Retention vs Purge Policy in the Archive Managed Package

Note This content relates to Archive. For Salesforce Archive, see Store Data Externally with Salesforce Archive.

As you begin to archive data, you'll create an Archiving Policy, which includes a retention option. The retention period, defined in the Archiving Policy, is a field specifying how long a record must be kept based on legal requirements or according to a set of criteria.

The Purge Policy is an ad hoc way of creating more complex purge criteria that overrides the original expiration date defined by when the data was archived according to the retention period.

Both Retention and Purge processes permanently delete records from the Archive.

Retention

• Purpose: Retention is the period during which archived data or records are intentionally kept and is defined when setting up the Archiving Policy.
• Criteria: The retention period is determined based on legal requirements, compliance regulations, business needs, or other criteria specific to the organization. Critera refers to how long data must be kept in the Archive.
• Effect: During the retention period, the archived data remains accessible in Archive and is not automatically deleted. Once the retention date is reached, the system purges the data.

Purge

• Purpose: Purge is the process of permanently deleting or removing data from Archive ad hoc, outside of the retention period.
• Trigger: Purging happens when a record meets the criteria set in the Purge Policy which is triggered automatically, or is initiated manually as an ad hoc action. This overrides the retention period.
• Use Case: Purging is often done to ensure compliance with data protection regulations, or to respond to data deletion requests, such as the Right to be Forgotten (RTBF), where you aren't allowed to wait for the predefined retention period.

Retention and Purge in Archive

• If the retention criteria for a specific Archive Policy has changed (for example data now needs to be kept 7 years instead of 5 for GDPR compliance) you can update the retention period from 5-7 years in the Archive Policy. However, they'll also retroactively affect all previously archived records through that policy.
• To avoid retroactively impacting records, deactivate this Archive Policy and create a clone with the newly defined retention period.
• The Purge Policy can be applied ad hoc to override the Retention Policy, particularly in response to a Right to be Forgotten request.
• A Purge Policy is limited to deleting up to 1 million (1,000,000) 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 purge policy.

Purge by retention shows records were removed once the retention period was reached.