Archiving / Deleting Posts Automatically

[JasonMeyers]

Our legal team is requiring that all posts be archived or removed after 3 years due to EU regulations about storing customer data. I've done my best to research the topic, but all I can find is this thread (- https://community.lithium.com/t5/Customer-Connection/Auto-archive-or-marking-read-only/m-p/8561#M313...) dating back to 2010 with people asking for the functionality. 

Does anyone know if there is a way to set a default where posts are no longer visible after a certain period of time?

Thanks!

Jason

[JasonHill]

There has been plenty of discussion regarding automatic archiving solutions on the Lithium community recently @JasonMeyers. Unfortunately it is still a weakness of the platform and there is nothing built in that can help you. You would need to archive the posts manually or build some sort of tool that can assist you. 

You might be interested in the tool that @Wendy_S has developed. See https://community.lithium.com/t5/Online-Communities/Best-practice-sharing-Locking-topics-after-they-... and https://community.lithium.com/t5/Strategy/Archiving-Posts/m-p/422822

Something like this could easily be tweaked so that posts are moved to a hidden archive board rather than simply locking them. 

I would also encourage you to add your vote and requirements to this enhancement request - https://community.lithium.com/t5/Product-Ideas/System-for-handling-old-threads/idi-p/65706

Jason

[ClaudiusH]

Also in regard to GDPR you might want to check the overview for Lithium Community: https://community.lithium.com/t5/General-Data-Protection/GDPR-Overview/ta-p/427587

[SheenaK]

This is something that is vital in my organisation as well.

While waiting for a more robust solution on the Lithium side, I export lists of users each month that haven't accessed the community in a set amount of time, and use macros in Excel to open their 'close account' settings page. Then iMacros closes the accounts for me.  

It's very clunky as it's processing them in batches of 30, but I can leave it running on a PC beside me and check periodically. You could possibly use the same setup to archive or delete old posts.

Hope that helps 🙂 

[ComcastJessie]

I know this is a concern to many community admins that use Lithium's platform and one that our community faced as well being that our community hit 15 years old this year.

Earlier this year we enlisted the help of Lithium's Professional Services to assist with our own request to be able to easily automatically archive older/outdated content. 

After a few months of working with that team and making tweaks we were able to get a new section in the Community Admin area dedicated to help us auto-archive content. 

This feature allows us to choose the age of the post, number of view, and last activity date so we are ensuring that we only archive content that is no longer being viewed/replied to. It will find all posts that meet our criteria on a certain board and automatically batch move all those posts to a "hidden" board of our choosing.

I am not sure if Lithium has plans on adding this for all their customers into the future, but it sure has been a TREMENDOUS asset to us and is absolutely done via Lithium's platform with the help of their Professional Services.

You can read more about this in our 2018 Lithy Submission here: https://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Lithy-Awards-2018/Lithys-2018-Comcast-B2C-Community-Innovator/cns...

I hope this helped. 

[miles]

As others have said, this is a weakness and one we have struggled to address. We are looking at something similar to @ComcastJessie and paying Lithium to help customise something to our needs. Our own development team found that as customers we couldn't modify the things we needed to build the solution we wanted, which was a shame.

However it really should be something the platform supports to some degree out of the box. An archiving MVP would be ideal, something that would suit most customers, and allowed those that needed something more to customise it and add extra functionality to their specific requirements.

We do regular sweeps to move older and inaccurate/unused content into a hidden archive, but it's time consuming!

[BeckyS]

I believe improvements are planned in that area, but I don’t have the specifics at this time. @VinhJ is this one of yours, and could you speak a little more about it?

[marthasimons]

I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one using macros in Excel to deal with this issue. Was very helpful to see the answers to this question. Thanks!