Enabling a data retention policy in Front

Front's data retention feature allows companies to automatically delete conversations and contacts from Front on an ongoing basis. Data retention results in permanent deletion and the data cannot be recovered.

• When enabled, conversations are moved to the trash automatically after a period of time set by your company.

• The retention time starts from the timestamp of the last message or comment in the conversation.

• Once in the trash, conversations are then permanently deleted after 7 days. 

• Both shared and individual copies of the conversation are deleted.

• If you enable inbox-level data retention, the inbox’s data retention period will override the company-level time period.

• If there are no longer any other messages from the contact in the deleted conversation, the contact record is also permanently deleted from Front. 

• If you have a large amount of historical data in Front, it can take up to one month to process your historical data after the data retention feature is enabled.

Step 1

To enable data retention, click the gear icon on the top right of Front and into the Company settings tab.

Step 2

Select Preferences under the Company section, then click the Data retention tab.

Step 3

Specify the number of days you would like to retain inactive conversations in Front before moving them to the trash. Keep in mind that Front deletes conversations in the trash after 7 days, so consider this time as well when setting your retention policy.

For example, if you want to permanently delete conversations after 60 days, you might want to send conversations to the trash after 53 days to account for the time the conversation will sit in the trash before being purged. 

The following data retention preferences are available for you to enable:

1. Automatically trash inactive conversations after: Conversations will be trashed if there is no activity (such as commenting, assigning or tagging) after a defined period of time.

2. Allow different data retention periods per inbox: Toggle on if you want to specify inbox-level data retention periods that override the company-level setting. This is helpful if different inboxes need separate retention periods. See section below for more details.

3. Automatically delete trashed conversations: Trashed conversations will be permanently deleted after 7 days.

4. Automatically delete unused contacts: When a conversation is permanently deleted by the data retention policy, all unused contacts in this conversation will also be permanently deleted (requires pref #2).

Step 4

Click Save, then you will be prompted with a confirmation modal. Type the word trash and click Save to confirm.

Prerequisites

• You must have the Allow different data retention periods per inbox setting enabled in company preferences

• You must be a workspace admin for the inbox you want to manage

Step 1

Click the gear icon on the top right of Front and into the Company settings tab.

Step 2

Click Inboxes in the left menu, then select the inbox you want to manage.

Step 3

Click the Settings tab, then navigate to the Automatically trash inactive conversations after setting.

Step 4

Select your desired data retention period, then click Save to finish. Your inbox-level data retention period will now override the company-level period.

Data retention references the timestamp of the last message or comment in the conversation to determine inactivity. For example, suppose a data retention policy is set to 14 days, and the following conversation is stored in Front: 

Dec 1: Inbound message
Dec 5: Reply sent
Dec 6: Comment made
Dec 10: Message tagged and archived

In the example above, the conversation would be moved to the trash on Dec 20, 14 days after the last comment was made. If, however, on Dec 14, a new message came in, the counter would be reset and the conversation would not be sent to the trash until 14 days of inactivity had passed. 

The entire conversation, including messages and comments, is deleted. This includes personal copies of the conversation located in individual inboxes, in cases where individuals have been a participant in the conversation.

If, while deleting the conversation, there are no longer any other messages from the deleted contact in that conversation, the contact record is also permanently deleted from Front. 

No, data retention results in permanent deletion and conversations cannot be recovered. 

No. Inbox-level data retention settings only apply to shared inboxes.

If a conversation is in more than one inbox AND inbox-level data retention is enabled, Front will use the setting for the inbox with the longest data retention period. 

For example, if a conversation is in Inbox A (retention period: 7 days) and Inbox B (retention period: 1 day), the conversation will be moved to the Trash tab after 7 days of inactivity. If one of the retention periods is set to “Never”, “Never” counts as the longest retention period.

When you navigate to a conversation in the Trash tab, you’ll see the deletion date at the bottom.

This feature is available on all plans.