Purged Activities

[Andrew Carrick]

Do these go anywhere e.g. some DBF when they are purged, or are they in electronic heaven never to return. I've got a user wanting to look at 2006 entries which have been purged. I said no chance.

[Jeff Zylstra]

I believe that they are purged, and the activity entries for a given customer are printed to a text file which is only available at that customer's customer file screen.  You can view them, but they will never again be available to be counted in a report.  At least that is the way all of the other purge functions work.  I say that because I don't believe that we've ever done a purge of activity entries.

[DebAmstutz]

I thought they were recoverable until the next pack and reindex, but I could be mistaken.  Unless they really are "somewhere" are are recoverable with some kind of forensic software?

[Todd Arnold]

Jeff - you are describing Archiving - a process designed to just clear stuff out of the database without actually destroying information.  Purging is different, it's intended to destroy.  I think Deb's comment is correct for most things; items deleted from TAM are just flagged and hidden until the next Pack, then they are really gone - but I think the purge process makes that pretty immediate.

Andrew, my opinion is that if you really purged them, you can tell your user that they are SOL.

[Andrew Carrick]

"SOL"?

[Todd Arnold]

SOL - "Shit Outa Luck". 

But now that I have to type it, I'm not so confident on my ability to spell "outa".

[Andrew Carrick]

Nice summary, thanks! Spelling looks fine.

[Jeff Zylstra]

Jeff - you are describing Archiving - a process designed to just clear stuff out of the database without actually destroying information.  Purging is different, it's intended to destroy.  I think Deb's comment is correct for most things; items deleted from TAM are just flagged and hidden until the next Pack, then they are really gone - but I think the purge process makes that pretty immediate.

Andrew, my opinion is that if you really purged them, you can tell your user that they are SOL.

Doh! A dyslexic moment on my part. A 50/50 shot and I blew it! Thanks for the wake up call. 

[Lance Bateman]

1.  Standard American English - wouldn't it be "outta"? (smirk).

2.  My question is why purging something from 2006?  What is your retention and destruction policy period?  If 5 years, 2006 should still be there.  If the standard 7 years, should have 2004 on - don't purge 2004 until you get to the end of 2011.

3.  And yes - first thing it does is make a copy of the activity file and index - then purges.  Until the pack and reindex is done, Applied can "undo" it.

4.  If your retention and destruction policy is actually 4 years (?), the CSR should be aware of that and not trying to access that info.

[Andrew Carrick]

We purged activities to ensure a separate application worked well. It it MS Access-based and we are using Activities to measure cost-to-serve instead of time sheets, so codes represent time periods. Trouble is it was taking too long to run because of the volume of activities in the DBF. We have retained Attachments back to our go-live which was 2004.

[Jeff Zylstra]

Andrew, seems like an "archive" utility (thanks, Todd) might be the best of both worlds.  I believe that it still prints the old activity information into a text file, but also removes it from the DBF file so it won't conflict with current information and won't slow down your SQL reporting.

Lance also brings up a good point about consistency of documentation, best practices and Errors and Omissions liability.  But since Andrew is a subject of her majesty, I'm not sure what laws would apply regarding document retention.  It might be a question that Andrew's agency should ask of its barrister. 

[Andrew Carrick]

Yes, often these posts open up a whole can of worms for a lot of people, but that's part of the great value of this forum.

By the way I hate that phrase "subject of..." - it's probably technically correct but this is the 21st century for goodness sake. Not blaming you in anyway Jeff! Out of interest what does it say in a US passport? Citizen?

[Jeff Zylstra]

Yes, often these posts open up a whole can of worms for a lot of people, but that's part of the great value of this forum.

By the way I hate that phrase "subject of..." - it's probably technically correct but this is the 21st century for goodness sake. Not blaming you in anyway Jeff! Out of interest what does it say in a US passport? Citizen?

Sorry Andrew.  No disrespect intended.  I find it a very antiquated phrase, and I'm surprised that it is still even used since the queen doesn't have any power anymore, and hasn't had for how long now? 

And I believe that it does say citizen as a matter of fact.  If I had a chance to get out of the country anymore, I would know these things!  Must work on that!

[Lance Bateman]

Checking mine (and yes, I now carry it always, thanks to Shrub) - it just says "Nationality", with USA spelled out as mine.

Yes, often these posts open up a whole can of worms for a lot of people, but that's part of the great value of this forum.

By the way I hate that phrase "subject of..." - it's probably technically correct but this is the 21st century for goodness sake. Not blaming you in anyway Jeff! Out of interest what does it say in a US passport? Citizen?