Conversation retention · Workforce Intelligence docs

Conversation retention sets how long the content of conversations is kept. By default it is kept forever, and nothing is removed unless you choose a period. You need the admin ability; other people see no access.

Open the page#

Select Settings, then the Administration tab.
On the Conversation retention card, select Manage.

The page has three cards: Retention period, Cleanup and Cleanup history.

Choose a period#

In Keep conversation content for, pick Keep forever, 30 days, 90 days, 180 days or 365 days.

For a finite period, you must preview it before you can save it:

Pick the period.
Select Preview impact. The page lists what the period would remove today: Conversations, Messages, Attachments, Artifact versions and Tool call records, with the date the count is measured from.
Select Save. The dialog Keep conversation content for N days? repeats the counts and warns that removed content cannot be restored. Select Save and apply.

Save stays unavailable until the selected period has been previewed, and changing the selection clears the preview. Choosing Keep forever needs no preview or confirmation: select Save and nothing is removed from then on. Content that was already removed stays removed.

What the cleanup removes#

A conversation is old enough when it has had no activity for longer than the period. For each such conversation the cleanup removes:

the content of every message, including condensed summaries, and the conversation's title;
attachments and images that only these conversations use;
the content of every artifact version the conversation produced;
the input and output of every tool call.

An attachment that something else still uses is kept: a newer conversation, a workflow run's files or inputs, or a review that is still open.

The conversation records themselves stay, and so do usage, cost and performance reporting. The totals in The Usage & cost view are the same before and after a cleanup. Knowledge Base documents, secrets, Coworker definitions and collaborative documents are never removed.

A conversation is skipped, and checked again at the next cleanup, while a Coworker is replying in it, while a message is queued, while it is condensing, while a workflow run tied to it has an open review or approval, or while a forked conversation that still needs it is not yet old enough.

Removed content cannot be restored. For how people see a removed conversation, see Chatting with a Coworker.

Run a cleanup#

A cleanup runs automatically once a week for the saved period. Nothing runs while the period is Keep forever.

To apply the saved period right away, select Run cleanup now on the Cleanup card, then Run cleanup in the Run cleanup now? dialog. The button is unavailable until a period is saved and while a cleanup is in progress. Only one cleanup runs at a time. If the service cannot start one, the card says "Cleanup is unavailable right now. Try again shortly."

Cleanup history#

Cleanup history lists the most recent cleanups, newest first, with these columns:

Column	Shows
When	When the cleanup started
Status	Running, Complete or Failed
Started by	Manual (Run cleanup now) or Scheduled (the weekly cleanup)
Removed	How many conversations, messages, attachments, artifact versions and tool call records were removed; In progress while running; the reason when it failed

A running cleanup refreshes the list on its own. A cleanup that was interrupted shows Failed and the next cleanup picks the work up again. Until one has run, the card says "No cleanups have run."

Exports#

The company archive marks a conversation whose content was removed and exports its messages without content.

Audit trail#

Every change to the retention period and every cleanup run (manual or scheduled, with its counts and outcome) is recorded in the audit log, which people with the auditor ability can read on the Audit tab (Area, then Conversation retention). A cleanup never removes audit records, and the record of which sources were shown with an answer stays in place after the answer's text has been removed. See The Audit log.