Data Retention Policies

SUMMARY

• Workato's data retention policy determines the lifespan of data like job histories, trigger events, and custom reports, deleting them after the specified time.
• Default retention varies from 30 to 90 days from the job's completion date depending on your workspace type and platform plan, and can be customized in certain cases.
• You can set data retention at the workspace level or opt not to store data for specific recipes.
• Store data beyond the default period by using audit log streaming to send data to supported applications.

Workato retains specific recipe and usage data to power the Dashboard, display custom reports, repeat jobs, and troubleshoot errors. After a certain amount of time has passed, this data is automatically and permanently deleted from the Workato platform.

The time data is retained is determined by a data retention policy. In this guide, we'll cover:

• The basics of data retention policies in Workato
• The default retention periods in Workato
• What types of data are subject to the retention policy
• How to customize your workspace's retention period
• How to selectively retain data at the recipe level

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Basics

• What is a data retention policy?
• What is Workato's data retention policy?
• Can I customize the retention period for my workspace?
• Can I customize retention at the recipe level?
• Can I store data for longer than the retention period?
• What types of data are subject to the data retention policy?
• What happens if I change my data retention policy?
• Is job data retention retroactive?

What is a data retention policy?

Workato's data retention policy specifies how long specific types of data are stored for your account. The data retention period is 30 or 90 days from the job's completion date, depending on your workspace type and platform plan. Workato retains this data to support error recovery, duplicate detection, custom reports, and job re-runs.

Data subject to the retention policy is automatically and permanently deleted when the retention period has passed. For example, if the retention period is 90 days, applicable data more than 90 days old is deleted.

Retention policy duration

RETENTION PERIOD STARTS WHEN A JOB ENDS

The retention period for a recipe job starts when the job ends.

For example, if your workspace's data retention policy is set to 30 days, the data from a recipe job is retained for 30 days starting from the job's completion date. This means that if a job begins on October 31st and completes on November 1st, the data associated with that job is retained until December 1st.

For customers on legacy plans, the default data retention policy for your Workato account varies based on the type of workspace you use and any additional capabilities you select.

Purchased?	Maximum retention	Customizable?
None	30 days	No
Enterprise Workspace	90 days	Yes (1 hour minimum)
Data Monitoring capability	90 days	Yes (1 hour minimum)

For customers on the new pricing model, the default data retention policy for your Workato account varies based on your platform plan. Refer to your pricing plan and contract to learn more.

Platform plan	Maximum retention	Customizable?
Standard	30 days	No
Business	30 days	No
Enterprise	90 days	Yes (1 hour minimum)

MAXIMUM RETENTION AND CUSTOMIZATION OPTIONS

The maximum retention period and the ability to customize it depends on your platform plan. Refer to your pricing plan and contract to learn more.

Can I customize the retention period for my workspace?

Yes, if you have an Enterprise Workspace or have the Data Monitoring/Advanced Security & Compliance capability.

Refer to the Customization at the workspace level section for more info.

Can I customize retention at the recipe level?

Yes. The Jobs data retention recipe setting allows you to define whether job data is stored for the recipe:

Recipe-level data retention policy

Refer to the Defining data retention for recipes guide for more info.

Can I store data for longer than the retention period?

To store data longer than the retention period, use Audit log streaming. Using this feature, you can send job and activity log data from Workato to your event management application of choice.

Currently, Workato supports the following applications:

• Amazon S3
• Data Dog
• Splunk
• Sumo Logic
• Any other application or service accessible over an HTTP endpoint

Note: Audit log streaming only includes data created after you configure the streaming. It does not apply to data created prior to the configuration.

What types of data are subject to the data retention policy?

The following types of data are subject to your account's data retention policy:

• Job history summaries
• Job history details
• Trigger events
• Customized job reports

DATA TYPES EXEMPT FROM RETENTION POLICY

The following types of data are not subjected to your account's data retention policy:

• Data tables data, including data entered in Workflow apps: Workato does not delete this data automatically. If you want to delete this data you must do so manually using the data tables UI or programmatically.
• FileStorage data: Workato does not delete this data automatically. If you want to delete this data you must do so manually using the FileStorage delete action. Data that is deleted by user will be purged from all backup drives within 4 days.
• SQL Transformations data: Temporary contents received from different sources other than FileStorage, and the transformed output data are all automatically purged from primary and backup drives within 4 days.

