Overview
Pendo retains subscription raw event data for 7 years/84 months from the date it was collected. This time period is the data retention time limit. After the subscription age reaches the retention time limit, raw event data older than the retention time limit is automatically deleted from the Pendo database. This is a rolling threshold. As a subscription ages past 7 years, the date for data retention advances daily, ensuring no raw event data is stored more than 7 years. For example, when a subscription becomes 7 years and 1 day old only the raw event data from the day of installation is deleted. The next day the data from the day after installation is deleted and so on. Subscriptions younger than 7 years are not impacted.
This effectively means that no data is available for Insights or queries using the Pendo API for events more than 7 years before the current date. This does not impact content created in your Pendo subscription including configuration, user profiles, integrations, tagged Features, Pages, or Track Events, Guides, Saved Reports, Segments, or Feedback requests. Only the underlying raw event data used to populate these tools is affected. Any Visitor or Account IDs that have not been used since the data retention date are also removed.
Shortening the Data Retention Time Limit
Customers can request that the data retention time limit is shortened to delete event data sooner than 84 months. The data retention time limit is set for the entire subscription. The data retention time limit can be set to any duration from 1 to 84 months. Contact your Pendo Customer Success Manager or Pendo Support to request a change to your data retention time limit. There is a review process that Pendo must follow to verify that the customer completely understands the impact of the change and that the request is approved by the appropriate subscription managers.
Data can also be deleted for an individual app. The Application Start Date controls when Pendo begins storing data for an app. If the Application Start Date is moved, any data collected prior to the start date is permanently deleted. The Application Start Date will not move automatically until the app is old enough to match the subscription data retention time limit.
Following request approval, there is a brief processing time as the app configuration is changed. Once the change is made, older data is immediately queued for deletion. If there has been an error in the selected data retention time limit, it may be possible to recover deleted data if the change request is received and processed within 28 days of deletion. Data recovery must be requested as soon as possible to improve the chances of recovering deleted data. Event data older than 84 months cannot be recovered.
Data Retention Date Calculation
The date used to set the data retention time limit is the current date minus 84 months, or customer-specified duration. To determine the data retention date, subtract the number of months of the data retention time limit from the current date. The day of the month does not change unless the month of the data retention date is not long enough to match the current day of the month. In this case the data retention date defaults to the last day of the month. The deletion process has a 2 - 3 day buffer to ensure that no data younger than the data retention time limit is deleted when months do not have the same number of days.
Examples
- If the current date is May 28, 2020, subtract the default data retention limit of 84 months, and the resulting data retention date is May 28, 2013.
- For a customer-specified data retention time limit of 18 months, if the current date is May 31, 2020, subtract 18 months, the resulting data retention date is November 30, 2018. November does not have 31 days, so the data retention date falls on the last day, the 30th.