Hello everyone,
Is there any reason not to delete old extractions? We have so many and would like our list to be shorter.
If you all do delete extractions, is there a way to do it in bulk?
Thank you!
Jane
The only reason to not delete old extractions is if your users desire to reference them. We have always maintained a host of "base extractions", which were mostly suppressions tailored to various communication channels/groups. We've simplified that dramatically since finally implementing Contact Permissions, but still have a couple. These just allow users to do a quick import and then the basic "Suppress Inactive, Deceased, etc." rows are quickly added. Beyond any standardized reference extractions, you can probably arrive on some other metric, such as "not run in 3 years", which your users will agree to.
There is not a bulk tool for this, I had to build my own script for doing it. The script uses one date field or another (I don't remember which at this point!), and also skips extractions with a specific Control Groups, so that I can label the "base extractions".
The other thing that builds up, at least if you are on Hosted Services, is extraction and associated (i.e. .err) files in FileMover. FileMover makes it nigh impossible to delete large numbers of files so I put in a ticket periodically (every couple of months or so) to ask them to purge anything older than a certain date.
Additional:
I think the actual list of customers in the extraction segments gets deleted after a certain amount of time? I might have scripted that also, but don't remember offhand, I think it's something that happens in Tessitura. So the "extraction" definition is there, but the extracted constituents from the last actual pull may not be. When I say "reference" an old extraction, I mean the definition, not the extracted constituents, I've never had a request for those.
The other thing to think about is that a typical extraction file has a lot of customers' personal information. Ideally you will have some kind of process by which those are kept track of and deleted after they are no longer necessary.