Data Storage

One of the licensing aspects of FastTrack360 that requires all customers to have a clear understanding of is, data storage. Whilst the system supports adding a unlimited volume of data to the platform, storage comes at a cost.  To help you to control overall costs, we highly recommend you have a clearly defined usage/consumption policy for your users, to outline what is and is not added to the FastTrack360 solution.

Prior to defining your policy, consider what you can influence regarding data storage:

It is important to understand the aspects of data storage you can control to assist with planning and implementing a policy.  We have outlined below the features in FastTrack360 that will have a significant impact to data storage:

Document Management

Attaching files to FastTrack360 to support recruitment processes is expected for both legal and procedural reasons, and will vary for each FastTrack360 client.  These items may represent 50 - 60% of your storage requirements.  Please consider the following:

• What type of documents do you wish to attach to FastTrack360 to support your processes?

  • What types of files i.e. *.docx, *.txt,  will you allow to be attached?

  • What is the maximum file size of any file that can be attached?

  • Ensure that your scanner settings are set to Compact or Minimal.  We did some internal testing using our scanner and we were able to reduce the document size to 20% of the 'normal' default setting.

• How long do you keep the file history?  Should this be cleansed/deleted at any point?  For example, as a business do you keep all historical resumes, or only the most recent resume from the most recent application.

Outlook Extensions

• Synchronising communications between your Recruiters email and the FastTrack360 solution supports the centralisation of communication, for all communications with Client Contacts and Candidates.

• When Synchronising communications, decide if you are going to synchronise the conversation OR the conversation and any attachments.

Audit History

FastTrack360 incorporates an Audit Trail that records every change made across the platform.  The audit trail grows the overall storage with the history of changes, and while this will vary for each FastTrack360 client, these records may represent about 15-25% of total storage requirements.  Therefore it is important you decide whether you maintain the full audit history and incur the storage cost or cleanse the Audit Trail. If you have a preference to have the audit cleansed, a monthly process will be ran that will delete historical data based on a agreed interval i.e. 12, 18, 24 months. For example; If you chose 12 months you would keep a rolling 12 months of audit history. Its is important to outline that once removed this data is not recoverable.

Now that you understand how you can influence you storage, what are the next steps?

1 Define your policy on Document Storage

• Set your system defaults:

  • Review the limit you have imposed via Maintenance > General Items > System Settings 'Upload File Limit' - by default we assign 5mb as the limit, this can be reduced to help manage the size of files that users can attach to records in FastTrack360.  Click here to see information on General Items > System Settings. 

• Educate your team on your policy decisions, so they are clear on what they can and cannot do around attaching files to the Document Management, Candidate Resume sections, Email Templates and Emails.

• Should you wish to remove historical documents that are no longer applicable, FastTrack can assist with customised culling.  Please log requests via customer service and outline your requirements.  Any development to meet your expected business rules will incur service costs.

2. Define your policy on Outlook Extensions Synchronising

• Configure the related settings in Maintenance > General Items (click here to see information on General Items settings)

  • Review the limits set for Maintenance > General Items > Outlook Extensions for Comms Integration 'Include Attachments', this can be switched off, so attachments are not brought in with email communication items.  If you want to accept attachments, review the list of accepted attachment types, some of these items like .mwv, mpr4. are movie clip file times and can be quite large in size.

  • Review the file types allowed in Maintenance > General Items > Outlook Extensions for Add Candidate.  As above some of these file types can be very large in size.

• Educate your team on your policy decisions, so they are clear on what they can and cannot do around attaching files to the Document Management and Candidate Resume sections, Email Templates and Emails.

3. Define your policy on Audit History

• If you would like to change the default audit setting, ON, please contact customer service, and log a request outlining one of the below options;

a) Audit trail to be disabled in and set to OFF.

b) Audit trail to be remain enabled, and a monthly cleansing task to be applied to any data greater than 12 months old.

Monitoring

To view your current data usage information, click on the ? in the top menu, then select About FastTrack360.

Open

The Data Usage tab displays the current data usage for your environment.  

Open

In the example above, in the left hand graph, the environment is using 100% of its current licensed data storage (as shown in green).  Additional usage will be displayed in red.

The right hand graph displays a further breakdown of the usage:

• FastTrack (in blue) shows the amount of data storage being used by your FastTrack application.

• Audit (in orange) shows the amount of data storage being used by the Audit Database.

• Documents (in purple) shows the amount of data storage being used for documents (attachments).

Reporting

To further analyse your data storage usage, a new FT Standard Report has been developed. The report is not intended to give you a complete understanding of your overall Data Storage, as it is focused on the estimated size of the documents stored within your system and the areas of your system with the highest usage. This supports with auditing what has been attached including file size and type. This report also assists in managing system usage, to ensure policies are followed around file management and storage.  Click here for more information on the Document Data Storage report.