This article covers:
- Deleting single records;
- Deleting multiple records;
- Deleting items with associated time entries or approvals;
- Deleting programmes, projects and resources;
- Deleting time entries.
- Recovering deleted items.
In some cases, you may want to delete records from PPO that were wrongfully added or that are no longer required. This is possible if the user group that you belong to has access to the delete functionality. We do suggest that the delete functionality should be limited to PPO Administrators to ensure that data integrity is kept intact.
When deleting records, only project related entity records can be deleted, e.g if your project schedule was imported incorrectly and you would like to delete all the tasks, before re-importing the final schedule.
When items in PPO are "deleted", they are no longer visible to the user from the front end, but they are never actually deleted from the PPO database. So should you need to retrieve a record that was wrongfully deleted, you can recover these records from the Deleted Items menu if your usergroup has been granted access to Deleted Items, For more information on editing user groups, access the following knowledge base article.
Note that resources, projects and programmes cannot be deleted from PPO. They can however be marked as inactive, after which the records will then be filtered out by a global filter.
Deleting single records
The risks entity has been used in this article as an example, but the principles can be applied to all project related entities.
To delete a risk, click on the Actions button and then select Delete from the Actions menu on the Risks View page.
PPO will ask to confirm if you are sure you want to delete this item. If so, click on OK.
Deleting multiple records
Continuing the example, to delete multiple risks, go to the Risks List page, and apply the filters or select criteria so that only the items that you want to delete are displayed on the list page. Select the records on the left which are required to be deleted then click on the Actions button and then select Delete from the menu.
PPO will ask to confirm if you are sure you want to delete these items. If so, click on OK.
Deleting items with associated approvals or time entries
Time entries or Approvals will not be deleted if the items that it relates to such as an Issue or Task is deleted. Time entries that are booked against an item that is later deleted, could still be valid even after the related item is deleted, therefore, the default behaviour is that we will keep the associated time entries but show a strikethrough on the item that was deleted:
Another example of items being associated with another is if an Issue has been linked to a Risk. If the Issue is deleted, it will still show on the Risk View page with a strikethrough. You will however not be able to access the deleted item. You should contact your PPO administrator if you need to recover a deleted item.
Additional Notes
- On the List Page, there will be no indication that the item was deleted.
- The Edit Page will still show the deleted item in the dropdown unless you edit the record by removing it.
Deleting programmes, projects and resources
Programmes, projects and resources are treated as special cases in PPO since they play a prominent role in relation to other entities. These entity records can therefore NOT be deleted.
In the case of projects, they can be linked to other projects (e.g. parent projects) while project related entities link to projects (for example issues, risks, tasks, time entries and approvals). If we allowed projects to be deleted, we would also have to delete all these related entities and references, which would compromise the audit trail and history of items in PPO.
Similarly, resources can be linked to users and can also be referenced in any entity that has resource type fields. If we allowed resources to be deleted we would again have to remove all these references.
A similar problem exists in respect of programmes.
Global filters can however be set up to hide these entities from the front-end so that they no longer appear in drop-down lists or on the list pages. For more information on filters, refer to the following knowledge base article.
Deleting time entries
Time entry records that are manually added can be deleted by following the steps below.
The screenshot below shows the Time Entries page with the pre-populated time entries.
Once a user manually adds a time entry record and NO time entries are recorded for the particular line item, the time entry record will disappear once the user clicks on the "Submit" button.
If approved time entry records need to be deleted the following steps need to be adhered to:
The mentioned time entries would first have to be "unapproved". This is done by accessing the Approvals entity. From the Approvals List page click on the approval for the time entry record which you would like to amend. Then click on the Edit button and update the Status from "Approved" to "Pending". Then click on the Submit button.
When the user then accesses their time entries, they will see that the record is no longer grayed out, and they will then be able to amend / remove the time entry. Please note that the time entry record will have to be sent for approval again.
Recovering deleted items
PPO allows administrators to retrieve deleted items via the Administration Menu. Follow this link for more information and feel free to reach out to your PPO Administrator for assistance.