What happens if I change my data retention policy?

This varies, depending on whether you reduce or extend your data retention policy:

• Reducing the data retention policy: If you reduce the retention policy from 90 days to 60 days, the data for the reduced period (30 days) is not retroactive. For example, if the retention policy is changed on December 1, 2024, data from before October 2, 2024 is no longer retained by Workato.
• Extending the data retention policy: If you extend the retention policy from 30 days to 90 days, the additional data (30 days) is retroactive. For example, if the retention policy is changed on December 1, 2024, data from as far back as September 2, 2024, is retained.

Is job data retention retroactive?

This varies, depending on the job data type:

• Job lines: No, job lines are not retroactive.
• Job history titles, errors, and custom columns: Yes, these are retroactive and expire according to your current data retention settings.

Job History Summary

Job history summary data provides job metadata on the Job details page. This includes info about the job such as:

• The job ID
• Status
• Description
• Starting time
• Duration

Job history summary with successful job completion

If the job resulted in an error, the summary would also contain details about the error:

Job history summary with error details

Job History Details

Job history detail data provides information about inputs and outputs for each action in the recipe:

Action input and output on the Job history details page

After the data retention period has passed, only job history summary data is retained. Action input and output data will be deleted.

Trigger Events

Trigger event data is found on the Job details page in the Output tab of the trigger step:

Trigger event data for a new issue in GitHub

Trigger event data can be used to repeat a job without creating a new trigger event. After the retention period has passed and the trigger event data is deleted, the Repeat this job option on this page will be disabled.

Customized Job Reports

Customized job reports are located in the Jobs tab of the recipe. If a job report isn't customized, only the job's ID, status, and timestamp will display in the table.

A customized report is a quick, easy way to see data from a job without opening the Job details page. In the image below, for example, the job report has been customized to include the GH issue, Team, Status, Priority, and Issue Type columns:

Custom job report showing data from the job execution

After the retention period, only the job's ID, status, and timestamp will display in the job report. Data in customized columns will be deleted.

Custom job report after the retention period has passed

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Customizing Data Retention

WHO CAN USE THIS FEATURE?

To perform the tasks in this section, the following are required:

• An Enterprise Workspace or the Data Monitoring/Advanced Security & Compliance capability.
• The Admin system role. Alternatively, you can be logged in as the workspace owner/ root login.

DATA RETENTION POLICY CHANGES

When you make changes to your workspace's data retention policy, Workato follows this logic:

If you reduce your workspace's data retention policy, the change is not retroactive. For example, if you change the retention policy from 90 days to 60 days on December 1, 2024, data from before October 2, 2024, is no longer retained by Workato. Conversely, if you extend the retention policy, the change is retroactive. For example, if you extend the retention policy from 30 days to 90 days on December 1, 2024, data from as far back as September 2, 2024, is retained.

For job data retention, job lines are not retroactive. However, job history titles, errors, and custom columns are retroactive and expire according to your current retention settings.

You can configure retention periods in the following ways:

• At the workspace level
• At the recipe level

Customization At The Workspace Level

1

In your Workato account, navigate to Settings > Data retention.

2

In the Data retention period unit field, select Hours or Days.

3

In the Data retention period field, enter an integer to specify the duration of the retention period, based on the selected period unit.

For example, if the period unit is Days and you enter 45, the retention period will be 45 days from the job's completion date.

Customized data retention policy of 45 days from the job's completion date

RETENTION PERIOD

The retention period must be between one (1) hour and 90 days. If set to a value outside this range, Workato will reset it to the maximum for your workspace's plan type.

4

When finished, click Save.

Customization At The Recipe Level

Data retention can be configured on a recipe-by-recipe basis to use the workspace retention policy or to not store data at all.

Refer to the Defining data retention for recipes guide for more info.