Typically, systems consider a document or file to be a work-in-progress until it has undergone review, approval, lock-down, and (potentially) publication, where it will wait to be used.
The version of the form that is saved containing user content will become a formal record within the organization.
Once a document achieves the status of a record, the organization may apply best-practice or legally enforced retention policies which state how the second half of the record life-cycle will progress.
Eventually, typically at a set time after these events, the record undergoes destruction.
The seamlessness of the integration and the original intention of the records-management component to manage electronic records typically sets the complexity of deploying and potentially of using the final system.