Data Maintenance

As a system administrator, you may want to retain information pertaining to your completed processes and uploaded files for a specified amount of time. After that, you may want to purge the information from the Forms database to help reduce the size of your database over time or to adhere to policies about data retention.

The Data Maintenance tab in Forms Administration allows system administrators to set the number of days for which they want to retain instance data (the values submitted in a form), instance statistics (details about the instance and how the instance ran), and file uploads (files uploaded with a form) in the Forms database. Process administrators can override the global maintenance policy at the process level, and override file upload retention at the field level. However, system administrators can set administrative locks to prevent designers from overriding specific policies.

To configure global data maintenance options

1. Open Administration.
2. Navigate to the Data Maintenance tab.
3. Configure the number of days for which you want to retain instance history and file attachments in the Forms database:
   1. Remove instance data from completed processes: Deletes instance data associated with completed Forms processes after a specified period of time. The instance data are the values submitted with the forms in the completed processes.

      Note: This option will still retain the statistics of the deleted instances for analytics purposes.

   2. Remove instance statistics from completed processes: Deletes instance statistics associated with completed Forms processes after a specified period of time. The instance statistics are information about the processes, like who each step was assigned to, how long the processes took, how long each step took, and more. By retaining only the instance statistics, you can still generate analytics and reports about the completed processes, but cannot open the processes themselves.

      Note: Removing instance statistics will remove any record that the instances had existed.

   3. Remove files uploaded to the Forms database: Deletes uploaded files from the Forms database and/or volume after a specified period of time. This removes only files associated with completed, canceled, or terminated instances. Files from running or suspended instances will not be removed.
   4. Remove unreferenced files after set number of days: Deletes files that are not associated with a form submission or draft. Unassociated files occur when a user uploads a file and then abandons the form without submitting or saving as a draft.
4.  Configure automatic clean up of saved draft forms. These options remove the form draft and any associated uploaded files.
   1. Remove public drafts saved by anonymous users after set number of days: Removes drafts saved from public forms and/or anonymous users.
   2. Remove private drafts and task drafts saved by authenticated users after set number of days: Removes drafts saved by authenticated users.
5. Optional: Configure administrative locks. Process designers can override the general maintenance policy you set in step 3. Administrative locks prevent process designers from overriding the policies you lock. The following locks are available:
   1. Lock instance data
   2. Lock instance statistics
   3. Lock file uploads
6. Set the time at which you want to remove the data you set in steps 3 and 4. The option is only enabled when you select one or more of the options in steps 3 or 4.
7. Optional: Select End at to set a time limit for how long the data removal process can take. At the specified End at time, if the data removal process is still running, the process will stop and resume again the next day at the time specified in the previous step.
8. Click Save.