Data Hygiene Best Practices - File Management
It is important to regularly maintain the cleanliness and accuracy of your data, including files stored on your computer’s hard drive, OneDrive, Teams, and/or SharePoint. In this article are suggestions for the best ways to manage your files.
Regularly Clean Out Your Downloads Folder
Your Downloads folder is the default location that files are saved to when you download something from an application or website. This can include temporary files that you may have only needed to view once or files that you want to keep indefinitely.
When downloading files, you should immediately save the file to a OneDrive, SharePoint, or Teams folder if you need to save it for some period of time.
Once a month, we recommend your review your downloads folder and delete anything that is no longer needed. At that time, you can also save any files that you do need to keep that might not have been saved yet.
If you are on a Windows device, you can configure your settings to automatically delete your Downloads folder after a file has not been opened for a set amount of time.
Open Settings, select System, then Storage.
Toggle Storage Sense on, then select it to view more options.
Check the box to “Keep Windows running smoothly by automatically cleaning up temporary system and app files”.
Under “Automatic User content cleanup”, toggle the switch On.
You can set the Storage Sense schedule to run every day, every week, every month, or only when you are low on disk space.
You can choose when to delete files in the recycling bin: after 1 day, 14 days, 30 days, or 60 days.
You can choose when to delete files in your Downloads folder if they haven’t been opened for more than: 1 day, 14 days, 30 days, 60 days, or never. We highly recommend you choose one of the options other than never, unless you plan on regularly going through Downloads folder, saving needed files to another folder, and deleting files that are no longer needed.
Avoid Downloading Files When Possible
We recommend you only download files that you need to save, edit, or view that cannot be saved, edited, or viewed in their native location/application.
Examples:
If you need to look up a piece of information about a specific student’s application in Slate, you can pull up and view that data within Slate without downloading the application. You can open the information in a new tab if you need to keep it open while working on something else.
Rather than exporting an Informer4 report to refer back to periodically, you could bookmark the link to the report, run it, and view the data directly within Informer4 whenever it is needed.
Sharing Files
Whenever possible, files should be accessed from the source. For example, rather than downloading data from Slate and emailing it to another employee, the employee who needs the data should log into Slate themselves and look up the data within Slate. If they have access to view the data, then you can be sure that proper procedures were followed to approve that access. If they do not have access to Slate or the data, they might not be authorized to view that data. In order to view Personally Identifiable Information (PII), an employee must have a valid reason or “need to know” based on their official job description. When in doubt, consult with your supervisor.
Another example: you’ve run a report in Colleague and would like to share it with another employee. Especially if the report contains PII, you could have the employee log into Colleague and run the report themselves rather than downloading and emailing the report. This may require submitting a Help Desk ticket to get access to the Colleague screen needed. This would ensure proper procedures are followed to get the required approval and document said approval for the access request.
There will be times when you do need to download and share files with other employees. If a file contains PII, first confirm that the person you are sharing it with is authorized to view the data. Then share the file via FileSafe. FileSafe can be used to share sensitive and/or large files. This is a more secure option than Outlook email. If there is no PII contained in the file, you can send it via Outlook email. If you no longer need the file after sharing it, you can delete it right away, especially if it contains PII.