DeskDox
Metadata and Versions1 min readReviewed 2026-05-14

Lifecycle Enforcement and Dry-Run

What this helps you do

Use dry-run, shadow backfill, and guarded manual enforcement safely before changing production documents.

Lifecycle Enforcement and Dry-Run

Dry-run previews planned and skipped lifecycle actions without changing documents. Use it before production enforcement to see due date, action type, trigger source, and skip reason.

Shadow Backfill can run as a dry run to report planned counts without changes. When applied, it creates or refreshes shadow document lifecycle state only; it does not move, archive, expire, or delete documents.

Manual enforcement is guarded by system configuration and explicit confirmation. The UI may require typed confirmation such as ENFORCE depending on the visible form. Keep production runs scoped to specific document IDs and limited allowed actions where possible.

Observe-only or shadow mode should mean calculation/backfill without document-changing enforcement. Do not assume it applies actions. Review dry-run results, resolver trace, missing metadata, target folders, and action limits before running enforcement.

Was this article helpful?

Related articles

Continue with closely related metadata and versions guidance.

Lifecycle Management OverviewUnderstand what Lifecycle Management does, how policies, versions, assignments, rules, and actions fit together, and where document users see lifecycle results.Lifecycle Policies ListFind lifecycle policies, filter the list, understand status labels, and use row actions when your permissions allow them.Create or Edit Lifecycle PolicyCreate or edit the basic lifecycle policy record before adding versions, rules, actions, and assignments.Lifecycle Policy VersionsUnderstand draft, active, and superseded lifecycle versions and what activation changes.