Auto archive content

Archiving old or out-of-date content helps keep your intranet content relevant and easily searchable. Automatic archiving allows you to plan ahead and use automation to keep stale content off your intranet. You can set archive dates on individual pieces of content, or create more encompassing rules for news/blogs, forums or calendars to archive child pages after a set time.

Set an "expiry date" to automatically archive specific content

Any time after adding a page, you can set a date for the page to archive. You might set a page with details about a company social event to archive after that event has happened. Keep in mind that if you set a date for a page to archive, any pages below it will also be archived on that date.

Setting an archive date is the only way to archive a link in the navigation. Because links in the navigation do not have a "view" state like a regular page, there is no archive option for them in the page controls. To learn more, see the Set a date to archive the link heading on the Add link in navigation page.

To set an expiry date:

1. In edit mode, click on Set archive date under Publishing options on the right.
2. Use the arrows (or click on the month and year) on the calendar that appears to navigate to the archive date. Click on the date you want the page to archive.
3. The archive date you have selected will now show under Archive date.
   
   
   
   
4. Continue editing or click Save at the top right of the page.

To remove the archive date, click the garbage can icon that appears beside the archive date.

To set a date to archive a file, click on the file title to open the File Editing Menu, click Edit file details to go into edit mode, and then follow the steps above.

To set a date to archive a folder, click the edit icon beside the folder name (hover over the folder to show the icon) to go into edit mode, and then follow the steps above.

If a news or blog post, forum topic, or calendar event is a child of a page with an auto archive rule, you will see the archive date determined by that rule under the Publishing options in edit mode. To learn more about auto archive rules, see the next heading.

Auto archive rules for events, posts or topics

The auto archive feature is available in versions 10.6+.

Calendars, news/blog pages and forums can end up with a lot of subpages due to the type of content created under them. Page editors can set a rule on the parent calendar, news/blog, or forum page to automatically archive old subpages after a certain time. This helps keep intranet content relevant and easily findable.

Auto archive rule criteria

The auto archive rule criteria is slightly different for each type of content:

• Calendar events: Archived once the set time has passed since the event end date.
• Repeating calendar events: If a repeating event series has an end date, the series will be archived once the set time has passed since the event series end date.
• News/blog posts: Archived once the set time has passed since the publish date.
• Forum topics: Archived once the set time has passed since the last activity (comment, like, or edit).

The defaults for auto archive rules are:

• • Calendar event: 1 day after calendar event date
  • News/blog post: 12 months after publish date
  • Forum topic: 6 months after last activity on the topic

Exceptions to auto archive rule

If an archive date has been set for a specific piece of content, that archive date takes precedence over any auto archive rules on the parent page that also apply to that piece of content.

For example, an annual news/blog post is published on January 2 and has a specific archive date set for December 31. Even though the parent news/blog page has a rule that posts automatically archive six months after they are published (which would mean this post would be auto archived in July), this post will not be archived until December 31 because of the page-specific archive date.

Individual content can also be set to Do not archive under the Archive date heading in edit mode. Again, if a specific piece of content has been set to not archive, this setting will take precedence over any auto archive rule on the parent page that also applies to that content.

Create auto archive rule

1. Navigate to the calendar, news/blog, or forum page where you want to add an auto archive rule to apply to the child event, post or topic pages. Go into edit mode on the page.
2. In the settings under the page title, find the Auto archive... heading. Select the Archive events/posts/topics... checkbox.
3. To select the duration of time to auto archive after, enter the value in the first field and select the time increment from the dropdown menu in the second field. Remember that auto archive rules work slightly differently depending on the type of content being archived. See the Auto archive rule criteria heading above.
   
   
   
   • A warning message will appear below the auto-archive rule, alerting you to the number of events/posts/topics that will be auto archived when you save the page.
4. Click Save when you are done editing the page.

View auto archive rule or scheduled archive date 

If a calendar, news/blog or forum has an auto archive rule, it can be viewed by editors in the page controls for that page. Click the down arrow in the page header and see the Auto archive rule heading to find what rule has been applied to that content. If no auto archive rule heading displays for a page editor, no auto archive rule has been applied to that content.

If an event, post, or topic has a scheduled archive date, it can be viewed in the page controls for that page. Click the down arrow in the page header and see the Scheduled archive date heading to see what archive date has been applied to that content. The scheduled archive date will appear here whether the archive date was determined by an auto archive rule, or by a page editor setting a specific archive date on the content.

For forums with an auto archive rule, the archive date is based on last activity, so the scheduled archive date for forum topics will show as "(time period) after last activity", rather than an exact date.

Auto archive notifications

Users who have their notification settings set to receive alerts when pages are archived will receive in-app and/or email notifications about pages being archived whether it is done automatically or manually. Auto archiving notifications and activity will show as being performed by the system user.

Restore auto archived items

Editors can restore content that has been previously auto archived. Specific content can be restored by clicking Restore in the header while viewing the archived content. The option to restore all auto archived posts/topics/events shows in edit mode under the Auto archive heading on the parent page.

Click Restore all previously auto archived posts. In the Restore pop-up window that appears it will say how many archived posts will be restored by this action. Click Confirm to immediately restore those posts.

Modify auto archive rule

If a page editor wants to modify the auto archive rule (eg. archive posts six months after the publish date rather than three months after the publish date), they can restore all auto archived posts in edit mode as described above, and then set the new auto archive rule.

Learn more:

• Archive pages
• Archive files