Retention vs Purge Policies in the Archive App

When you archive data, you create an archive policy that includes a retention option. The retention period, defined in the archive policy, is a field specifying how long a record is kept based on legal requirements, or according to a set of criteria.

A purge policy is a method of creating more complex purge criteria that override the original expiration date defined by when the data was archived during the retention period.

Both retention and purge processes permanently delete records from Archive.

Retention

Retention is the period during which archived data or records are kept intentionally.

The retention period is defined when setting up the archive policy. The length of the retention period is determined based on legal requirements, regulations, business needs, or other criteria specific to your org. Criteria refers to how long data is kept in Archive.

During the retention period, the archived data remains accessible in the Archive and isn't deleted automatically. When the retention date is reached, the system purges the data.

Purge

Purge is the process of permanently deleting or removing data from Archive outside of the retention period.

Purging happens when a record meets the criteria set in the purge policy, which is triggered automatically or initiated manually as a custom action. The criteria set in the purge policy overrides the retention period.

Purging ensures compliance with data protection regulations or responds to data deletion requests, such as the Right to Be Forgotten (RTBF), which takes precedence over the predefined retention period.

Retention and Purge in Archive

If the retention criteria for a specific archive policy has changed, you can update the retention period in the archive policy. However, this change retroactively affects all previously archived records through that policy.

To avoid retroactively affecting records, deactivate this archive policy and create a clone with the newly defined retention period.

The Purge policy can be applied specifically to override the retention policy, particularly in response to an RTBF request.

A purge policy is limited to deleting up to 1 million records per policy per day.

Review Activities

In the Archive Activities tab, you can view whether a record was purged via the retention period defined in the archive policy or purged via a purge policy.

Purge shows records removed via the purge policy.

Purge by Retention shows that records were removed when the retention period was reached.