Data retention policies are critical for companies to ensure regulatory compliance, as many industries have laws mandating the retention of certain data types. For example, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation requires EU companies not to retain personal data longer than necessary, and companies must be able to demonstrate compliance with this principle. Often, companies must comply with multiple data retention laws, depending on industry and location.
- Delete end users that haven't been active in three years
- Delete end users whose organization is NOT Acme, Inc. that haven't been active in two years
- Delete end users without the tag retain that haven't been active in 18 months
When you delete end users in Zendesk, they’re soft deleted and queued for permanent deletion after 30 days.
Related articles:
About end-user deletion schedules
End-user deletion schedules continuously search for and delete end users who haven't been active for a specified period of time. For example, if you create a schedule that deletes an end user after one year of inactivity, but the end user comments on a ticket within that time, the end user is not deleted. The clock starts over, and the user will be deleted one year after they've been last active.
- The end user's last activity on the help center, including the last time they searched for, viewed, or commented on an article.
- The last time the end user signed in.
- The end user's last ticket comment, which is the timestamp of the last comment made by the user on a ticket where they are the requester.
User activity is not activity driven by a team member or Zendesk, such as the time a ticket was closed.
After it's activated, a deletion schedule isn't a one-off event. Zendesk continuously searches for and deletes end users unless you deactivate the schedule. Deletion schedules start to delete eligible end users within 72 hours of meeting the defined criteria. For example, if a schedule deletes inactive end users after 3 years, it will start deleting them within 72 hours of reaching 3 years of inactivity. Zendesk can delete up to 24,000 end users per account per day.
Deletion schedules soft delete end users, meaning users are still in the Zendesk database and accessible on a limited basis to Zendesk employees with certain database privileges. You can then permanently delete the user, or take no additional action, and Zendesk deletes the user permanently after 30 days.
You can track these changes in the audit log by filtering by Activity type: Updated.
Creating end-user deletion schedules
You can create up to 10 end-user deletion schedules, but only one end-user deletion schedule can be active at a time. If you have the Advanced Data Privacy and Protection add-on, you can activate up to 10 end-user deletion schedules.
To create an end-user deletion schedule
- In Admin Center, click
Account in the sidebar, then select Security > Deletion schedules.
- Click Create deletion schedule > End users.
If you already created 10 end-user deletion schedules, a message appears notifying you that you’ve reached your limit. You must delete a schedule before you can create a new one.
- Enter the Schedule name.
Use a consistent naming convention to help you recognize similar types of deletion schedules.
- (Optional) Enter a Description for your deletion schedule.
- For Last active, indicate when to delete end users based on when they were last active in Zendesk. This field is required.
Note: The earliest last active date is January 1, 2018. End users who were last active before that date are marked last active January 1, 2018.
- Click Add condition to add additional conditions for deleting end users, such as by organization or tags. You can configure the deletion schedule to delete end users that meet All or Any of the specified conditions. See Building condition statements for end-user deletion schedules.
You can add one additional condition for deleting end users. If you have the Advanced Data Privacy and Protection add-on, there's no limit to the number of conditions you can add.
- Select a Category, Operator, and Value for each condition.
The operator determines the relationship between the category and the value. For example, if you select the operator Is, your category must equal the value.
- (Optional) After conditions are added, click Preview to preview an approximate number of end users that match and will be deleted when the schedule is active.
- Click Create.
- Activate the deletion schedule.
Building condition statements for end-user deletion schedules
Condition statements consist of categories, field operators, and condition values (which vary depending on the category selected). Condition statements are essentially "if" statements that delete tickets meeting the specified criteria.
The table below lists the categories available for building condition statements for end-user deletion schedules.
Category | Description |
---|---|
Last active | Deletes end users based on when they were last active. At least one Last active condition is required.
Deletion schedules delete end users that have been inactive for the time period specified in the Last active field. For example, if Last active is set to 365 days, and the end user commented on a ticket within that time, the end user is not deleted. The clock starts over, and the end user will be deleted 365 days from the last active date. |
Organization | Deletes end users based on organization, if you have multiple organizations. |
Tags | Deletes end users with the selected ticket tags. |
69 comments
Emily Hillerman
Is there any plan to allow for any exceptions? We would like to delete all tickets after a certain time frame, with an exception of certain model numbers which we have setup as a customer field in our Zendesk forms.
