CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi all,

We're speaking about limiting users ability to delete contact records in the system.  For various reasons this is a benefit to organizations.  Accidentally deleting a record can be devastating (depending on the record of course) and some users just shouldn't have the choice (volunteers, etc). In addition, organizations might get in trouble with email SPAM laws should they delete a record (whom had opted-out) then accidentally added it again. And then there's the business case of keeping all contact records in the database so you can report on number of "No longer interested" and how that number compares over time to the number of supporters or records in the database as well as see the history behind these records. 

The case for deleting records is not so frequent that it needs to be a simple two-step process as it is today.  If it were a little more drawn-out, this would lessen the chance of accidentally deleting the records and give the user a little more time to "think" about it.

I have seen other CRM products utilize a wizard where the user goes through a number of steps to complete the Deletions. I liked this process.  The records first had to be built into a Group, then the Group had to be selected during the Wizard process, and finally the user had to type out a specific phrase, like "Yes, I want to Delete all records."

ACLs could be used to limit the users that had access to the Delete Record Wizard.

Here's another post I found on the topic: http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,3696.0.html