Processing Activities

Introduction to Processing Activities

Processing activities are the core element of personal data management. Many regulations require them to be documented and assessed.

Privacy-Now® dedicated process enables to record processing activities, to maintain them and to use them for assessment or other tasks related to personal data management.

Workflow

A new processing activity can be created using the Add New functionality and choosing "New Processing Activity".

A workflow enables to move the processing activities in several statuses as shown in the following picture.

Processing activities workflow and statuses.

The following table explains the meaning of each status:

Status	Description
Default	A temporary status when the processing activity is initially created before the first save.
Draft	A processing activity in this status is draft.
Active	A processing activity in this status is actually executed by the organization.
Inactive	A processing activity in this status is not executed by the organization. Either it was in the past or it will in the future.
Cancelled	Processing activity cancelled. It is still possible to recover a processing activity from this status by enabled users.

Information

Processing activities records are organized in four sections:

• Identification, where identification data of the processing activity are recorded,
• Ownership & Organization, containing the assignment of the key roles enabled to manage the processing activity;
• Characteristics, with the key attributes of the processing activity;
• Information Technology, with information about the technologies used to process personal data by the processing activivty.

Detailed information on the meaning and use of every field can be found by pointing the mouse on the (i) next to each field. This will activate a tooltip with a brief description of the field.

Additional information can be found in the secondary forms of the record: attachments, related items, messages and history. See How To for more information.

Privileges

Processing activities can be created by the users to whom the corresponding privilege is granted (see Users & Groups for more information on how to set this privilege).

The lifecycle of the processing activity is managed by the roles described in the table below. Groups are pre assigned to the roles according to the settings (see Settings for more information on how to set these defaults). Initial assignments can be modified according to privileges choosing among the enabled groups (see once again Settings for more information on how to enable groups).

Role	Description
DPO Group	Members of the group assigned to this role have full privileges. They can: transition records to any compatible status, update fields when possible, update data sources directly in record management, revert from "Cancelled" status.
Data Controller Group	Members of the group assigned to this role have view (read) privileges.
Data Processor Group	Members of the group assigned to this role have view (read) privileges.
Auditors Team	Members of the group assigned to this role have view (read) privileges.
DPA Owner	This role can be assigned to a single user among members of the DPO group or the Data Controller Group. The DPA Owner has several privileges: transition to any compatible status, update fields when possible.

Reports

The list of processing activities can be filtered and exported to excel format from the view Processing Activities.

Finally, it is possible to print the processing activity card using the Print command positioned up right in the General form of the processing activity record.

Related processes

Many other entities can be related to processing activity records, in particular:

• access requests,
• actions,
• impact assessments,
• risks.