Control transcript retention

Plan limits and your selected period#

Core allows up to seven days of full conversation history, Business up to 30 days, and Scale up to 90 days. Within that maximum, an owner or admin can select a shorter period, starting from one day.

The selected workspace matters: each workspace has its own policy and plan maximum. A period longer than the allowed maximum cannot be saved. A transcript's Stored until date in Conversations is the clearest way to check the expiry of that particular thread.

Set the policy#

1. Open Privacy in the workspace navigation.
2. Under Transcript retention, choose Keep full transcripts for.
3. Select an available day count.
4. Choose Save retention.

After a successful save, the portal confirms that new conversations use the selected period. This setting is not a transcript export or a customer-facing promise that every copy of a request will disappear at the same time.

Understand when the setting applies#

The selected period is applied when a new widget conversation is opened. Saving a shorter period is not a bulk action that retroactively rewrites every earlier conversation's expiry. Extending the period cannot restore a transcript that has already expired.

Changing the website, re-crawling Knowledge or removing the website is not a substitute for checking retention. Existing conversations keep their stored expiry and their relationship to recorded usage. Review the Stored until date when working on a case that is near expiry.

What happens at expiry#

The customer conversation list and detail view exclude expired or invalidated conversations. Background maintenance removes expired message text and stored conversation-context values, clears identifying conversation fields such as its page path, and invalidates the conversation record.

Anonymous analytics aggregates and the usage or billing ledger remain. Retention is therefore a transcript policy, not a way to reset the conversation allowance or erase payment history. Expired full text is not available for later review in the portal.

Internal handoff content and delivered email#

Transcript-associated internal handoff content follows the expiry cleanup: stored contact and transcript payloads are scrubbed, and expired requests are not a permanent alternate copy of the conversation. Delivery records can retain appropriate status metadata without retaining that payload.

Messages already delivered to your configured business mailbox are outside Reesponder's transcript cleanup. Apply the business's own mailbox access and retention process. For a wider personal-data request, identify the relevant systems and follow the published Privacy policy contact process.

Use retention deliberately#

Choose a period that fits real support follow-up, access control and your business's obligations. Read and act on important conversations before their expiry rather than trying to extend an expired record later.

There is no per-conversation delete or export control in the Conversations interface. If a saved setting fails, check the selected workspace, your owner/admin role and its plan maximum. Contact Reesponder for a specific data request; do not place personal transcript copies into shared Knowledge to keep them beyond their retention period.

Worked example: changing the policy during an investigation#

A Business workspace currently uses thirty days and the owner saves a seven-day selection on Monday. A new conversation opened afterwards uses the saved policy. For a thread already under investigation, the reviewer checks its own Stored until date; they do not assume every historical thread has immediately received a new seven-day expiry.

The team schedules the investigation before that displayed date and records the source correction without copying personal chat text into Knowledge. When another person later requests the old exchange after it has expired, the team explains that the transcript is unavailable and uses the current source or authorised business case to address the outstanding issue.

Verify a policy save without testing deletion on a customer case#

Check the saved selection in the intended workspace and the expiry shown on a new controlled conversation. Make sure the period is within the plan maximum and that your review schedule fits it. Avoid using a real customer investigation as a destructive retention experiment.

Review who can access the configured business mailbox and how its delivered copies are handled. Document the distinction between service transcript cleanup and business records. If an unavailable transcript is needed for a complaint, contact support with the website and safe timing details; never promise that increasing retention will recover expired text.

Choose the smallest period that supports real follow-up#

Start with the time your team takes to notice, investigate and follow up on a normal support request. If the team reviews conversations once each week, a very short period could make that process ineffective. Conversely, choosing the longest plan maximum by default creates more retained content without necessarily improving support. Agree a review routine and a selected period together.

Consider different copies as part of the same operational decision. The portal transcript, a confirmed handoff email and a separate business support case have different places of storage and people with access. Your chosen Reesponder period governs the service transcript; it does not become an instruction to delete mail from your own system. Keep those policies aligned with the purpose of the records and your organisation's published obligations.

Tell people using the portal which period you selected and that old text will become unavailable. Do not encourage them to save full transcripts into shared Knowledge or personal spreadsheets as a workaround. Where a business investigation needs a record in an authorised support system, handle that record under the business's access and retention policy. For a specific personal-data request, follow the published privacy contact process rather than assuming that changing one setting addresses every relevant copy.

Know what survives after the text expires#

After expiry, the portal cannot offer the old full exchange for review. Cleanup removes message text and conversation context and clears identifying conversation fields. Transcript-associated internal handoff content is also scrubbed: the stored contact and transcript payload does not remain a hidden alternative archive simply because an escalation existed. Delivery metadata may remain without that conversational payload.

An email already accepted for delivery to your configured business mailbox is different. Reesponder does not control deletion inside that mailbox. If the customer has a related support case, handle its copy with the responsible business team. This matters when someone asks to remove information: list the systems that actually hold the relevant copy and use the applicable process for each.

Aggregate usage and billing records are also different from a transcript. They can remain to support accounting and capacity calculations without preserving the recoverable conversation text. A number showing that conversations occurred cannot reconstruct what a particular person said. Do not promise that a shortened transcript policy resets allowances, erases an invoice or closes the workspace. Those actions have their own rules and workflows.

Plan for a case that is close to its Stored until date#

When a visitor reports an issue, check the retained thread promptly. Read its Stored until date before assigning a review for later in the week. If the transcript is about to expire, investigate the relevant source or operation while the authorised evidence is available. Extending the workspace setting later does not bring back text that is already gone and is not a promise to rewrite that older thread's expiry.

Write the review outcome around the business issue, not a copy of every message. For example, “Delivery exception absent from the collected returns page; corrected and retested” preserves the maintenance lesson without keeping the customer's address. If follow-up needs their contact record, use the authorised business support system and its policy rather than creating a new Knowledge entry.

If expiry has already occurred, be explicit about that evidence limit. You can still inspect the current policy or connected record and help with a new question, but you cannot quote or reconstruct a deleted transcript from aggregate counts. Ask for the minimum non-sensitive details necessary to investigate the remaining issue. This makes a short retention policy workable without quietly creating a substitute archive.