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
evanthia dimitriou
If a note(email) is deleted after ex 72h completely is this the reason why some conversations aren’t linked in the same one? If only one schedule is up to be active out of 10 ,does it mean that it will delete the emails from the previous active schedule? Since i cant have 2 active schedules? (and I would like to keep some of me previous notes belonginging to the previous schedule)
0
Anunay Sinha
Hi evanthia dimitriou - you can create more than 10 ticket deletion schedules but keep only 1 active at any time unless you have the Advanced Data Privacy and Protection (ADPP) add-on that allows you to keep up to 10 active ticket deletion schedules. I am not sure I fully understand your question, but the deletion happens only based on “the then active” deletion schedule. Also, the deletion happens at the ticket level, not at a note or a specific comment level. If your question was something else, please elaborate it a bit.
0
Anunay Sinha
Hi Marty - the ability to delete only the attachments from the tickets is on our 2025 roadmap. We haven't established a specific quarter for its launch but we'll share the information as soon as we have it. Thanks for your patience!
1
Anunay Sinha
Hi Aleix Paytuvi Gallart - the user deletion schedules are coming very soon. The launch is expected to happen this month. Stay tuned!
2
Milena Rusanova
Hi Anunay Sinha and Mary O'Neill , great news! This was a very needed feature for our company!
Can you please give more information on what happens with the tickets of a deleted user?
0
Yu Sakaguchi
I have two questions.
1. What are the min and max days or durations we can set up the delete schedule?
Could they be set up based on day counts?
2. Would it delete users that still holds unsolved tickets? Will there be an option toggle this? (ex: delete all inactive but with no unsolved tickets)
Thanks in advance!
0
Mary O'Neill
Hi Milena Rusanova,
Tickets and users are decoupled, if you delete a user but not the ticket the ticket will remain and vice versa. When you delete a user and view a ticket with a deleted user, the name will be replaced with “permanently deleted user” and no trace of the user's email, fields etc. will be visible.
To delete both users and tickets older than say 3 years, you will need to create a user deletion schedule and a separate ticket deletion schedule.
I hope that helps, let me know if you have further questions!
1
Milena Rusanova
Hi Mary O'Neill great, this was the functionality I was hoping for. One last thing → emails will be deleted from the user profile, does this include also secondary email addresses; phone number; all types of user identities?
If I understand correctly data in other user fields & custom user fields will remain visible?
0
Mary O'Neill
Hi Yu Sakaguchi,
1. For user deletion schedules there is a min of 30 days from when the user was last active and a max of 100 years.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by day counts?
2. No, users will not be deleted if their tickets aren't closed. All users displayed in the count / preview do not have open tickets.
I hope that helps, let me know if you have further questions!
0