Description

Enterprise Vault (EV) and Discovery Accelerator (DA) 12.3.0 introduced the feature called Privileged Delete that allows properly permissioned users to permanently delete items that are not on Legal Hold from Enterprise Vault Archives.

This is a Case-level only feature which is available to any DA Case-level Role that is granted the Privileged Delete permission.  The Privileged Delete permission is granted to the built-in Regulatory Reviewer Role and can be added to its own custom Role if needed.

NOTES:

1. The Privileged Delete feature does not work for items captured in Research Folders.
2. The Privileged Delete feature requires each Archive containing items to be deleted to allow items to be deleted.  

The Privileged Delete is a permanent deletion process which means the deleted items will not be placed into Enterprise Vault's holding folder for tombstoned items.  Such items will be deleted immediately.  If the below SQL query is run against the specific Vault Store that contained the deleted item(s), additional information will be obtained to confirm the deletion from EV:

SELECT * FROM JournalDelete;

Note the SavesetID of the item.  A check in the physical Vault Store Partition will show that the item is no longer present.  The location of the Vault Store Partition can be found in the Properties window of the vault store partition in the Vault Admin Console. After the items are successfully deleted from the archive, they will not show in the Deleted Items tab in the archive.

To ensure any Archive that contains items to be deleted is configured to allow item deletions:
1. Open the Vault Admin Console using an account with permission to modify Vault Store configuration settings, such as the Vault Service Account.
2. Navigate to the Enterprise Vault | Directory on {EV server or alias name} | {EV site name} | Archives folder.
3. Click  on the folder containing an Archive that contains items to be processed through Privileged Delete to see the archive. For example, if the Archive is an Exchange Journal Archive, click on the Exchange Journal folder to see the list of Exchange Journal Archives that are present in Enterprise Vault.
4. Right click on the Archive and select the Properties option to display the Archive Properties page.
5. Click on the Advanced tab.
6. Ensure the option Allow deletion of archived items and of this archive is enabled by having a check mark in its check box.
     NOTE: The default setting for this option is to be enabled.
7. If that option must be enabled, click its check box, then click the Apply and then OK buttons.  If the option is already enabled, click the Cancel button to close the Archive Properties page.

To obtain items to be used for the Privileged Delete feature, complete the following actions in the DA Client using an account with the Privileged Delete permission:
1. Create or access a Case in which the items will be processed.
2. Using an account with the Privileged Delete permission, configure and run searches within the Case to find the item or items that need to be permanently deleted from EV.
3. When each search is in the Finished status, accept it into the Case's Review Set if the search has not been configured to automatically be accepted.
4. After the search is in the Case's Review Set, go to the Review tab in the DA Client.
5. Select the Case and the Search in the Review Facets pane on the left of the page, then click the Apply button to see the captured items displayed in the middle, List View pane and the first item previewed in the right Preview Pane.
6. Select the appropriate Delete option:.
6.1. If a specific item is to be deleted, 
6.1.1. Select that item
6.1.2. Click on the Actions button in the lower right corner of the page to see the available options for the selected item.
6.1.3. Select the Delete option.
6.2. If all items need to be deleted,
6.2.1. Right click on the top item.
6.2.2. Select the Delete all # items from the set option.
6.3. If all items from a specific Author need to be deleted,
6.3.1. Right click the top item from that Author
6.3.2. Select the Delete all archived items in this set from {Author's Name} option.
7. A Confirm deletion of items dialog box will appear to confirm the deletion request:
Delete items
This will permanently delete the selected items from the Enterprise Vault archives.  Are you sure you want to continue?
8. Click the Delete button to confirm the deletion request or the Cancel button to cancel the request.

Upon completion of the deletion, the item(s) will still be displayed in the List View pane and the selected item moves to the next available item on the list.  If a deleted item is selected, the Preview pane will display the following:
Cannot retrieve item
Report this error to your system administrator
The target archive is not found or has been deleted or
the selected items is not present or has been deleted.

Clicking on the History tab of an item deleted by the Privileged Delete feature will show 2 lines of information with the date and time in a Date column, the event type in an Event column, a description of the action in a Description column, the type of action in a Type column, and the name of the user in the User column.  For example, from a lab environment:

Date                                Event                       Description                                                                 Type                             Subtype    Rule    User
4/17/2024 4:32:00 PM    Privileged Delete    The item is successfully deleted from the archives.    Deleted successfully    None                    vsa
4/17/2024 4:31:40 PM    Privileged Delete    The item is queued for deletion from the archives.      Pending delete             None                    vsa
 

NOTE: If the Case has Legal Hold enabled, the Confirm deletion of items dialog box will appear stating:
Failed to delete items
Cannot delete items from Enterprise Vault as this case is set to put items on hold.