# 3. Before you share an input

Michael Rainer · APEX-PRESS · v0.37-C01 · EN

Use these eight references alongside the chapters. Copy the fields you need into your own record and keep one working version of that record. A reference card can remind you what to check; completing its fields does not prove that the answer is correct. Examples below are author-written practice material unless explicitly linked to the dated observations in Day 28.

Write what the task needs before opening an attachment or pasting a conversation. For practice, fictional material is often enough. For real work, establish that the information may be used in the particular service and follow the applicable organizational rules.

Leave credentials, access codes, and unnecessary personal or confidential information outside the request. Review the whole material you intend to provide, including screenshots, comments, attachments, and surrounding context. Removing a visible name does not establish that the remaining material is appropriate to share.

Check the current account's relevant data controls and provider terms. Do not treat training, storage, retention, and deletion as interchangeable. This reference supplies no current provider-specific promise about any of them. A setting you remember from an earlier account is not evidence of today's conditions.

If a connected service is involved, identify what it could read or change and whether that access fits the authorized task. The fact that an interface offers a connection or upload does not establish permission to use it. If the conditions are unclear, narrow the input or use an approved alternative.

**Input record:** Information needed; information excluded; permitted service and basis for that choice; settings or terms checked and date; person or policy responsible for workplace permission; unresolved issue; alternative if the issue remains open.

Before acting on the result, revisit the input record if the conversation has expanded. A request that began with invented data may later ask for real records. Make a new permission decision at that point. The original exercise does not authorize the expanded use.

Use this as a preparation checklist, not a certificate that the service or your procedure is legally compliant. Days 4, 25, and 27 explain related boundaries in the context of actual tasks.