How Pleno keeps correspondence
What Pleno keeps of your conversations and shared links, for how long, who can delete it, and how to download it.
What it is
The email your council sends and receives through Pleno is the strata corporation's correspondence. The Strata Property Regulation (section 4.1) asks a strata to keep its correspondence for at least two years, and an owner can ask to see it. Pleno keeps it for you, and lets admins download it.
What's kept
Every conversation on a card or a report:
- Who is in it: names and email addresses, who added each person and when, and who was removed and when.
- Each message: who wrote it, when, whether it was sent or received, its subject and text, and who it was sent to and copied on. Pleno also keeps the full email as it came (Show full email).
- The files that came with a message, filed on the card (or, from a resident, on their report).
- Messages held for approval, and rejected ones: a rejected message is never passed on, but it's kept, with why it was held and who rejected it and when.
- The council thread on each card, and imported history (an old thread forwarded in with "history" in the subject).
- Conversations with residents on their reports.
- Delivery: for each copy Pleno sent, whether it was delivered, bounced or marked as spam.
How long
- At least two years from when a message was sent or received. A held message is kept two years from when it was approved, or from when it was rejected.
- A message still waiting for approval isn't locked yet: its two years start when it's approved or rejected.
- A rejected message's files aren't filed on the card, so they aren't kept under the two years; its text and the email as it came are.
- Within those two years no one can delete it: not a council member, not an admin, not Pleno, and not by deleting the card or the report it's on (Pleno says why and refuses). The files that came with it stay on the card too. The one exception: an import of earlier email can be removed within 7 days of it, by whoever imported it or an admin. See Importing an old email thread as history.
- After two years, Pleno keeps it. Nothing in Pleno deletes correspondence on its own; it goes only with the card or report it's on, if an admin deletes that.
- Owner contacts stay until a council member removes them, on a card or in Settings › Owner contacts, where every contact is listed, including one whose unit no published card names any more. Messages to and from an owner stay with the card's conversations after their contact is removed.
- Shared links stop working after 30 days, when their card is done, cancelled or archived, or when revoked. The record of each link (who it went to, which files, when it was opened) stays with the card.
Downloading it
- The whole strata: the data export in Settings › Privacy & data holds every conversation on a published card or a report, one text file each, with a list of them all, and the owner contacts. See Exporting and deleting data.
- One card: in the card's Conversation tab, Download conversations gives a ZIP of every conversation on the card, and the conversations with the residents who filed its linked reports, with the files that came with their messages. Use it to answer an owner's request for records. On a project's item, the project's messages linked to the item aren't in the item's download: they're in the project's.
Each conversation's file says what it is (with people outside the council, the council thread, imported history, or a resident's conversation), who is in it, and every message in the order it was written: the date and time in your building's time zone, who wrote it, whether it was sent or received, its text, and its files with where they are in the ZIP. Held messages are marked [Held for approval], rejected ones [Rejected], and imported history [Imported history].
A download holds each message's own text, without the earlier mail quoted under it. Private reply addresses and private file links are replaced with a note: they are never in a download. Ask AI chats aren't in it.
Who can do it
- Every council member reads a card's conversations. Residents never see them; a resident reads their own conversation by email.
- The admins (president, vice-president, and a property manager with delegated admin) download the strata export and a card's conversations, on every plan. Not during a support session: Pleno staff never see what a message says.
Reading and downloading past conversations is part of every plan, including Free. A strata that moves to Free keeps every conversation.
Limits and things to know
- A download holds personal information: the names, email addresses and messages of everyone in the conversations, owners and residents included. Keep it safely and share it only with those entitled to it.
- A correction to a message is made by adding a note to the card: messages themselves aren't edited.
- A way for an admin to delete a message or a conversation after its two years, with the reason kept, isn't in Pleno yet.