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GDPR - Automatically deleting old tickets via the automation feature

Completed


Posted Apr 13, 2018

We're in the middle of our work to comply with the new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) policy which will "go live" on may 25:th (2018) in the EU. GDPR states that no company may save the personal information of their customer longer than needed, how long this period of time is may vary depending on why the information is kept but can as far as I know not be indefinite.

Personal information can e.g be an email address or an email signature with a phonenumber or an address to the person sending the email and since we never know what information is in each ticket without manually going thru every ticket we'll have to delete them.

As of now there is, as far as I know, no simple solution to do this in Zendesk without using the API or "hacking" your way around it using the method described here -> https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/203723688-Auto-Delete-a-Ticket-with-a-Trigger

What we need is a way to create a simple automation where you can say "tickets with status *insert status here* should be deleted after *insert number of months/years* year(s)".

This would give everyone an easy way to follow GDPR fairly easy imo.


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30 comments

Official

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Mary O'Neill

Zendesk Product Manager

Hi all,

We have released a feature for deleting tickets on a schedule. For more, please see Creating ticket deletion schedules for data retention policies.

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This is certainly a valid function. As it stands, we've come to the conclusion that any customer data older than X years is unnecessary for us. We would like that data to automatically be deleted after a defined time period.

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Nicole Saunders

Zendesk Community Manager

 

Thanks for the feedback, all. I've passed this along to the appropriate teams internally. 

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I assume this will soon become a requirement from every Zendesk customer in EU, so here's another vote on this function.

 

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As far as I can tell, you have three options:

  1. Manually delete archived tickets one by one, which will probably cost a tremendous amount of time,
  2. Develop something that deletes closed ticket through the API (a bumbling workaround), and
  3. Switch to another platform.

 

Zendesk itself apply for the GDPR legislation (of course). In my honest opinion, Zendesk's clients are left alone in the dark.

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We need this as well, our case is pretty much the same as mentioned.

We have said that tickets with status: solved or closed older than X years is irrelevant and needs to be deleted.

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I can add that we have 772 395 tickets in closed status, perhaps 20% of those tickets are subject to be deleted.
To manually delete the ticks would take approx. 16 weeks for one person. 
Anyone want some extra work? :-) 

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I added my +1 as well for this functionality.

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How have you (other customers) solved this issue to date?

I contacted Zendesk (through a ticket) in an attempt to ask them to delete said tickets from their end but they refer to:

"unfortunately for security reasons we are unable to delete tickets from your account on your behalf. You are able to delete tickets yourself in bunches of 30 via the UI and bunches of 100 via the API."

But deleting tickets in bunches of 30 doesn't even work for closed tickets (unless I'm missing something), even if this also would be a really bad solution - it would at least be somewhat less time-consuming.

As I see it right now the only solution is to write in our DPA that we will save tickets indefinitely until we have a solution as to how to delete them. Or build something with the API to fetch the tickets and them delete them in bunches of 100 through this solution:
https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/core/tickets#bulk-delete-tickets

It's not optimal to force customers to use the API as the only way out however since it will most likely mean hiring someone (or use in house developers time) to build this.

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Yes! we need this as well.

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If anyone has a ruby on rails app with this issue, let me know and I can share the solution I ended up using. Won't work on anything built in other languages though, unfortunately.

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We have built a GDPR Redaction app that helps remove all PII and customer data based on a ticket, a user, or an entire organization.  We built this custom for a few clients then made it available as a general app.  

We don't have it based on an automation but would be willing to explore adding this feature.  We would probably do a periodic check based on ticket tags.  Please reach out regarding requirements and we can look at updating our app to accommodate.

Find it in the Marketplace here:  https://www.zendesk.com/apps/support/gdpr-redaction-app/

We have a couple of major international clients using the app and have also worked with Zendesk Services team on one of those implementations.  

Please reach out to me with any questions.  gdpr@thoughtexhaust.com.  

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Nicole Saunders

Zendesk Community Manager

Hi Tom -

We've made the product team aware of the pain points and suggested solutions in this thread, however it is not something that they are currently working on. This means a solution may come at a later time, but we cannot commit to it at the moment.

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We need to retain data in Insights for reporting purposes and we keep coming across conflicting information relating to deleting tickets. Once minute we read the data will not be deleted and other times we read it will be deleted.

We cannot lose historic data therefore deleting tickets is not an option for us.

We are redacting personal information from each ticket once they are solved however this is very time consuming.

Also, we cannot redact information on closed tickets ao although redacting is helping to a degree, it isn't the solution.

What is everyone else doing to comply with GDPR when deleting is not an option.

We haven't received any support from Zendesk - very poor to be honest.

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@Claire

We have built a GDPR app in the marketplace for this exact purpose.

Find it in the Marketplace here:  https://www.zendesk.com/apps/support/gdpr-redaction-app/

The app removes fields where the user has entered information and other custom fields specified.  In doing this it retains nearly all ticket information including dates and CSAT data.  

The app works on closed tickets as well.  Please take a look at the page.  I'm happy to have a conversation directly about it.  We have many customers using the app successfully.  

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I added my +1 as well for this functionality

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Hmmm. Still no news? This can potentially force us (70 agents) to change to something else than Zendesk.

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We're currently revisiting retention periods for GDPR reasons and I'm absolutely staggered that this isn't already a thing. Surely customisable options to delete tickets or ticket data over X time old is basically essential for any EU organisation? 

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pero no sale como configurarlo para eliminar tickets despues de forma automatica al haberse cerrado y quedar resuelto despues de 24 meses.

 

Me ayudan eso necesitamos por fiscalizacion y auditoría.

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I'd like to be involved in the EAP please.

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We would like to be part of the EAP as well.
Thank you!

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Please get in touch, @..., our organization would also benefit from such a feature.

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It has been more than 2 years since GDPR has become active - what is the current status on this feature request?

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Is there now an option to automatically delete all chat history after x days?

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Dear Nicole or other Zendesk reps,

Do you have any update on this issue? This kind of functionality should be available, knowing that GDPR requires data controllers to remove data from time to time. GDPR has been around since May 2018.

Thanks.

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Hi Emelie Ivarsson, Christopher Rehn, Jan Hansen, Caspar Hardholt, Daniel Petersson, Marrit, Kasper Nielsen, Claire Garrett, ROUACH Noémie, Terry Knox, Lucas, David Pitt & Daan V

since we are also operating multiple online shops in the EU, we were also in desperate need of this feature. 

We now created an app for us to solve this problem. The app automatically deletes tickets that were last updated more than X months (the period you set). It runs in the background automatically and reliably – so you do not need to interact manually
The app is a real-time-saver. It saved us multiple weeks of work!

Feel free to try it: https://www.zendesk.com/marketplace/apps/support/482953/gdpr-tickets-and-users-auto-deletion/

And let me know what you think or if you have any suggestions to improve it!

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Hi, thanks for building an app for it. I appreciate the effort. However, I see that it would cost us $48.95 per month after the trial period.

It really is Zendesk's responsibility to allow us to be able to comply with GDPR. This should be functionality that's included in our Zendesk subscription. I refuse to pay extra (and to a third party even) for this external solution to a problem that Zendesk created.

Kind regards, Daan

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Hi Daan V

I totally understand your point of view. Thanks for the feedback though!

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We just established the GDPR process in our company but the missing feature for deleting tickets (and users) after 3 years really is a pain point. Please do something about it thanks :)

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5 Years since this post was created and we still do not have this functionality native to Zendesk. This lack of attention to something as important as GDPR is incredibly disappointing. Please provide us all with a roadmap. These features are considerably more important than what I currently see on the roadmap. 

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