Retention, legal hold and approved patterns
On Enterprise, an organisation's owner decides how long its library and its audit log are kept, can put everything on legal hold, and can ask its agents to start from the organisation's own patterns.
TL;DR
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Where are they? | The organisation's Settings tab: Retention, Legal hold and Approved patterns. Each is also in Recommended settings, except the legal hold. |
| Who changes them? | The owner. Admins see them. Admins and the owner can keep a single diagram, and save the organisation's patterns on the Patterns tab. |
| Which plan? | Enterprise. Turning a policy off works on every plan, so nothing is stuck after a contract ends. |
| Can old diagrams be deleted for us? | Yes. Delete library diagrams not updated for 90, 180, 365 or 730 days. Never is the default. |
| Can one diagram be spared? | Yes. Keep on a diagram spares it from that retention. The list then says Kept. |
| Do we get a warning? | Yes. A week before, the list shows Deletes on with the date, and the owner gets one email a week that lists what will go. |
| How long is the audit log kept? | The plan's days, or longer with Keep the audit log for: 1 or 2 years, and 7 years where Plotwork's database has room for it. It only lengthens. |
| What does a legal hold do? | Nothing of the organisation is deleted until the owner takes it off: no clean-up, no member's delete, and not the organisation itself. |
| What are approved patterns? | Diagrams your organisation saved as starting points, in the same format as Plotwork's own patterns. Your agents' find_pattern lists them first, marked Your organisation's pattern. |
| Can agents be held to them? | Agents start from approved patterns makes find_pattern answer with your patterns only. A diagram that matches none can still be drawn: it guides, it does not block. |
| Can broken style rules stop a publish? | Yes. Style rules are errors refuses a publish, or an editor save, that breaks one of your saved style rules, with the findings. |
| Is it all audited? | Yes, and sent to your SIEM with every other event. |
1. Library retention
Delete library diagrams not updated for deletes a library diagram that nobody published again or edited for the number of days you choose. Publishing it again, or saving it in the editor, starts the time over.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What are the choices? | Never (the default), 90, 180, 365 or 730 days. |
| What if the plan keeps diagrams for less? | The plan wins. A plan that deletes a diagram after 30 days still does, whatever you choose here. |
| What goes with a deleted diagram? | Its file, its previous versions, its public link and the copy behind that link. |
| How do I spare one? | The owner or an admin turns on Keep in the diagram's menu. Kept then shows in the list. A kept diagram is still subject to the plan's own retention. |
| When does it happen? | The clean-up that runs once a day. A diagram due within a week shows Deletes on and the date in the list. |
| Who is told? | The owner gets one email a week while something is due in the next seven days. It lists each diagram by name and folder with its date, and links to the Diagrams tab. |
| What is recorded? | orgs.settings.retention when the owner changes it, orgs.diagram.keep when someone keeps a diagram, and one orgs.retention.sweep event for each run that deleted something, with the counts. Its actor is Retention policy. |
2. Audit log retention
Keep the audit log for keeps the organisation's audit log for 1 or 2 years instead of the plan's days, and 7 years once Plotwork's database is on a tier with room for it. The portal offers only the choices this service has room for. It only lengthens: an organisation keeps its events for the longer of the two.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Why not always 7 years? | Each event takes about 650 bytes in the database, indexes included, and every organisation's log shares one database. Seven years of a busy organisation's log needs the larger database tier, so it is offered only there. To keep events longer, send them to your SIEM. |
| What happens after? | The daily clean-up removes events older than that, as it does for every plan. |
| Does it change exports? | An export reaches every event the organisation keeps. |
3. Legal hold
A legal hold keeps everything. Only the owner turns it on, with a reason, and only the owner takes it off, with a reason.
| While it is on | What happens |
|---|---|
| The daily clean-up | Skips the organisation: no diagram expires, no retention deletes, no audit event is removed. |
| A member, an admin, the owner or an agent deletes a diagram | Refused with orgs.legal_hold. The portal shows Legal hold is on since the date: nothing can be deleted. |
| An edit | Is saved, and every previous version is kept. |
| The owner deletes the organisation, or their account | Refused. |
| The audit log | Every stored event can be read and exported, whatever its age. |
Settings and the Diagrams tab show the plain line Legal hold is on since the date, nothing can be deleted, while it is on. Admins see the reason; members and readers see the line. Both changes are recorded as orgs.legal_hold.on and orgs.legal_hold.off with the reason.
4. Approved patterns
A pattern is a diagram saved as a starting point: a name, a title, a summary, when to use it, tags, the source of one or more flavours (neutral, AWS, Azure or Google Cloud), named slots and notes. It follows the format of Plotwork's own patterns. The owner and admins save them on the Patterns tab; every member can read them.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What is a slot? | A part an agent renames, written {{name}} inside a quoted label of the source, with a default and one line on what belongs there. The Patterns tab finds them in the source. |
| How is a pattern checked? | As Plotwork's own are: every slot it uses is named and every slot named is used, a default fits its label, and each flavour, filled with its defaults, is valid source of one kind of diagram. Every problem is shown at once. |
| What is its id? | org: and its name, such as org:payments-service. |
| How many? | Up to 50. |
| Who finds them? | An agent connected to the organisation, or a call with one of its API keys. find_pattern lists them first, marked Your organisation's pattern, and get_pattern and draw_from_pattern take their ids. A person's own connection is not affected. |
| What is recorded? | orgs.pattern.create, orgs.pattern.update and orgs.pattern.delete, with the pattern's id and title. The source is never recorded. |
Agents start from approved patterns
With this on, find_pattern through the organisation's connections and keys answers with its own patterns only, and the server tells the agent to start from them. When none fits, the agent draws from nothing as before: the policy guides, it does not block. It is recorded as orgs.settings.patterns_only.
5. Style rules are errors
Your saved style rules are warnings everywhere by default. With Style rules are errors on, a publish to the library and a save in the editor that break one are refused with orgs.style_rules_failed, and the findings come back as data: each one's code, line, column, message and hint. Nothing is stored. It needs saved style rules to do anything, and it is recorded as orgs.settings.style_rules_strict.
See also
| Doc | Why |
|---|---|
| Organisations | The library, roles, and how long a diagram is kept on each plan |
| Audit log | Every event these policies record |
| Architecture patterns | The built-in patterns, whose format yours follow |
| MCP server | find_pattern, get_pattern and draw_from_pattern |
| Privacy policy | What is kept, for how long, and what the organisation can shorten |