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 end user's last comment on a ticket where they are requester or CC'd. This is the timestamp of the user's last comment on the ticket.
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 as last active on January 1, 2018. In addition, only ticket activity is considered between January 1, 2018 and March 1, 2021. Any help center activity during this period is ignored.
- 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 in your
Zendesk account. 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 an article 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. Activities that count toward an end
user's activity in the help center or community include:
Activities that count toward an end user's activity in Support include:
|
Organization | Deletes end users based on organization, if you have multiple organizations. |
Tags | Deletes end users with the selected ticket tags. |
69 comments
Mary O'Neill
Hi Aaron C.,
Yes that's correct. Deleted tickets are excluded from most Explore reports by default. Ticket created events will not be deleted and will report on deleted tickets but solved etc. will not report on deleted tickets.
To report on ticket deletion events, use the Updates history dataset to create a report with the Activity > Deletions metric. SLA data from deleted tickets is also retained in the SLAs dataset.
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Gicheol Shin (Casey)
Hello Anunay Sinha, Is there a plan to be able to create user deletion schedules?
0
Jaap Meijer
This is helpful option! As for GDPR I think it is as important to be able to delete contacts that we didn't communicate with for e.g. 3 years. Is this issue in the picture as well?
2
Ivan Miquiabas
Thanks for reaching out! Yes this is already published as available. This is also available on all plans. Please check the announcement here.
Cheers!
0
Gicheol Shin (Casey)
Ivan Miquiabas
Thanks, but I mean associated users deletion. I want user deletion schedules and wanna know when this feature will be launch.
0
Ivan Miquiabas
If you are referring to just specific user deletion only, there is no announcement yet on when this will be added as a feature. So I would recommend writing a feedback about it here.
Cheers!
1
Gicheol Shin (Casey)
Thank you, Ivan Miquiabas
I've noticed a feature request on the admin center feedback post, and there's a comment stating that the feature is expected to launch this quarter. I would like to know when and how I can start using it. Can you provide assistance?
0
Ivan Miquiabas
Since this has already been on the roadmap it was mentioned this quarter, we need to stay tuned on the development. I would suggest going in to the comment thread and follow up from the Product Managers. As of the momen this is not yet available but this will be announced here.
Cheers!
0
Marty
Hi,
Would it also be possible to add a function to only delete attachments and not the ticket?
For us we want to keep the tickets for statistical data but remove all attached files.
This function would also help with storage.
Best Regards,
Martin
1
Gabriel
If you need to keep a record of the tickets outside Zendesk before deleting them, I recommend this app:
Ticket Export & Archive by Knots
https://www.zendesk.com/marketplace/apps/support/1010199/ticket-export--archive-by-knots/
It stores tickets as PDF, including comments, ticket fields and attachments in a cloud-storage folder.
0
Alan
Mary O'Neill - you mentioned exclusions based on custom field will be coming in H1 2024. Will those (or other exclusions) be available for all customers or just as part of the Advanced Data Privacy and Protection add-on?
1
Jon E McClain
Would this also include Sunshine data?
2
Marty
Mary O'Neill it's very important for us that the standard functionality allows for only deleting attachments(file storage) and not whole tickets. As you can see we have a lot of space left for tickets and want to keep the statistical data and not lose it just because tickets needs to be deleted.
1
Kurt Ferraris
Is it possible to add another parameter on which we could delete only those that are spam tickets or tickets not coming from our customers? We would like to retain them so that we can have a reference when they contact us back in the future.
0
Anunay Sinha
Hi Emily Hillerman
The ability to exclude tickets from deletion is available as part of the Advanced Data Privacy and Protection (ADPP) add-on. With the add-on, you'll be able to create more than 1 deletion schedule for tickets and segment ticket deletion by brand, tags, requester, form and organization. See Creating multiple ticket deletion schedules for advanced data retention policies.
0
Anunay Sinha
Hi Kurt Ferraris
The ability to segment tickets for selective deletion is available as part of the Advanced Data Privacy and Protection (ADPP) add-on. The segmentation options available with the add-on are brand, tags, requester, form and organization. See Creating multiple ticket deletion schedules for advanced data retention policies.
0
Anunay Sinha
Hi Alan
The exclusions will only be available as part of the Advanced Data Privacy and Protection (ADPP) add-on.
0
Anunay Sinha
Hi Jon E McClain
When a ticket is deleted, all associated conversations are also deleted. Conversations which do not result in a ticket (i.e. a bot conversation) will be deleted separately. We are working to integrate that with our deletion admin settings in 2024.
0
Anunay Sinha
Hi Gicheol Shin (Casey)
User retention policies is expected to launch in H2 2024. We can't pin point a quarter (Q3 or Q4) just yet.
0
Anunay Sinha
Hi Jaap Meijer - yes, user retention policies will solve for that use case. It is on our roadmap for launch in H2, 2024.
0
Milena Rusanova
Hi Mary O'Neill Could you please provide an overview which functionalities will be available for the Suite Professional plan and which will be only part of the Add-On?
Creating Ticket and/or User deletion schedules is of great importance to us, but in most cases we need to be able to add conditions like Tags/Custom fields etc.
0
Gamine Team
Hello,
Is there a way to delete only media files and attachments in X years old archived tickets, while keeping the tickets? Frankly saying it would help a lot to keep the storage within the limits without affecting the workflow and analytics.
0
Anunay Sinha
0
Christine Schulze
Hi! Any update on when it will be possible to set a schedule for deleting users as well? Will it be now during Q3 or first in Q4?
0
Joel Hellman
Anunay Sinha can you confirm that ticket deletion schedules delete email side conversations connected to the deleted ticket?
0
Aleix Paytuvi Gallart
Hello,
It's been almost 1 year since this response [1]. When will it be possible to set a schedule to delete users? Is there any update on that?
Cheers,
Aleix.
[1] https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/6062884435866/comments/6432862416538
0
Anunay Sinha
Hi Aleix Paytuvi Gallart - User retention policies are expected to be launched by the end of Q4' 2024. Thanks for your patience.
0
Marty
Anunay Sinha how about the possibility to delete only attached files to tickets so that metadata is still saved for year over year reporting?
Attachments takes up a lot of space but I don't want to delete the whole ticket just because a customer has included attachments.
0
Aleix Paytuvi Gallart
Anunay Sinha , is there any update regarding the possibility of setting a schedule to delete users?
0
Andy Underwood
Could you please look to include a throttling option to this feature for clearing large back logs. Each time the Zendesk deletion takes place it generates a multitude of update events which clog up our internally built extractor. We have no way of excluding these updates from the actual updates we need. Either stop these events as they are surely unnecessary or allow throttling to say only delete 2k tickets per hour. At the minute we are having to manually do 2k per hour so when you sometimes have client backlogs at around 500k tickets it takes an age.
0