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Guide

What happens to archived Salesforce files when their retention period ends?

Last reviewed · All guides

When retention ends, FilePreserve does what each Archive Job is set to do: preserve the file forever (the default), queue it for manual approval, or delete it automatically after an email notice period.

The three choices

  1. Preserve forever (default). Nothing is deleted.
  2. Ask me first. Files whose retention has ended go to a Disposal Approvals tab, and someone with the Disposal Admin or Approver permission set approves or keeps each one. Only approved files are deleted.
  3. Delete automatically after a notice period. Admins and approvers get an email listing the files. If nobody keeps a file during the notice period you set, it is deleted when the period ends. The notice period only starts once the email has actually been sent.

What deletion removes, and in what order

Deleting a file removes the archived copy in your S3 bucket first (every version of the object), and only once S3 confirms does it remove the file in Salesforce. The archive index row stays as a record marked Deleted, with the checksum and dates. If S3 refuses or fails, nothing is removed anywhere, the attempt is recorded, and it is retried. After three failed tries the file moves to a Needs attention list where an admin can fix the cause and retry.

S3 Object Lock

If you enable S3 Object Lock, S3 will refuse to delete a locked object until its lock period ends. FilePreserve treats that as a failed attempt, leaves Salesforce untouched, and records "Blocked by S3 Object Lock". To make files deletable when FilePreserve retention ends, set the Object Lock retention to end at or before that time.

The record of what happened

Every attempt, whether deleted, failed or blocked, writes an entry to the Disposal Audit Log: the file, the job's retention setting, the retention date, who approved it (or "Automatic"), when, and the result in S3 and in Salesforce. Entries cannot be edited or deleted by anyone, and the log is a standard Salesforce object you can report on.

Good to know

Only files archived after the disposal feature was installed are linked to their Archive Job, so only those can be disposed of. Earlier files are simply kept.

Related

This guide describes how FilePreserve works and is not legal or compliance advice. Reviewed against the FilePreserve product documentation. Have a question? hello@filepreserve.com.