A data retention policy tells Mateflow what to do with the accounts of members who haven't been active for a long time: send them a reminder, or anonymize their account. It helps you keep personal data only as long as you need it, the storage limitation principle of GDPR.
Who can do this: Community owners and admins. · Where: Web (admin console). · Plan: Available on every platform plan.
Turn on the inactive member policy
- Go to Admin → Settings → Data Retention.
- Under Inactive member policy, turn on Enable inactive member handling. The other fields become editable.
- In Inactive after (months), enter how long a member can be inactive before the policy applies: from 1 to 240 months.
- Choose an Action on expiry. See the next section.
- In Grace period (days), enter how long a warned member has to become active again: from 0 to 365 days.
- Click Save Changes.
The policy is off until you turn it on. Its starting values are 24 months, Notify only, and a 30-day grace period.
Choose what happens to inactive members' data
Action on expiry decides what the data retention policy does once a member has been inactive for the number of months you set:
| Action on expiry | What happens |
|---|---|
| Notify only | The member gets an inactivity reminder email, once each time they become inactive: a member who comes back and later goes quiet again gets another one. Their data is never removed. |
| Anonymize | After a reminder and the grace period, the account is anonymized. |
| Delete | Currently the same as Anonymize. |
Anonymize and Delete can't be undone. The account shows as "Deleted User", and the member's personal details and sign-in data are removed. Their posts and comments stay, credited to "Deleted User". There's no separate 30-day cooldown as when members delete their own account: the grace period is the only buffer.
What counts as activity for the data retention policy
A member counts as active when they sign in, post, comment, like, follow, or use the community while signed in. An admin viewing the community as the member doesn't count. A member who has never done anything is judged by their sign-up date.
The policy skips:
- your community's team: the owner, admins, moderators, and anyone with a community role, including custom roles and billing admins. Space admins and space moderators without a community role aren't skipped. To include someone from the team, remove their role first;
- members who aren't in good standing: waiting for approval, banned, deactivated, or with an account deletion in progress;
- members with an active paid membership, including ones that are trialing, past due, or paused.
How the reminder email and grace period work
A nightly job checks your members against the data retention policy. With Anonymize or Delete, when a member reaches the inactivity limit:
- Mateflow emails them a reminder with the date their account will be anonymized. If the reminder can't be sent, nothing happens until it is.
- The grace period starts. Any activity during the grace period cancels the action for that member.
- If they're still inactive when the grace period ends, the account is anonymized.
Turning the policy off doesn't cancel actions already scheduled. They wait, and run if you turn the policy back on, unless the member has been active since. If you change Action on expiry before the date, the member is checked again under the new setting.
What the data retention policy doesn't cover
The Data Retention page only handles inactive member accounts. It doesn't change how long other records are kept:
- AI chats: members' conversations with the AI assistant expire after 180 days. See AI data privacy and limitations.
- Audit log: the admin audit log isn't affected by this setting. See Use the audit log.
- Accounts that members delete themselves: these are removed after a 30-day cooldown. See Export your data or delete your account.
Handle one member's data request yourself
To act on a single member's request right away, for example a GDPR access or erasure request, open the member's page from Admin → Members → All Members and use the actions menu:
- Export data (GDPR): queues a full export of the member's data.
- Anonymize member: scrubs the member's name, email, and avatar. It can be reversed only during a short grace period, then it's permanent. You can't use it on the community owner.
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