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Creating end-user deletion schedules



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Kristie Sweeney

Zendesk Documentation Team

Edited Jan 21, 2025


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69 comments

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.  

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Mary O'Neill

Zendesk Product Manager

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.

 

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Hi,

This is a feature we've been looking for in Zendesk for a long time.

Are Users deleted when all their tickets are removed or will they remain in the system? According to the GDPR, personal data isn't allowed be held longer than necessary and we must be able to remove users automatically.

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Anunay Sinha

Zendesk Product Manager

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. 

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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.

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JR Lausin

Zendesk Customer Care

Hi Kajsa,

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,

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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.

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Anunay Sinha

Zendesk Product Manager

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.

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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.

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Anunay Sinha

Zendesk Product Manager

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.

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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 :-)

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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.

 

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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.

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Mary O'Neill

Zendesk Product Manager

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.

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Mary O'Neill

Zendesk Product Manager

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.

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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?

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Mary O'Neill

Zendesk Product Manager

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. 

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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.

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"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?

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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.

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Mary O'Neill

Zendesk Product Manager

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.

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Mary O'Neill

Zendesk Product Manager

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.

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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.

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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

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Mary O'Neill

Zendesk Product Manager

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.

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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. 

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Mary O'Neill

Zendesk Product Manager

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.

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Stacy Robinson

Zendesk Luminary

Is there a plan to be able to delete by organization? 

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Anunay Sinha

Zendesk Product Manager

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.

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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? 

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