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How to set up Data Retention

Data Retention helps you clean up old survey data across every survey in your team at once. You can erase only the personal and health answers (PII / PHI) inside responses, or delete the responses completely.

BlockSurvey provides two options depending on your needs:

  1. Delete PII / PHI only: Erases the answers to personal and health questions. The rest of the response stays, so your results and charts are kept.
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  2. Delete entire responses: Deletes every answer and the response itself, along with any files uploaded with it.

Note: Data Retention is available on the Team and Enterprise plans.

Follow these steps to set up Data Retention:

  1. Go to TeamSpace -> Settings -> Data & Privacy -> Data Retention.

  2. Choose what to delete from the Delete dropdown: Delete PII / PHI only or Delete entire responses.

  3. Choose the period from the date dropdown:
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    • 1 month, 3 months, 6 months or 12 months: Responses collected before that point. For example, 6 months means every response older than six months.
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    • Custom range: Pick a From and To date and click Apply.

  4. Review the survey list. For each survey you can see the total Responses, when they were Collected, how many are To erase (or To delete) in the chosen period, and the PII / PHI questions found. Use the search box or the All filter (Starred, Live, Closed) to find surveys quickly.

  5. Click the arrow next to a survey to see the detected questions. All of them are selected by default. Untick any question you want to keep.

  6. Select the surveys you want to clean up and click Erase PII / PHI (or Delete responses) at the bottom.
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  7. Check the summary in the pop-up and click Confirm Deletion.

  8. Keep the window open while it runs. A progress bar shows how many responses are done. When it finishes, a summary appears at the top of the page.

Note: Deleted data cannot be restored. Every run is recorded in Settings -> Audit Log.

Good to know:

  • Responses that were already erased are skipped, so running it again is safe.

  • Responses above your plan's response limit cannot be read, so they are skipped and left as they are.

  • Nothing runs automatically. Data Retention only applies when you run it
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If you are still running into issues, contact us at [email protected] at any time.

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