One of the core concepts within Pathways is that of Active and Archived records. The field used to determine Active and Archived is called the Status, and is present in almost all parts of Pathways.
For example we group Hosts into Active and Archived. Similarly we group Students into Active and Archived. All the way down to the Setting screens and all the supporting lists where we have, say, the list of Industries you attach to placements - you have an Active list of industries, and an Archived list of industries.
But Why?
The databases behind Pathways are enormous, and concepts from the past such as archiving and deleting records after a period of time are no longer relevant to current technology. This means we are always accruing information in your Pathways account because the history of your program is one of the most important things in Vocational Learning (placement history especially!).
To keep things simple we use the Status field to split what's a "now" thing and what's a "not now" or "Archived" thing. Below are a few common scenarios to demonstrate.
A Student Finishes Year 12
In this scenario the student's year level moves from 12 to Past, and as they are no longer at the school you would in many circumstances not want the student's record to be appearing in your day to day processes after they have left. When the end of year rollover (automatic!) runs it not only increments the year levels, but changes the "Status" of students that have left the school to "Archived". Their entire record is stored and intact, but taken out of the spotlight and day to day activities by changing the status.
A Host Goes Out of Business
This host may have a decade of placements and history with you, and this history is naturally very important to be retained, however you don't want the host record to appear in your day to day operations or be available for students to be placed. In this case we "Archive" the host record, changing it's status from "Active" to "Archived". This means the host doesn't appear in common processes such as creating a new placement, or bulk mail merges to "Active" hosts. As part of the archiving process (2 clicks!) in Pathways we also ask you WHY the host was archived and present a list of common options (eg. Out of business, unsuitable etc.).
Tidying Up Setup Lists
In the setup screens you maintain all the drop-down menus and plumbing of Pathways - quite often this involves removing options from lists. For example you have a list of 15 industries that can be selected when adding a host. You need to remove 3 of these for hosts in the future, but don't want to alter historical records. Pathways allows you to change the status to "Archived" for these setup lists, so the history is maintained, but from that moment onwards those items won't be available to be added to the host records.