Configuring data retention

Some customers may specify how long certain pieces of data should be retained for, or a certain environment may require longer retention periods for technical reasons. This article will explain how to change the data retention periods within the Lens application.

Background

First, some background on data retention within the Lens application. Lens captures a lot of data. Over time this data fills the database up and slows it down. For this reason the Lens application removes data that old.

It does this in two parts:

Marks records as ‘stale’ after a defined period of time
After some time (varies by function) stale records will be removed

Currently, not all data supports custom retention times.

A bit more detail

The reason for this is to prevent removing records from the database in the event of a system issue. For example, a Len Collector goes offline and does not report back. Without this grace period the records would be removed quickly and this would have a knock on effect. Such as templates not having any platform specific data in them.

Changing retention times

Login to the Lens application with a user that has the Administrator role, or a role that has the Access to Settings option enabled
In the left sidebar select Configuration then select Settings
Select the Application item from the General section
Select the Data processing tab
Navigate to the Data retention section
Make the changes you need
Click the Save button at the bottom of the page