Instant message archiving is the practice of capturing and retaining records of conversations from instant messaging (IM) platforms. All businesses are mandated by law to do this, or else they face legal repercussions.
However, due to the sheer number of messages managed daily, your company might need to decide which to keep and which to discard. This straightforward guide will help you categorize conversations for your “instant message: capture or delete” dilemma.
Important Chats: Messages to Archive
To simplify the decision process in choosing which messages to keep or delete, we recommend identifying the important ones first. Messages that involve direct business interactions, high-value transactions, customer interactions, and sensitive information exchanges are chats that you must keep.
The key factor in choosing important messages is how they will affect your business if they are gone. For instance, keeping employee training materials sent via IM will hold much value for future reference, so consider keeping them in your archive.
A summary of common important messages are as follows:
- Communications related to legal matters
- Project instructions, planning, updates, and progress tracking
- Messages containing confirmation for agreements and contracts
- Customer feedback and complaints
- Training materials and other valuable information-sharing chats
- Compliance documentation
Toss in the Trash: Messages to Delete
Some instant messages contain mundane information that is not useful or relevant to the business. Rather than letting these “bloat” messages eat up space, you may consider deleting them.
Most bloat messages are personal chats or duplicates of existing and archived messages. Think about it: if you delete them, they won’t affect your business at all.
Below is a summary of messages you can consider deleting:
- Personal employee or casual messages not related to work
- Outdated or superseded documents and data
- Duplicates of existing and archived messages
- Routine check-ins with zero actionable information
Delete or Keep: Organizing Your Archive
Not all messages are worth keeping, especially when they hold little to no value to the business. To simplify, all messages unrelated to work or are repetitive can be discarded, while the rest can proceed to the archive. By separating disposables and valuable chats, you can keep your archive organized and have more than enough space to store future conversations.
