Run parallel Retention Policy Stages

Question

I have a document library with a property that can be set to three different values:

Pending - > Delete after 90 days
Delete - > Delete immediately
Completed - > fire a workflow that moves items to a location outside of SharePoint

The problem is one of the threee status values can be selected at any time, in any order. I am trying to figure out if the correct behaviour can be triggered with custom retention policies.

I can set up a retention stage for the first two options with a custom retention policy and a delete action, and a second stage for the "Completed" option linked to a workflow. However, if set the property to "Completed" upon the first upload, I would think I would never reach the second stage. I am wondering if there is a way to have multiple stages at once.

Answer 1

I don't think a retention policy would necessarily be the route to take here. It seems as if all of this scould be accomplished with a singular workflow that evaluates the status of the column and takes the desired action as you have specified.

You have 2 immediate actions based on the status of the coulmn, delete or move. Those could be immediately handled via an onchange workflow. You could then have an IRM retention policy that looks at the created plus 90 days and if the status is pending, delete it via workflow. Any other status wouldn't make it to that point and would be deleted by the on change workflow or relocated.