Retire questions

Information in very old answers is unlikely to still be useful and so should not be being automatically retrieved when searching the RefTracker database for helpful answers.  The RefTracker Search screen has a parameter that, by default, excludes “Retired” questions from the standard search results, but optionally allows them to be included.  This “Retire questions” process allows you to decide for how long a question must have been closed before it is retired. 

Reopening a question automatically sets its Retire status to off.  Putting a question in the KB (or FAQ) also prevents it from being Retired.

This Retire function will not effect client interface searches, so clients can find questions and answers they asked, that have since been retired.  Of course when clients search for other than their own questions, they will only see questions in the Knowledge base (and/or FAQ), if this is allowed.

If you already have the statistics you need about old questions, and no longer want them to be appearing in search results, you can delete those questions from your RefTracker system (using System>Batch process menu>Data management>Delete questions).  Although Deleting provides a true Archive process (rather than the Retire process being discussed here), Deleting removes the statistics from RefTracker, so it is important that, if you decide to do that, the data is copied to a Data extract Excel spreadsheet before being Deleted.

So, this Retire process provides a way to optionally exclude old answers from your Searches whilst retaining the old questions/answers for statistical purposes.

This new Retire questions background process (System>Batch process menu> Background process>Retire questions), will run according to the schedule that you specify in its Schedule tab, if you turn it on.  We recommend the default Schedule settings as shown here, as it is important that the process runs out of your operating hours, but you can set it to whatever frequency you want.  In fact many customers may well prefer to run this process manually, every year or so, rather than have it run automatically.

Parameters for this process are in the Parameters tab.  The primary setting is “Retire questions closed for”, and in this setting you should enter a value that suits the work that you do – set it to how long information in your system will stay relevant.  The entire database is searched for questions that should be retired according to the current parameters so that means that, if you think that you have retired questions that are too new, you can set a longer time period and, next time the process runs, the questions that were too aggressively retired, will be “Unretired”!  

Questions that have been retired by this process are clearly marked as such in the Summary screen, Details tab.

Note that this is a system wide setting and so it applies to all questions/answers of all types in your system.

The “Exclude KB” and “Exclude FAQ” tick box can be changed if relevant to your organisation, but are usually not changed, and are primarily provided as a reminder that questions in the KB and FAQ are not being retired.  This means that if you want to protect a question/answer from being retired (retain its ability to be retrieved by the standard search), you should put the question in the KB or FAQ.  Similarly to return a question that has been retired, put in in the KB using KB review.

The Process log says how many records in total are retired in your system, and the date by which they must have been closed to have been retired by that run.

If a question is Retired, it is clearly marked as such in the Summary screen Details tab.

Implementation hint: By default the Retire questions batch process is turned off, so this process will not come into operation unless you specifically change the process to Enabled (in the Overview tab).  Be sure to check the parameters first and set “Retire questions closed for” to an appropriate value for your organization.  You may prefer to use this process manually every year or so, to letting it run regularly.
If you decide to use this process, we recommend that you also take the time to consider whether some of the older questions in your system can be deleted.