Should I delete or disable a person record?

As ever it's a balance.

Deleting a Person record

By deleting a person record, your data set is clean and you can of course always re-add later. By deleting the DoorFlow person, all direct and related data is removed.

Hard and soft deleting

When a record is deleted (in the UI or by API call), it's soft deleted. Two weeks after soft deletion, a record is hard deleted permanently and cannot be undone.

DoorFlow employs soft deletion as a failsafe. We've learned that integrations can sometimes not work as expected for whatever reason. Without soft deleting valuable meta data is easily lost forever.

Disabling a Person record

By disabling a person record you are maintaining a number of meta data that might be useful both to the admins but also to the card holder/person.

  • Attendance history
  • Credential details (card, pin etc)
  • Manually updated details like photo (although you can also add photos via the API)
  • Historical changes to a person's record

A note on credentials

Depending on circumstance, you may or may not get the card/keyfob back if a person leaves. By disabling a record rather than deleting, the original card/keyfob can be used again should they return.

This also applies to wallet passes. The pass can continue to reside in the digital wallet, but because it's not active it won't work. Should the person return, this can be automatically be re-enabled without the pass needing to be re-issued and downloaded. This certainly ensures the best experience for the person.

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