Archive Entities

Overview

The primary purpose of this feature is to delete or move the old, inactive, process-completed data to a separate database or warehouse. This allows the primary database to focus on managing the essential data for current operations. At the same time, the archived data can be used for compliance, auditing, historical analysis, etc.

Users with Administrator Permissions and Can Administrate Permissions to the folders can mark entities archived using the Archive Entity action. Once an entity is marked as archived, it is not moved or deleted immediately; instead, the "Archive Entities Settings" allows administrators to configure the duration for which entities remain in the system before being deleted or moved to an external database.

This document demonstrates the following topics, 

• Configuring the Archive Entities Settings
• User actions to Archive the Entities
• Automating Archiving of Case Folder
• Generate a Report of the entities that have been archived

Type of Entities that can be archived

Only transactional data can be archived.

• Process Folders
• Case Folders

Configuring Archive Entities Settings

Navigate to System (Gear Icon) > Settings > Archive Entities settings. A dialog box appears to edit the archive entities settings.

For all the configurations and a detailed description, please refer to the following table, 

Archive Settings

Archive Strategy Settings

When using an archiving strategy that involves moving data, the administrators must set up the connection to the external database.

Archive Settings Calendar

Admins must configure the calendar information to schedule a job. This scheduled job will automatically archive all the entities which are already marked as archived and also surpassed the number of days configured in Process After Days. Refer to Understanding Scheduled Job articles for a detailed description of all the calendar settings.

User actions to archive the Entities

Archiving can be done manually on demand via folder actions (right-click on the entities) or through Flow Steps.

1. Archiving through Folder actions:
   
   
   
   
   • After configuring the settings for archiving. Navigate to the decisions studio. Navigate to the process folder that you wish to archive.
     
     
   • Right-click on the folder > Manage > Archive Folder. A confirmatory dialog box will open. Click OK.
     
     
   • Hence, the folder will be marked as archived.
     
     
   • It is possible to select multiple entities at the same time and mark them as archived simultaneously by using a multi-select feature. Press "Ctrl" and click on the entity to enable the multi-select.
2. Un-Archiving through Folder Actions:
   
   Navigate to the folder that is already marked as Archived. Right-click on the folder > Manage > Un-Archive Folder. A confirmatory dialog box will open. Click OK.
   
   
   
   
3. Archiving through Flow Steps:
   
   Users can mark "archive" to the Case folders or the Process folders by using the "Archive Folder" step within a Flow. The Archive Folder step takes the Folder ID as input and marks the Folder as Archived, similar to the one we mark manually. Refer to the Archive FolderStep Article for detailed information about the step.
   Note:

   From the System settings, if Archive Entities Settings is disabled, the Step will throw a "Business Rule Exception" stating that Not allowed to Archive {Folder Name}.

Automating Archiving of Case Folder

When a case folder reaches the closed state, it will be automatically marked as archived after a specified number of days, as configured by the administrator in the case management settings.

Configuring Case Management Settings

Navigate to System (Gear Icon) > Settings > Case Management Settings. A dialog box appears. Click on ADD to add the type of case.

After Adding the case type, it will expose the calendar information to configure the scheduled job. Refer Archive Settings Calendar for more information.

Decisions Data on External Database (Warehouse)

When connecting to an external database, it is recommended to either create a new database or use a database that was not used by any decision instance.
When the data is moved to the external database (warehouse), a database schema is automatically created only for the entities being moved, and all archived data is moved to the respective tables.
For example,

• folders will be moved to dbo.entity_folder
• comments will be moved to dbo.comments_folder

Generating Report of Archived Entities

Users can generate a Report of all the archived entities by integrating with the external database (warehouse) that has been used to archive the entities.

Example

1. Integrating with external database(warehouse)
   
   
   • Follow steps 1 and 2 from the following article to integrate with an external database. Ensure to use the same credentials that were used to connect to the warehouse.
     
     
   • In this example, we have named the external database Archivied_Entities_DB
2. Integrate with the Database Table.
   
   
   • Click on the newly created database connection. From the top action bar, click on Add Table, and a database integration dialog appears.
     
     
   • From the drop-down, select dbo.entity_folder and click on Next-Next-Save.
     
3. Creating the Report.
   
   
   • Navigate to the Designer Folder and create a new Report Archivied Entities.
     
     
   • Under Data Sources > Add > Common > Archivied_Entities_DB [name of the database] > dbo.entity_folder [name of the table].
     
     
   • Under Data Fileds > Add > entity_name, archivied_by etc. Save and close the Report.
4. Refer to the following article to Add Report to Page.

Similarly, users can create multiple reports after adding multiple tables from the database. Refer to the following articles to build more complex reports.Configuring the Archive Entities Settings