Restoring deleted records before they're destroyed

Hello,

We’re currently trying to understand what actually happens when you delete a record. In our context, we’re considering the deletion of CASE records inside a Citizen Hub Host application, which in turn will trigger the deletion of related records (notes, documents, etc.) through the ‘Delete when orphaned by’ relationship selector under the data retention tab in the object. Deleting the CASE record would then be communicated to Central via an API call, which I think adds another layer of complexity as it means we’re now dealing with potentially two different data retention periods.

I know that deleted means that records are kept for a specified period of time (is there a default if unset?) before it’s then destroyed, and that destroyed records mean there is no way to ever restore it and it’s completely gone from the shared cloud storage. However, in instances where we might want to restore records we had previously chosen to delete, provided it’s before they’re destroyed, is there any way we can surface this to end users out of the box? This question also applies for records automatically deleted because they were orphaned by the record chosen for deletion.

The event history widget suits our needs to tracking who deleted records, but there’s also a filter for when a record is undeleted. I suppose my questions would be:

a) how would I be able to trigger an undelete, and could that also undelete records that were orphaned by the initial deletion?

b) Could this also be connected to an API call back to Central to undelete the CASE SUMMARY DATA record?

c) Similarly, there’s no filter for ‘Record destroyed’ – how do we know when a deleted record is destroyed?

Happy to answer any questions to fill in possible gaps in context I may have left. Cheers!

1 Like

Hi, hopefully some helpful answers…

There are currently no tools within the platform for undeleting records (no matter how they were deleted), so deletion should be considered final.

On occasion in emergencies, Netcall have been able to work with customers to restore some accidentally deleted data, but it is not a quick or complete process as it involves bespoke development in each case due to the unique data structure of each application.

The “undeleted” filter is a bit of a red herring and will not show anything. It indicates there has always been an intention to add such features in future but that is not planned for any specific upcoming version. You will find an Idea on that topic here, if you want to add any thoughts: https://ideas.netcall.com/i/ideas/p/feature/vote/idea/view?context_record_id=4357

No, the same applies here, you cannot undelete records.

Once destroyed, all data about that record (including it’s history) is removed so it will no longer appear in the widget.

2 Likes

Many thanks for your helpful answer, covers everything I needed! Our alternative will probably be to not delete records, but mark its status as ‘inactive’ (or abandoned, we’re still figuring out the right terminology to use) and hide it from view, subject to automatic deletion if its status doesn’t change in x days.

Yes, having your own archive or inactive status is a good solution if you want to hide records but not remove them completely.

1 Like