Creating a ticket deletion schedule

Removing old tickets on a schedule, with the widest consequences of any setting here. It reaches archived tickets only: closed for more than 120 days.

Removing old tickets on a schedule, with the widest consequences of any setting here. It reaches archived tickets only: closed for more than 120 days.

Create one

1. Agree the retention period first.
2. Open Admin Center, then Account, then Security, then Deletion schedules.
3. Create a ticket schedule with that age.
4. Narrow it with conditions if only some tickets are covered.
5. Check what it would remove before enabling it.

Only archived tickets are ever removed

A ticket deletion schedule reaches archived tickets only, which means tickets that have been closed for more than 120 days. Nothing newer is touched, whatever age you set on the schedule. That is the first thing to know, because it changes both what you should expect and how you count.

Count what it will take

Build a report of tickets that have been closed for more than 120 days and are older than your retention period, with the same conditions. That number is what will disappear, and seeing it beforehand is the whole safeguard.

Counting everything older than the period instead gives a figure that includes open, pending and recently closed tickets the schedule cannot remove. It will frighten you with a number that was never at risk.

The count still runs a little high, and this is why. The schedule measures from the ticket's last change, not from the day it closed, so a ticket touched inside the period survives this run. Redaction counts as a change, which means the tickets somebody cleaned up for a privacy request are exactly the ones that stay.

If the number surprises you, the scope is wrong.

Your reporting goes with them

Deleted tickets leave Explore. Volume trends, seasonal comparisons and anything year-on-year stop working beyond the retention period.

If you need long-term trends, export the aggregate figures before the first run.

Conditions narrow it usefully

Different retention for different work is normal: complaints kept longer than how-to questions, one brand differently from another. Conditions are how a schedule matches an actual policy rather than a single blunt age.

Watch the first run

Check what was removed and that nothing unexpected went with it. After that it is routine; the first cycle is the one to supervise.

Tell the people who use the history

Agents look up what was agreed with a customer two years ago. If that is no longer possible, they need to know before they need it.

See also

• What deletion schedules do
• Managing your deletion schedules
• Setting data retention