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How can I easily remove old, unneeded person profiles?

Describes the tools available to keep the number of profiles as low as possible by removing old data.

One Church provides several tools to help identify and remove people data that is old and no longer needed. This article covers the two best ways to do it: the Profile Clean Up Tool for most cleanups, and the People Query Builder for more targeted control.


Profile Clean Up Tool

You will need the Profile Deactivate and Full Write People permissions to perform this action. Both are campus-scoped, so a campus override can change them at one campus. Archiving needs Profile Deactivate at one of the person's campuses, but deleting needs Full Write People at every campus they are on, so a campus-limited person can archive people they cannot delete. See People for what these permissions cover, and Campuses and organizations in Version 8 for how campus access works.

To open the tool, go to Contacts in the left-hand menu and then choose Clean Up Data at the top of the page.

The Contacts page with the Clean Up Data button at the top.

This opens the Profile Clean Up Tool in a pop-up. From here, delete or archive person profiles matching the criteria that is set.

Walkthrough of the Profile Clean Up Tool pop-up.

Start by choosing what kind of profiles to consider in the People drop-down. The options are:

  • Only unarchived profiles (the default)

  • Only archived profiles

  • Both archived and unarchived profiles

  • Custom criteria

    • If chosen, search for a saved people query to control which profiles are considered by the tool.

Below the data source is the Inactive Criteria section. Check the rules to use to find old, unused profiles. All are checked by default and set to one year in the past. If Sync time selections in the upper right is turned on, any change made to the time component of one criterion is applied to all the others as well.

The Inactive Criteria section with its rules and the Sync time selections toggle.

A profile is returned only if it matches every checked rule. Most rules are checked against the person, but Family does not have contributions is checked against the whole family.

Tip: The results also narrow to the campuses you can reach and to the campuses the selector at the top of the page is set to. If a cleanup returns fewer people than you expect, widen the selector before changing your criteria.

General involvement checks

In addition to the Inactive Criteria, the tool also checks for general involvement by default. Click customize below the criteria to see and change these checks. A profile is left out of the results if it fails any checked item:

  • Is not a system approver

  • Does not have a login

  • Is not a room or item approver

  • Does not have connection assignments

  • Is not an event organizer

  • Does not have an active pledge

  • Is not a supervisor for a group position

  • Does not have an active safeguard

  • Is not scheduled on a future service plan

  • Is not a current member of any group

  • Is not a manager for any group member

  • Does not have an active recurring giving schedule

  • Is not a workflow manager

  • Is not a process manager

  • Is not currently going through a workflow process

  • Is not in an assignment pool for a process task

  • Does not have an assignment in a workflow process

Why are children returned without their parents? Children rarely have a login, a group membership, or the other roles above, so they often match every rule while an adult in the same family does not. If a person you expected is missing, open customize, uncheck one item at a time, and click Preview to see which check is keeping them out. Review families where only the children were returned before archiving or deleting, so households are not left incomplete.

When the criteria look right, click Preview to see the first 50 profiles that match. Depending on the database size, this may take a moment to run. Clicking a Person ID value opens that profile in a new tab.

The preview also reports how many profiles matched in total, not just the number shown. A banner at the top reads, for example, "Below is a preview of the first 50 of 839 matching profiles," and a count appears underneath the table. Use this to gauge the size of a cleanup before archiving or deleting anything. There is no need to run an export just to get the total.

At the bottom of the pop-up are the main actions that can be taken against the matching profiles:

  • Export

  • Archive Profiles

  • Delete Profiles

Note: Archive Profiles is hidden when People is set to Only archived profiles, because those profiles are already archived. Export and Delete Profiles are still available.

The Export, Archive Profiles and Delete Profiles buttons at the bottom of the pop-up.

Tip: If planning to delete profiles, run Export first so as to have a copy of the data before it leaves the system.


Export

Click Export to open the Export Data pop-up, where you choose which areas of data to include. Each area selected is exported as its own CSV file, and the files download together in a zip. Each CSV file can be re-imported into One Church. When re-importing, upload the people.csv file first.

Walkthrough of the Export Data pop-up.

Choose what to export

Under General Areas, check each area to include:

  • People

  • Emails

  • Phones

  • Addresses

  • Important Dates

  • Notes

  • Safeguards

  • Connections

  • Attendance

  • Group Membership

Tip: Only People is checked when the pop-up opens, so it is worth reviewing the list before exporting. Use check all to select every area at once, or uncheck all to start from an empty list and pick only what is needed.

Below the checkboxes, a Custom Fields section lists the custom fields that will be included in the people export.

The Export Data pop-up with its General Areas checkboxes and Custom Fields section.

The areas offered are based on the user's system access rights, including any campus limits and overrides. For example, a user may have access to certain note types but not others, and the export will only include the types they can see.

This tool does not export every piece of data on a person, but it does export most of it. The resulting CSV files can be re-imported into One Church if needed. Financial data is not included because financial data is never deleted by this tool.

Archive Profiles

Click Archive Profiles to open a confirmation pop-up. From there, indicate why the profiles are being archived and choose whether to archive their family members as well.

If you do not see this button, check the People drop-down at the top of the pop-up. It is hidden while that is set to Only archived profiles. Switch to Only unarchived profiles or Both archived and unarchived profiles to bring it back.

Archiving the family members as well needs Profile Deactivate at every campus of every member, so a campus-limited person may be able to archive the person but not the whole household.

Walkthrough of the Archive Profiles confirmation pop-up.

Delete Profiles

Click Delete Profiles to open a confirmation pop-up with information about the deletion. Choose to include family members of the people being deleted.

Deletion needs Full Write People at every campus of each person being deleted. People you can see but not delete are reported rather than removed, so a cleanup can come back having deleted fewer profiles than it matched.

Walkthrough of the Delete Profiles confirmation pop-up.

People Query Builder

You will need the Reporting, Full Write People and Profile Deactivate permissions to perform this action. Reporting is account-wide, so it applies at every campus and a campus override cannot take it away. Full Write People and Profile Deactivate are campus-scoped, and deleting from a query still needs Full Write People at every campus of each person. See Reporting and People for what these permissions cover, and Campuses and organizations in Version 8 for how campus access works.

Also delete profiles from Reporting > Query Builder in the left-hand menu. Set Data Source to People, build a query that returns the profiles that need to be deleted, then run it. Above the results table, choose Bulk Actions > Delete.

Query results with the Bulk Actions menu open showing Delete.

A pop-up appears with information about the action to be performed, including a button to export the person profiles first (just like in the previous section).

The delete confirmation pop-up with the export button.

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