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Content Cleanup

Find BusinessObjects content that nobody uses, back it up, and remove or archive it in a controlled way.

Goal

The platform holds thousands of documents, many not opened for years, plus old instances, inbox clutter and empty folders. They slow down upgrades, migrations and searches, and confuse users. You want a defensible list of unused content, a backup you can restore from, and a repeatable way to remove it.

Who

BI administrators and BI content owners who approve the removal.

Before you begin

  • MetaMiner collects audit data for the environment, so usage is known. Check how far back it goes in MMA (Preferences > Settings > Audit). See Audit settings and Audit and CMS Databases.
  • You have the MMC permissions Tab: Backup/Promote, Delete and, for scheduled clean-up, Tab: Alerts. See Permissions Reference.
  • Agree the rule with the content owners, for example "not opened, refreshed or scheduled in 12 months".

Steps

1. Find unused and stale content

  1. In the Web Console, open the Sessions and Usage dashboard for usage trends and the most and least used content.
  2. In the MMC Meta Query tab, run from the SQL Script Catalog:
    • IK-015 Audit - Last 12 Month Usage and IK-020 for documents and instances used in the last 12 months;
    • IK-025 for reports used only by schedules that deliver to the platform or an inbox;
    • IK-001 to see which documents take the most space.
  3. Run MM-A01 Object Activity Summary for an activity report by folder.
  4. Save the final query that returns the content to remove. It must return the cmsid and the object id of each row.

Image of the Meta Query tab with a list of documents not used in 12 months here

../images/use-cases/content-cleanup-unused-list.png

2. Review with the owners

  1. Export the list and send it to the content owners.
  2. Remove anything they want to keep from the rule or the list.

3. Back up what you will remove

  1. In the Backup/Promote tab, click New Backup... and choose SQL-based to back up exactly the rows your query returns, or Wizard-based to pick folders. See Backup and Restore.
  2. Run the backup and check that it completed.

4. Remove the content

Choose one:

  1. In the CMS Explorer, select the reviewed objects.
  2. Right-click and choose Delete..., then confirm.
  1. In the Alerts tab, create an alert of type SQL Script with your query.
  2. Select Delete object(s), purge Inbox, empty groups/folders. The option needs the Delete permission and is not available in the Basic Edition.
  3. Schedule it, for example monthly, after the backup job. See Alerts.

Deletion cannot be undone in BusinessObjects

Deleted objects are gone from the CMS and the File Repository Server. Only the MetaMiner backup brings them back. Test the SQL in Meta Query first and check the row count before you enable a deleting alert.

5. Reduce size without deleting

For documents you keep but that store large result sets, select them and choose Purge Report Data... to remove the saved data.

Expected result

Unused content is removed from the platform, a MetaMiner backup holds every removed object, and the rule can run again on a schedule.

Variations

  • Restore something removed by mistake: see Disaster Recovery.
  • Unused universe objects rather than documents: see Unused Universe Objects.
  • Disable inactive users instead of deleting content: use an alert of type SQL Script with Disable Users.

Next steps