Backed up data that's outside of retention period is purged (deleted) automatically.
'Purge Backup' offboarding step
The 'Purge Backup' offboarding step automatically triggers a purge of backed up data for a user x days after they've been offboarded. By default the number of days we wait before the purge will happen is set to 30 days but this can be configured in the step. The step triggers purge of both Mail and Drive data for the user.
If a customer also uses CloudM Archive and has the Archive step configured we make sure Archive happens before the Purge Backup step.
This functionality is especially useful for customers who use Archive as well as Backup - Backup stores incremental changes to items, while Archive only stores the latest version of items. When a user is offboarded (i.e. an employee leaves the company) the value of keeping incremental backups typically diminishes over time but the customer keeps incurring storage cost.
The Purge Backup step allows customers to move leavers’ data into Archive (which typically has lower storage cost) and keep the incremental backups for a set period of time for contingency purposes. Once this time elapses the backups will be purged automatically and customers will incur no further storage cost for the backups.
How to configure the 'Purge Backup' offboarding step
- Select Automate from the main navigation menu and then select Offboarding Workflow.
- Choose the OU or Smart Team and click Add Offboarding Step.
- Select Purge Backup, set how many days you want to wait after offboarding before the purge happens in the Purge After Days field and then click Add.
- Click Save Rules.
Expected Outcome
The user is unassigned from their backup policy and their retention period is set to the amount of days that are set in the step. If the days are 0, the purge will start within the next hour. The step will be skipped if the user does not have backup. Note that after the offboarding, this user will no longer be assigned to a policy despite being in a OU/Smart Team that has a policy set. The only way to assign the policy corresponding to the OU/Smart Team of the user back to them is to move the user to another OU/SmartTeam (make sure that the user inherits its configuration from the new OrgItem they are moved to) and then return them back to the old one. The policy should get synced within 4 hours afterwards.
Possible Errors
An error could occur if the user being offboarded has already been deleted within the source platform.
Manual purge
The 'Purge Backup' functionality allows manual purging of backed up data of users and Shared Drives that no longer have an active backup policy and the data is within retention period.
To purge a User or Shared Drive backup:
- Select Backup from the main navigation menu and then select Purge Backups in the sub menu.
- Select the relevant User or Shared Drive tab.
- Select the user(s) or Shared Drive(s) you want to purge.
- Click Purge Selected.
- When purging user data you can choose what data to purge by ticking the tick box under Mail and/or Drive.
- Click Purge Backups.
The data purge will start within 1 hour of being triggered.
The status of the purge will show in the Last Mail Backup / Last Drive Backup column: Pending, Purging, Purged.
If a backup policy is reapplied, the user/Shared Drive will no longer show in the relevant ‘Purge Backups’ tab (the purging status will be cleared) and a new backup will start.