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The hard delete task permanently removes items after they have first been deleted in Zylon or marked inactive. When chats, projects, files, or organizations are deleted in Zylon, they remain recoverable until the retention window expires. This cleanup configuration lets each organization align Zylon’s permanent deletion behavior with its own data retention policy.

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Default configuration

By default, cleanup checks run daily at 03:00, and items become eligible for hard delete after 14 days. If timezone is not set, Zylon uses the server machine’s default timezone. 
zylonBackend:
  scheduler:
    cleanup:
      enabled: true
      cron: "0 3 * * *"
      deleteAfterDays: 14

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Configuration example

Edit /etc/zylon/zylon-conf.yaml, then apply the change with sudo zylon-cli sync. Use a retention window that matches your company’s policy. Many organizations require a value much higher than the default. 
zylonBackend:
  scheduler:
    cleanup:
      enabled: true
      cron: "0 3 * * *"
      timezone: "Europe/Madrid"
      deleteAfterDays: 365
enabled turns scheduled hard delete checks on or off. cron determines how often the system checks inactive items, timezone optionally defines which timezone is used to interpret the cron expression, and deleteAfterDays is the number of days that must pass before an inactive item or a previously deleted item is permanently removed by the cron execution. If timezone is omitted, the server machine’s default timezone is used.
We suggest setting an IANA timezone that matches your company’s timezone.

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Accepted values

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Cron values

Cleanup uses the same 5-part cron format as sync: 
minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week
Use values in these ranges:
FieldAccepted values
Minute0-59 or *
Hour0-23 or *
Day of month1-31 or *
Month1-12 or *
Day of week0-6 or *
Examples:
  • 0 3 * * * runs every day at 03:00
  • 15 4 * * 0 runs every Sunday at 04:15

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Timezone values

zylonBackend.scheduler.cleanup.timezone is optional. If it is not set, the cleanup cron runs in the server machine’s default timezone. When you set zylonBackend.scheduler.cleanup.timezone, use a valid IANA timezone identifier. Common examples include:
  • UTC
  • Europe/Madrid
  • America/New_York
  • America/Los_Angeles
  • Asia/Tokyo
  • Pacific/Auckland
  • Africa/Johannesburg
For a practical list of IANA timezone identifiers, see IANA Time Zones.

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Retention values

For zylonBackend.scheduler.cleanup.deleteAfterDays, use a positive whole number of days such as 14, 30, 90, or 365, according to your retention policy.
The minimum supported value for deleteAfterDays is 1 day. Set this value according to your company’s deletion or retention policy before enabling hard delete.

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Access before hard delete

Before the retention window expires, deleted data is not yet permanently removed. During that time, an operator can use the CLI migration and restore flow to recover organizations, projects, chats, or files. If you need help performing that recovery, you can also contact Customer support.

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Execution and failure handling

The cleanup task runs on the cron schedule and checks whether inactive items and previously deleted items have passed the deleteAfterDays retention window. When they have, the system flags them for hard delete and removes them from Zylon. A cleanup run may permanently delete chats, files, projects, and organizations, together with associated cascaded data. Per-item failures are logged. The task continues with other items, and the next scheduled run retries remaining items.