Deleted Content...
Many of you may know; some of you may not know. When a file is deleted from Content Central it is not permanently deleted. (This is a good thing.) Those items are located in the DeletedContent folder in your installation directory's system folder. Ex. D:\Content Central\System\DeletedContent. (will vary depending on your installation).
The fact that the items are not deleted is documented in the manual however I was unable to find out if the system cleans out the DeletedContent folder ever. Thanks to Ian in support he informed me that the system does not clean that folder out. That is your job as the system admin. However...*****NEVER DELETE, RENAME, OR CHANGE ANYTHING ABOUT THE DELETEDCONTENT FOLDER ITSELF ONLY THE CONTENTS OF******
Depending on your compliance policies you may not be able to delete items from that folder at all.
One thing you may consider setting up is what we call a "Soft Delete" vs. giving users permission to delete anything from the system.
To do this we added a Global Field called "Status". Now you can call the field whatever you want. For us this name works. The field is a dropdown with two values. Active and Delete. Active is the default value. Every item added to the system is set with the Status field to "Active".
We also created a Document Type called "Deleted". General users do not have permissions to this document type. The document type MUST contain all of the fields from the other document type(s) in your system. If a field is not there then the meta data that is tied to the document will be lost.
Next setup a Workflow Trigger on the Document Type that contains all of your document. The Workflow Trigger monitors Content Field Values where the Field Value Updated in Document Type, the field being "Status" (or whatever you called your field), is updated to the value of Deleted.
After creating the Trigger go to Administration and create a Workflow Action - Change Document Type to the "Deleted" document type that you created above. If that Document Type is in a different Catalog you will need to create two actions. One to change the Catalog and one to change the Document Type.
After creating your actions you now must create your rule. Same section...Administration Workflow (not from within the Document Type). Now create a Rule using the Trigger you created that monitors the "Status" field for the value to change to "Delete", with 1 or 2 Actions depending on if you need to change the Catalog and Document Type.
Hope this helps others create a "Soft Delete" that allows users to "Delete" an item but not have it actually leave the system. Benefit being easy to restore and easy to see from a document history who did it. It also helps with data loss prevention as a malicious user could not delete a large set of documents that you now have to somehow restore.
The fact that the items are not deleted is documented in the manual however I was unable to find out if the system cleans out the DeletedContent folder ever. Thanks to Ian in support he informed me that the system does not clean that folder out. That is your job as the system admin. However...*****NEVER DELETE, RENAME, OR CHANGE ANYTHING ABOUT THE DELETEDCONTENT FOLDER ITSELF ONLY THE CONTENTS OF******
Depending on your compliance policies you may not be able to delete items from that folder at all.
One thing you may consider setting up is what we call a "Soft Delete" vs. giving users permission to delete anything from the system.
To do this we added a Global Field called "Status". Now you can call the field whatever you want. For us this name works. The field is a dropdown with two values. Active and Delete. Active is the default value. Every item added to the system is set with the Status field to "Active".
We also created a Document Type called "Deleted". General users do not have permissions to this document type. The document type MUST contain all of the fields from the other document type(s) in your system. If a field is not there then the meta data that is tied to the document will be lost.
Next setup a Workflow Trigger on the Document Type that contains all of your document. The Workflow Trigger monitors Content Field Values where the Field Value Updated in Document Type, the field being "Status" (or whatever you called your field), is updated to the value of Deleted.
After creating the Trigger go to Administration and create a Workflow Action - Change Document Type to the "Deleted" document type that you created above. If that Document Type is in a different Catalog you will need to create two actions. One to change the Catalog and one to change the Document Type.
After creating your actions you now must create your rule. Same section...Administration Workflow (not from within the Document Type). Now create a Rule using the Trigger you created that monitors the "Status" field for the value to change to "Delete", with 1 or 2 Actions depending on if you need to change the Catalog and Document Type.
Hope this helps others create a "Soft Delete" that allows users to "Delete" an item but not have it actually leave the system. Benefit being easy to restore and easy to see from a document history who did it. It also helps with data loss prevention as a malicious user could not delete a large set of documents that you now have to somehow restore.
Topic Participants
Joseph Cavallaro
George Arbocus