Archive incidents

madhuri229 · ‎03-19-2023

Hi all,

I have a question on archiving incident records.

If we archive incident record.. what is the effect of attachments associated with incidents.

Could you please explain.

Thanks,

Madhuri

Allen Andreas · ‎03-20-2023

Hi @madhuri229

It's listed as: Table sysID in Attachment(sys_attachment):

Additionally, ensure you read the response here from @Mwatkins about how to view the attachment once the record archived and important information related to restoring, if you need to do that in the future: https://www.servicenow.com/community/now-platform-forum/system-archiving-issues-with-archiving-attac...

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View solution in original post

Allen Andreas · ‎03-21-2023

Hi,

As you add more tables, the effort will take longer. I'd recommend posting a new question asking about how to optimize things, what tables "should" you archive, and things like that. So that you have a fresh discussion on it. Feel free to mention me in it so I get notified using the @ symbol.

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Ravi Shrestha · ‎03-19-2023

When you archive incident records in ServiceNow, the attachments associated with those incidents are also archived. The archived attachments will still be accessible when you view the archived incident records, but they will not be available in the regular attachment tables or when searching within the active incident records.

It's important to note that the process of archiving records and their associated attachments is typically irreversible. Once records are archived, they cannot be easily moved back to the active tables. If you need to access the archived records or their attachments, you'll need to search for them within the archive tables specifically.

Allen Andreas · ‎03-19-2023

Hi,

For the part where you mentioned it's "typically irreversible" and that you can't easily move them back to the active tables, is that an experience you've had personally?

I haven't seen it be that difficult and in fact, it's as simple as access the archived record and selecting the restore record or restore record and related records related link option: https://docs.servicenow.com/en-US/bundle/utah-platform-administration/page/administer/database-rotat...

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varunkumar11863 · ‎12-28-2024

The best way to manage attachments while archiving is to leave them be.

The difference between leaving them alone and "archiving" them below:

Archiving

Leaving

"Archiving" has no effect on the actual file data; it merely archives the "File Info" record in sys attachment. As attachments are typically obtained from the parent record, these are directly queried via the table_sys id, and this will be extremely quick even for a large number of attachment "File Info" records, this actually has no benefit.

However, since the "File Info" is archived when you perform this action, if you want to manually restore a record, you will also need to manually restore any associated "File Info" records.

If the attachments are left alone, for example, the platform will simply update the sys attachment entry (the "File Info") to point to the ar incident table rather than the incident table once an incident is archived. Once the record is restored, the update will be undone and everything will function as it should.

The attachments will get permanently deleted if the corresponding archive record will be deleted as part of the Archive Destroy rule.