Example: Deleting transactional references

In addition to deleting static personal information, you can also remove information that is stored as a transactional reference to a person. For example, personal information that is entered as free-form text in work orders or service requests rather than selected from a drop-down list. You can use advanced relationships to delete that personal information.

About this task

As an example, Louise, a location manager, wants to clean up personally identifiable information (PII) that is no longer necessary to store in the system. In addition to removing static people information, she wants to make sure that no PII remains as transactional references in some records. Users occasionally enter free-form text into some fields and you cannot easily find PII in those fields. Before she implements a stricter policy for users, Louise decides to remove the following personal information:
  • Transactional references to the person in the Reported By field in the Service Requests application.
  • Transactional references to all people in the On Behalf Of field for all open work orders at the AIR102 location in the Work Order Tracking application.

Since the objects for service requests and work orders are not default objects for removing PII, she must add these objects to the MAXPDOBJ domain before she can remove these transactional references in the People application.

Note: Exercise extreme caution when you use advanced relationships. Ensure that you test relationships thoroughly and back up your Manage database before you delete any personal information. When you delete personal information, the data is not recoverable.

Procedure

  1. Back up the Manage database.
  2. In the Domains application, click Edit Detail for the MAXPDOBJ domain.
  3. In the List Where Clause field, add the objects to the list that are in parentheses.
    For example, to remove attribute data from service requests and work orders, add 'SR','WORKORDER' to the list of objects that are in parentheses.
  4. In the People application, select the Manage People Data action and insert a row.
  5. Specify the attribute details for the data that you want to remove.
    For example, to remove the transactional references to the person in the Reported By field in service requests, specify the following information:
    Field Value
    Object SR
    Attribute REPORTEDBY
    Relationship reportedby=:personid
    Removal Type NULL
    To remove the transactional references to all people in the On Behalf Of field for all open work orders at the AIR102 location, specify the following information:
    Field Value
    Object WORKORDER
    Attribute ONBEHALFOF
    Relationship location ='AIR102' AND Status in ('WAPP','APPR','INPRG')
    Note: The content in the On Behalf Of field is randomized for all people on all open work orders because the relationship is not based on the PERSONID attribute.
    Removal Type RANDOMIZE
  6. Click OK.
  7. Select the person that has personal information that you want to delete or randomize.
  8. Select the Delete Person Data action.

Results

The values for the specified object attributes are deleted or randomized for the selected person or people.