Is it safe to delete RITM records?

[Keith Gonzales]

Good afternoon. Are there any ServiceNow best practices on deleting RITM/INC records? These type of tickets have a lot of relationships with other tables so we want to make sure that there won't be any issues in our instances.

Thank you!

[Mark Roethof]

Hi there,

You could delete them, and depending on the method you are using a cascade delete will be performed (though never a complete cascade delete!).

My question though would first be: why would you delete them? It's not a common thing to delete task data.

Also when deleting such data, ask yourself what to do with data almost no one is thinking of: Audit, Audit Delete, Workflow context, Metrics, Attachments, Variables, etc, etc, etc..

Kind regards,
Mark

[Keith Gonzales]

Hi Mark,

Our users created some test data in production and now that they're extracting reports, these data are also extracted.

That's what I'm thinking as well, if we delete table records, there would be a lot of leftover data that may or may not cause issues in the future.

Thanks,

Keith

[Mark Roethof]

You could use Delete Jobs for this, pretty safe way to do.

System Data Management > Delete Jobs

Though like I mentioned, there might be data left-over which almost no one thinks of. For example Audit and Audit Delete, will have no function at all for the case you are describing, so clean it up as these tables are also growing rappitly when unmanaged (= performance, = database footprint, = managebility, etc, etc).

You could consider simulating the deletion by cloning an instance.

Kind regards,
Mark

[Amit Gujarathi]

HI @Keith Gonzales ,
I trust you are doing great.

When it comes to deleting RITM (Request Item) or INC (Incident) records in ServiceNow, it's crucial to follow best practices to avoid any potential issues with related tables and maintain data integrity in your instances.

To safely delete RITM or INC records along with their associated relationships, you can leverage ServiceNow's built-in platform capabilities, specifically the "Delete Cascade" functionality. This feature ensures that related records are also deleted to prevent any orphaned or broken references.