Hi, I was wondering if anyone can give me advice on what is the correct steps to remove really old data if you have Opportunities, Recurring donations, Payments, Installments, Contacts, Household accounts, Payment profiles, Inbound reports, Memberships, SMS history. I would like to think I could do this as a flow so that once a year old data is automatically removed so keeps my database really clean, tidy and keeps the program quick in response. Any information is greatly appreciated.
Heya Lorraine!
I think automatically deleting once a year is not the ideal solution!
At least not for everything.
Do you have some alternative place where you are storing donations/payments?
Why would you want to delete Contacts and Households?
I have a lot more questions than answers hahaha
The general answer I suggest for orgs that want to do ongoing automatic deletion is:
- Determine the criteria for deletion
- Build a formula field checkbox that is true when the record should be deleted
- Set up a daily flow that deletes all records that meet the criteria
This prevents a single day where EVERYTHING is deleted
Bare in mind, this functions well for records that don't need to be retained long term.
For donations/payments I would first suggest exporting the data somewhere off-Salesforce before permanent deletion
ALSO deleting a bunch in one day over-crowds the recycle bin which means there is no recovery for most of it.
Are you using any backup provider at the moment?
Lastly - this is a big topic ahahah, if you wanted to jump on a call to discuss in more detail I would be happy to find time. Poke me here in the DMs :)
