Document Database is large and Retention is timing out.  What do I do?

Issue

Document Database is large and Retention is timing out.  What do I do?

Solution

1. Query the documents database and find the oldest date in the LastAccessedAt column.
2. Get a count for the number of documents for that month.
3. Set the Retention Policy (RP) to delete those documents. You will have to do a calendar calculation to determine the Year and Month value. For example, if the LastAccessedAt was 2 years ago, RP would be set to delete everything after 1 year, 11 months.
4. Execute the RP by changing the RP System task to run 2 minutes from now. Wait until the due date changes indicating it executed.
5. Get a count for the number of documents for the Document database again. Hopefully it will be lower.
6. Repeat the steps for the previous month (e.g. 1 year, 10 months)

If the count does not go down, try deleting one or two weeks worth instead.  If that does not work, then open a case with Technical Support, who will provide some queries to diagnose the issue.

Level of Complexity 

Moderate

Applies to