6
Mary O'Neill
Hi Emily,
Thanks for your question. Yes you will be able to create exclusions by custom fields, just not in this Beta version. Exclusions by custom fields will be coming in the first half of next year.
1
Kajsa Linderborg
Hi,
This is a feature we've been looking for in Zendesk for a long time.
0
Anunay Sinha
Hi, Kajsa Linderborg - with this feature, tickets are removed but not the associated users. We have a planned feature for launch in upcoming quarters to offer the creation of user deletion schedules, which could be used to remove the users as well. These schedules would allow for the deletion of users both in isolation to their tickets, as well as along with their associated tickets.
2
Kajsa Linderborg
Thanks for a quick response! Do you know if it will be available in Q2 or later? Will it be possible to delete a user apart from the tickets? We have a need for keeping tickets longer than the users.
Will this feature be included in the Professional Suite or will you charge extra for the functionality?
Sorry for all questions but this is important to us.
0
JR Lausin
There's no specific details yet as to when this feature will be launch based on what the product manager said "This would allow for the deletion of users both in isolation to their tickets" So this feature should be included. Regarding on what plan or if this will be an add-on there's no specific details yet but we encourage you to sign up to this beta feature so you can get an update via email.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1OOJmTxQODQEBEgud_mUdg-1-dgInYr0YTR2JIqTlPYo/viewform?edit_requested=true#responses
Sincerely,
0
Elisabeth Henderson
Is there a limit to the number of deletions will take place per day? We enabled the beta function, and it looks like it tapped out at 49,999 tickets (I know there are WAY more than that in the timeframe we specified.
The process also seems to not work from oldest to newest in the selected timeframe, rather by some other logic (it's not apparent since the tickets are gone now :) ) but it would be helpful to know how this is done so that we can make sure to select appropriate timeframes for deleting tickets.
0
Anunay Sinha
Hi Elisabeth Henderson
We do have a limit of 200k ticket deletions per day. The deletions are ordered by creation time. If you' re not seeing that happen, feel free to let us know (log a support ticket) some of the tickets you were hoping to see deleted based on the above logic. We will troubleshoot and get back with our findings.
0
Eckhard Doll
Hi there,
This is a very useful and much needed feature given that we have to keep a closer look at our available storage. So thank you for providing access to the beta.
Before first enabling this option, it would be helpful to see how many tickets will be deleted and how much space this will free up. This way, we can adjust the number of days before putting this into effect. Currently, it's just guessing, provided that I haven't missed that option.
0
Anunay Sinha
Hi Eckhard Doll
Your question is very timely as starting today, we have enhanced the beta experience to show the number of tickets that'll be deleted based on the condition. Re. the space freed up, we'll take a note of the requirement for prioritization purposes.
0
Eckhard Doll
Hi Anunay Sinha,
Okay, I felt stupid for a moment this morning when I saw the schedules including the preview until I saw your comment. Thank you, that must have been the quickest feature request implementation I ever witnessed :-)
0
James Clarke
Would it be possible to delete files over a certain size from tickets but have the tickets remain?
I see it has already been requested to remove the user details but to retain the tickets, this is the most important request for me.
My data storage is very low but my file storage is high, and ultimately I'd like to keep the tickets for reference purposes but remove the user information and any video files they have sent us (hence the file size request).
Long term, this would require three deletion schedules at the same time. One for the user (to comply with GDPR), one for the attachments that exceed a certain size, and one to remove tickets over a certain age.
This could work like the trigger system, so that each time the deletions happen an order is followed.
1
Sean Morrissey
Are there plans to allow tags in the schedule? I would like to delete tickets for my prior clients where the tag = "prior_client" and ticket is greater than 2 years closed. Right now I can only delete tickets based on the year.
1
Mary O'Neill
Hi James Clarke,
Thanks for your comment.
User deletion schedules will be launching first half of next year which will allow you to delete users who have not logged in / been active for a certain period of time.
