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Archive/Deactivate/Delete - Clean-up Question!

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Level 1
Hi WF Pros! I am in the process of cleaning up our WF instance as it has gotten a bit messy/confusing. I am going through groups, teams, requests, templates, and custom forms and wanted to see what best practices you all use that are efficient so that I am not 1. disturbing any work, 2. breaking anything. I realize best practice is to NOT delete things as it eliminates historical data and such, so I am in need of your expertise. Looking forward to hearing back! Dylan Dylan Vargas Worldwide
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Level 7
The ability to now 'deactivate' certain objects in the system like Templates, Programs, Custom Forms, etc. has helped us out tremendously with reducing the 'clutter' that we had accumulated over the past few years. When that functionality was released, I did quite a lot of admin housekeeping that week and loved it! Now, the one thing to be careful of is if you are removing fields from an active Custom Form. If you remove a field from a Custom Form, you will lose all historical data. See this support article for help if you want to remove a field from a Custom Form without losing historical data: https://experience.workfront.com/s/article/Managing-Custom-Forms-1156518149#Removing_Fields_from_a_C... It is a few steps but will ensure your data is not lost. Terry Hynd EBSCO Information Services

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Level 1
I didnt realize deactivating was an option on so many! That is great, thank you! Also - great note on the historical data loss from deleting fields from custom forms. That was next up on my list! Dylan Vargas Worldwide

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Level 7
Here's the link to the support page describing the "Deactivate Unused Objects" functionality. It also has a quick video. Terry Hynd EBSCO Information Services

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Level 3
I just wanted to start up my own form clean up process. So I understand the deactivation on Forms, but what about the fields. So we have redone our forms and fields a couple times and now we have over 500 fields! I want to be able to deactivate those as well but I se there is no way to do it that i could find. Has anyone done anything with field clean up at all during this process. Andrea DiMauro-Walton

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Level 10
Hi Andrea, I haven't done it, but I have weighed the value of the effort to do the cleanup versus the gain. We have over 2100 fields. I'm sure we have many that are no longer used, but as long as the forms we're using are clean and looking like we want, there's no harm in the extra fields being out there. At least we haven't experienced any harm. So I came to the conclusion it would take me hours and hours of effort to go through and remove those fields, but I don't see a benefit to it (that I'm aware of – I don't know the limit of fields – I guess if it's 2500 I'm in trouble �� ). So I don't think there's a deactivation option that you're looking for, but either way I would evaluate whether the cleanup effort at the field level is worth the exercise. Just my thoughts.

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Level 8
We have 4500 fields and I've also seen no harm! The one thing I think is worth cleaning up is duplicate fields. We have several text fields that are called "additional comments" or "additional notes" and there's really no need to have more than one field that serves the same purpose. Kirsten Heikkinen

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Level 3
You guys are making me laugh. I was freaking out about 500 fields :) Thank you all this helps a lot! Andrea DiMauro-Walton

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Community Advisor
We have about 3600 fields, I've also set up a View on my list of fields that includes a column for which forms they are on. And if a field truly isn't used on any forms, it's fairly easy to spot and delete.

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Level 3
Is there a way to show the # of projects (and which projects) are associated with a specific form? Andrea DiMauro-Walton

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Community Advisor
Hi Andrea, There is, I use a Project report with a Prompt for Categories > Name. The prompt allows me to quickly re-use that report for other forms. (Categories = Custom Form) Be sure to use Categor ies , not Category if you have multiple forms on a project. If I recall correctly, Category gives you projects that have the form you've selected as the first form on the project, it doesn't look at any of the other forms.

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Community Advisor
Just FYI...I also have that same report as an Issue report and a Task report if I need to see which forms are where for those as well.