Thanks to requests from several customers, we've added a new option to Reader management: the option to Purge deleted readers.
New Purge Deleted Readers optionAs you may know, when you delete most things in KnowledgeOwl, we do what's called a "soft" delete. This allows us to continue to show the deleted items in a 'Deleted' filter (which can be very useful when you didn't mean to delete that item and need to recover it!).
We've had several requests for help permanently deleting items. The most frequent of these is permanently deleting or purging reader accounts. Very often, this is for a GDPR or other privacy compliance process, though sometimes it's just to clean up old test reader accounts.
Previously, you'd need to contact us to permanently delete these old reader accounts.
Now, you can click the new Purge Deleted Readers option on the Readers page to do this yourself!
This option is available by default only for authors with Full Admin rights.
If you have authors you've given Admin access to readers who you'd like to be able to purge deleted readers, there's a new checkbox available in their author details for Admin ability to purge readers. Check that box, re-save, and those authors will also have the permission. See Author permissions for more details and screenshots.
How it works
The purge will permanently wipe all of the reader's account information from the Readers page and our database.
These jobs run in the background, so it can take a few minutes depending on how many readers you're purging and how busy the system is with other jobs.
But you'll see a progress bar letting you know how many readers are left, and that progress bar turns into a Success message once it's complete.
Once you see the Success message, the readers' details have been fully removed from our systems. If you needed to delete these as part of a GDPR request or other request to be deleted, you can notify the necessary stakeholders that the action has been completed.
Purged readers cannot be recovered.
See Purge deleted readers for full steps and screenshots, and happy purging!
