Deleting and recovering elements in branches

When you delete project elements from the current state of a branch, they are put in the recycle bin of that branch. You can restore those elements to your branch.

Project elements displayed in the recycle bin can be filtered by project, element type, and date of deletion.

You cannot edit an element in the recycle bin. However, if you have sufficient permissions to edit in a change activity, validation activity, or ungoverned branch, you can restore the element so that it returns to the current state of the branch. The recycle bin of a release is in read-only mode for all users, so you must restore elements in change activities.

The recycle bin also displays deleted folders. If you restore a deleted folder, you do not also restore the rules it contains. You must restore them explicitly.

Some artifact views in the recycle bin might display missing information or errors. This happens when a deleted object has a reference to an object that is not deleted. For example:

When a deleted deployment configuration references an operation that is not deleted, the operation is not found in the recycle bin and cannot be displayed.
When a deleted operation references a variables in a variable set that is not deleted.
When the BOM is not found in the recycle bin, a deleted variable shows errors.

Note:

You cannot restore elements in a closed activity.
You can only restore elements in the recycle bin. You cannot permanently delete them.

Background branch and decision service deletion

Deleting a branch or a full decision service can take a while, and can have timeout issues. The deletion process runs in background mode. A single request is sent to initiate the deletion, and then a background process does the actual deletion. This is applied to decision services and the different kinds of branches: regular branches, change activities, and releases.