Thanks for your request to delete attachments also, we have been getting more and more requests for this feature recently and will work this into our backlog. We have a short form for capturing requirements if you would like to complete it, it helps us prioritise what to build next and the option to opt to part take in customer research and prototype validation.
0
Mary O'Neill
Hi Sean Morrissey,
Thank you for your comment.
For this particular version, ticket deletion is by time only. There is a more advanced version with a condition builder as part of the Advanced Data Privacy and Protection (ADPP) add-on. This includes the ability to segment tickets, currently by brand, and will expand to include tags early next year.
We have a short form for capturing requirements if you would like to complete it to help us prioritise which features to build.
0
Arno (EMEA Partner)
As it is mentioned it separately, that these tickets are not visible in Deleted tickets view, does this mean, that hard delete takes place immediately and also used storage is affected immediately? Or is there a 30 day delay before storage is freed?
0
Mary O'Neill
Hi Arno,
Hard ticket deletion still takes place 30 days later, the tickets are just not visible in the view. Storage is reflected straight away as a result of soft deletion and you don't have to wait for hard deletion.
1
Lala
The value and unit for deletion a little confusing. For example, when I select value 1 and unit weeks, it shows tickets from August 2023. Why is that? That seems like a random time frame. How is it calculating weeks? Also, we want to delete specific groups of tickets for storage purposes so it would be nice to be able to input other criteria such as a group or even keywords to bulk certain tickets.
0
Arno (EMEA Partner)
"Hard ticket deletion still takes place 30 days later, the tickets are just not visible in the view. Storage is reflected straight away as a result of soft deletion and you don't have to wait for hard deletion."
Can you confirm if storage is really affected right away, or is there a significant delay. I have removed a lot of tickets, but storage report did not really reflect that until I made a script to permantly delete tickets via API. I am deleting tickets with third party App from marketplace, but I assume there is no difference how old (archived) tickets are soft deleted, but it should affect the storage the same way - immediately?
0
Sean Morrissey
My two cents...Zendesk started enforcing storage, but the deletion feature does not address the proper way to setup deletion based upon retention schedules. Zendesk should not be enforcing storage until they have a correct way to delete tickets.
1
Mary O'Neill
Hi Lala,
Thanks for your comment. The preview shows a sample of tickets matching the criteria set. In this case it is tickets that have been closed and not updated for a week or more - ex: all tickets closed before Dec 25th would include August 2023. Hope that helps.
0
Mary O'Neill
Hi Arno,
Thanks for your patience on this, I have raised this with the Storage dash team again as this is the info they are providing regarding soft / hard deletion. I will keep you posted and have asked them to update their docs with the answer to this question.
0
Christopher
The tab does not exist under Security in admin, is this feature limited to a certain plan? Or is the rollout still ongoing, and we are just not included yet? We have 0 schedules set up.
1
Bruce Williams
Kristie Sweeney Anunay Sinha I am not seeing this available to me. We have the Enterprise plan.
Do you have to do something to add my account to the Beta? Please contact me directly to get this feature made available.
Thanks
Bruce
0
Mary O'Neill
Hi Christopher and Bruce Williams
Yes this is still in a beta - you can sign up here. Once you have signed up we will add you to the feature and notify by email.
0
Steven Granner
Glad to see that this is something Zendesk is implementing! To make this feature useful to us, we would need to have the ability to add conditions/exclusions within Ticket Deletion Schedules and would also need the ability to delete end user profiles at the same time, as just deleting tickets isn't sufficient.
1
Mary O'Neill
Hi Steven Granner,
Thank you for the feedback! Which conditions would you like to see included? We have a short form for capturing requirements for deletion if you would like to complete it, it helps us prioritise what do build next.
0
Stacy Robinson
Is there a plan to be able to delete by organization?
2
Anunay Sinha
Hi, Stacy Robinson, the Beta version will allow for deletion by only time. The Advanced Ticket Retention Policies available as part of the ADPP add-on will soon have the ability to delete tickets by organization.
0
Aaron C.
I'm assuming that you will not be able to report on tickets in Explore after they are deleted. Is this correct?
So, total number of tickets created will not stay the same after tickets have been deleted, right?
For example, if there are 200,000 created tickets for all time, and you delete 100,000 tickets, this metric would then show 100,000 tickets created for all time?
0