Help

Page tree

Delete Actions

Delete actions are used to automatically delete table records or history entries. They can be run with a time-based or event-specific rule, and they are particularly useful for deleting excess history records created by other time-based rules or older, unnecessary records.


Examples

  • Once a month, you want to delete unpublished records older than three years.
  • You want to automatically delete the history records generated by a particular time-based rule that are older than one week, such as from a rule that updates a count every hour.
  • You want to automatically delete records that have been marked as spam by power users, but you don't want to give these users permission to delete the records themselves. You could, however, allow users to prevent records from being deleted by allowing them to change the spam designation before the rule runs that contains the Delete action.


Create a Delete Action

You can access the Actions wizard in several ways, but the easiest way is to select Setup [Table] from the table where you want to create the action.

  1. From the top nav bar, expand the table's drop-down and select Setup [Table].
  2. Select the Actions tab in the Table wizard.
  3. Click Create Delete Action.

  4. Name your action and give it a description.

    Once your action is saved, the system automatically adds a D: before your given title to distinguish the action as a Delete action.

  5. Choose to either delete records or delete history entries. If you delete history entries, you have several additional options:
    • All but the most recent [value] history entries per record: Prevents newer history entries from being deleted. With this option selected, you can also select the "Do not delete the first history entry for record creation" option. This prevents the first history entry from being deleted, which is created when the record is created.
    • All history entries created by rule: Deletes history entries that are created by the selected rule. To the right of this option is a list of all rules in each table of the knowledgebase. Hold down the Ctrl key to select multiple rules. 
      All history entries created by rule field

      When deleting history entries created by a rule, you can refine which entries are deleted by checking the "Limit deletion to those that are more than [value] days old" option. With this option checked, only delete entries that are older than the desired number of days are deleted. This is useful to limit database size in cases where tables have a lot of rules and history tables can become overly large. Large history tables affect backup times and storage size, and it is best to keep only history records that are actually useful.

      Time-based rules can cause many history entries to add up over time, so it's often useful to select this option when using time-based rules.

    • All history entries more than [value] [choice] old: Deletes history entries that are older than a desired number of days, weeks, months, or years. With this option selected, you can also select an additional option to prevent the first history entry from being deleted when a record is created.

    • Delete empty history entries, i.e. those where no tracked fields were modified: Deletes history entries where no tracked fields were modified.
  6. Click Finish.

Once created, the action can be selected in rules, action buttons, and workflows.