Organization Deletion

Support Operations policies page for Zendesk organization deletion

This process relies heavily on the ZD-SFDC sync and custom deletion scripts to work. Please review the following projects so you can better understand the automation/scripting aspect of all this:

Criteria for deletion

As per our Data Retention policy and in accordance with various governing laws/regulations, we delete an organization 3 years after their last valid subscription has expired. So if an organization’s last valid subscription expired 2021-12-18, then the date it would be eligible for deletion would be 2024-12-18. For organizations within Zendesk (both instances) that are found to meet this criteria, an organization field named Greatly Expired is marked as true. This results in the tag greatly_expired being added onto the organization. Through this, organizations that have met the criteria for deletion are marked in a way that is readily findable within Zendesk.

Reporting on impending deletions

Once a week, on Monday, the Organization Deletion project for the corresponding Zendesk instance will make a Slack post within the channel #support_ops-audit-events (private channel) with information about organizations slated for deletion in that week’s upcoming Friday (if there are any to report on). The script reporting on this will omit reporting organizations have tickets within the last 120 days or have an open SFDC opportunities.

To prevent any organizations from being added to the search criteria in the time when this report is run and when the deletions occur, an organization tag of to_be_deleted is added.

Reviewing impending deletions

Once a report has been made of impending deletions, it is our job to reivew the list of organizations slated for deletion. It is here we can ensure we are only deleting organizations actually valid for it (and ensure no tooling mistakes).

When reviewing the list, be sure to check all the below areas. If everything looks to be accurate and correct, no action is needed. If you see anything that seems amiss, add the tag do_not_delete to the organization to ensure said organization is not deleted. You should also remove the tag to_be_deleted to clean up the organization.

As you review a list item, add the 👀 Slack emoji on the list item. This indicates you are reviewing the item. Once you are done reviewing the item, add the ✅ Slack emoji (and remove the 👀 Slack emoji) on the item.

If for any reason you cannot perform the review (such as not having access to the organization in Salesforce), do the following:

  1. Remove the 👀 emoji from the list item
  2. Make a thread on the list item that:
    • Ping @jcolyer and @lyle
    • Explains why you could not perform the review

One of the people pinged will manually review the item you made the thread on.

No tickets created within 120 days

Check the organization in question for any tickets that have been created within the last 120 days. If there are any, this organization should not be deleted.

No open opportunities in SFDC

Check the SFDC account tied to the organization for any open opportunities. If you see any, this organization should not be deleted.

No recent chatter indicating renewal

Check the chatter log on the SFDC account tied to the organization for any indicators that a renewal is upcoming. If you see any, this organization should not be deleted.

Organizaton deletions

Once a week, on Friday, the Organization Deletion project for the corresponding Zendesk instance will take the list of organizations using the organization tag to_be_deleted (excluding those with the tag do_not_delete). With this list, the project will then completely delete the organization, which involves the following:

  • Deleting all tickets under the organization
  • Deleting all users under the organization
  • Deleting the organization itself
  • Updating any Redis objects that involve Zendesk organizations, users, and tickets