delete automatically issues archived after a while

[Ramin Dehghan]

Hi 

we need to delete automatically issues archived after 1 year to clean up database . 

the solution we find is:

*restore issues one by one then delete them.

this solution take a lot time.

we need clear the caches of the archived issues overall.

(notice: we don't want restore and delete ,again and again..)

thanks for your response.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I'd like to explore why you think you want to "clean up the database"?  

Archived issues do not have a significant impact on your use of the system.  They don't appear in searches or reporting unless someone is explicitly asking for archived issues.   You won't get any increase in performance by deleting them because they're not actively included in anything day-to-day.  The data behind them is tiny, if you're worrying about disk space on the database server (attachments are different if you're trying to regain space on the server's disk)

What are you actually trying to achieve by doing this? 

[David Brotzer]

hi Nic - from our point of view, it's basically a legal issue. GDPR includes a 'right to be forgotten in Article 17 whereas an archived issue can still be opened if a user has a direct link to it. So the only way to be compliant with law is to physically delete the archived issue after a certain amount of time...

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Hi David,

I don't think you've quite understood the law.  There is, exactly as you say, a right to be forgotten, but there are two caveats on that (which I'll try to do in plain English instead of "legalese")

• It is illegal to destroy tracking information about who may or may have not, done a bad thing.
• When people take up a role or job, they are agreeing to waive their rights to be forgotten when in a place that needs to be tracked.

The only way to be compliant with the law is to retain the tracking information.  GDPR does not give you any rights not to be held responsible.

Even with GDPR, you waived your "right to be forgotten" when you signed up to do your job. 

However, you can be anonymised.  As long as enough data is kept to eventually work out your responsibility (and only by those that you agreed to), you can be mostly forgotten.