Thanks Rob, appreciate your input, good thoughts.

FYI - we do have a way right now to 'clone' an account - which we occasionally do on requests from clients and consultants. The logic is a bit arcane (what it copies and what it does not copy) so we plan to revise it in the future, but I think it can be a close approximation for what you have described above.

Adding my voice to the calls for an ability to delete trial data, hopefully in a constructive way.

I think you may need a two-pronged solution.

First, for those accounts with sites in production, a "trial data delete" feature is probably not going to be feasible since delineating trial data from production data will be a very manual process. For this, I believe the ability to delete contacts, and separately the ability to delete financial transactions promised in 3.5, will likely provide the best chance for cleanup. (My site will fall into this category -- I likely will be live before 3.5, so will have to return to manually cleanup trial transactions.)

However, as you consider new features, I believe the ability to separate "setup" data from "operational data" will be pivotal, and I suspect you already have such a distinction "behind the scenes." Basically, anything that is specfied on a "Settings" page, such as your list of "exceptions" in your post to which this is in reply needs to be preserved in a "trial data delete." However, I don't see the need for a selective delete. I struggle to imagine a transition from "setup/testing/conversion" to "production" where it would be desireable to preserve any contacts (save administrators), events, registrations, donations, or transactions, The sole exception may be emails, since calling up and editing an old email to create a new one is likely commonplace. However, I would prioritize such a capability very, very low.

An interesting off-shoot drawing a strict delineation between "setup/configuration" data and "operational/transactional" data may provide would be the ability to download said configuration, perhaps as some kind of XML export, etc. If that same file could subsequently be re-imported it could serve two purposes: Provide a configuration "backup" or "versioning" capability. I could easily imagine exporting my configuration and archiving it before any major changes. Provide configuration portability. As a secondary market of expert WA consultants and configuration specialist grows, the ability to transport a configuration between accounts will be desirable. Starting my next client with the configuration from a prior client could be a real time-saver. (Especially if the two are highly related, like two chapters of a national organization.)

If you think about it, if you prioritize such an export/import feature, it's existence could simplify the trial data delete. Imagine a process consisting of the following steps: Export configuration Delete ALL account data (no need to develop delete routines that are "smart") Import configuration Load production memberships

I hope this helps.

Kind regards,

Rob Bullard

Thanks. Individual transaction deletion should be available in our next version 3.5 in August.

Having just upgraded our account from trail, deleting all objects from the trail with the noted exceptions would be great. Although we are no longer in trial, we are still testing all fuctionality before we move our current members to this and still have test transactions going. With that said, we would welcome individual transaction deletes too. :)

After analyzing this and also reviewing the changes in upcoming version 3.5 (e.g. payment transaction log is replaced with several other tables; it will be possible to delete individual financial transactions etc.), we have realized that we need to look at this broader.

Generally speaking, once people finish evaluating a trial account and upgrade, they frequently want to delete all the test data. So we want to figure what are the possible scenarios, e.g.:

- Delete pretty much all object in the trial account

( exceptions: keep web pages, membership levels, custom fields, all settings, discount coupons, custom report layouts, saved searches, uploaded files)

- Some kind of selective delete:

-- contacts/member/donor records

-- events

-- event registrations

-- donations

-- financial transactions (invoices/payments)

-- sent emails/email drafts

I would appreciate comments and insight from everyone

This has not been addressed yet.

This is still on a wish list or has it been address. Sorry if I missed the answer in another post. New to this. Thanks.

Ian,

The reason we have not been able to address this before is due to two key reasons:

- very complex and very fragile data architecture behind (basically can't ensure data consistency if financial transactions are deleted)

- desire to ensure that our clients have a full audit log of transactions (which by definition should not be clearable)

In our next version 3.5 we are rearchitecting the financial management side and will provide the ability to delete individual transactions.

I have split out your post into a new thread as you have good suggestions about Clearing functions we should provide.

So if you have lots of test data and can't live with it until next update (~end of July), you can open a new clean account and contact our tech support to use instead of current one.

Hi everyone from New Zealand ...

Yes we would also like to understand why trial transactions are still in our live data (with no option to remove them).

This is not acceptable from a data (read solution) integrity point of view.

When someone updates to a live system, you need options to:

Archive or Delete Trial Transactions
Clear Trial Contacts and Members (except Admin)
Clear Trial Events
Clear All

etc

I am in IT and this would be unacceptable to my clients.

As a workaround for customers requesting this, is it not possible to remove the transactions from the back end table ?

Or, can we start again afresh and have a new site completely under the same contract ?

Sincerely Yours

Ian McDonald

Devonport Swimming Club

I too, would like this feature

Teri

OFLA

I would also like to clear the payment transaction log or have the option to delete some transactions, especially useful for all the transactions I entered as tests.

Sorry, there is no way to do it now. This makes good sense so I will move the thread to Wishlist forum.

and same question for the log of email blasts