Configure Bulk Delete Jobs

This step will guide us through how to properly configure a Bulk Delete job, as well as some considerations to make during configuration.

From time to time you may need to delete a group of data. This may be sample records or stale data or operational data within a limited purpose that you don’t want to hold space in your system.

Bulk delete jobs are a simple way to remove data. These jobs can be scheduled to run automatically at specified intervals or configured individually as needed.

Records to be deleted are gathered through a query that is configured just like an advanced find. This query filters the record to be deleted.

In recurring bulk delete jobs, this dynamic list is important for finding the records appropriate for deletion at the time. Most commonly these queries include a date field in addition to other fields to filter the records.

Several options are available during the configuration of a bulk delete job:

• Enter a name that reflects the criteria of the query, so you will remember what was deleted when referencing the bulk delete job logs.
• Bulk delete jobs can be run immediately but are commonly scheduled to run after hours to not impact user productivity.
• By checking this box and selecting a frequency the bulk delete job will run automatically in the future.
• Bulk delete jobs can send an email to the administrator and another email address after the job is complete.

Security

To run a bulk delete job, a user must have the bulk delete privilege as well as the delete privileges for the specific entity types of the records being deleted. The user must also have read permissions for the records.

Considerations

• If a bulk delete job fails, any records successfully deleted before the failure remain deleted and are not rolled back.
• Bulk delete jobs will trigger delete actions specified by cascade rules of that entity’s relationships. This means that if you bulk delete account records, you may also be automatically deleting child records, depending on your cascade rule settings for accounts.
• Delete actions can trigger workflows, business rules and other automation if they are set to trigger on delete of that record type. Using the bulk delete wizard could trigger these processes in mass and cause performance issues.

In the next step you’ll have the ‘Bulk Delete’ Hands-on Lab for this week where you’ll be tasked with configuring a Bulk Delete job and setting it to automatically recur