Configuring a File Retention Policy

Hosted~FTP~’s file retention policy feature allows admins to set-up rules in your infrastructure, and when those criteria are met, to automatically delete files in your account. This feature is available starting at the Enterprise T2 bundle and above.

*Note: Please carefully read the rules and syntax parameters before activating your file retention policy. This is a destructive process that will permanently delete your files and be unrecoverable. Please contact our support team for any advanced setup requirements.

Adding a new file retention policy

Going to the Policy tab, you’ll find a list of your existing policies in place to manage, or add a new policy. Click on the Add button located on the right-side menu to add a new policy. Please see table below to understand what to input into each field.

Rules

The rule is set on the owner of the folder and not the shared folder. (I.e. if you add a username in User + and they have read/write permissions to a shared folder – the rule will not work)
Files are deleted based on their “Uploaded” date aka creation date which is defined as the date when the file was uploaded to the FTP site. Although the FTP and SFTP protocols allow you to set the last modified date to be different from the created date, the file retention policy feature works only against the Uploaded date.
Folders/sub-folders are not deleted and will remain regardless of the last modified or uploaded date, only files are subject to the policy.
Files are deleted permanently. After the file retention policy deletes a file, it cannot be recovered.
The policy will run only once a day overnight, you will not see the results until the next day.

A screenshot explaining the different fields to setup the file retention policy

Field	Description	Example
Policy Name	Name of the policy
Action	Default is Delete. Cannot be changed.
User +	Use a * to include all users in your account, or add specific users and separate by a space Rule: Only include the usernames that own the folders you want the rule to run for	This example entry includes 3 different users as the folder owners separated by a space: User1 User-2 User_3
User –	Exclude users who you do not want to be affected by this policy	Same rule applies as User +
Folder +	Use a * to include all folders, or specify the folder path (You can enable the include subfolders option). Multiple folder paths are separated by a space, whereas spaces in the folder path are replaced with a \s Rule: Beginning of a folder path must have two forward slashes (//). i.e. //Mainfolder Multiple folder paths or users can be separated by a space ” “. If a folder path has a space, replace with syntax \s i.e. /Main folder must be inputted as //Main\sfolder	This example entry includes 2 folder paths with a space: /Mainfolder/sub folder and /Mainfolder/sub folder 2 will become //Mainfolder/sub\sfolder/ //Mainfolder/sub\sfolder\s2/
Folder –	Exclude folders here separated by a space between multiple folder paths	Same rule applies as Folder +
File +	Use a * to include all file extensions, or include specific file extensions and separate by a space	This example entry includes 3 different file extensions separated by a space: .CSV .TXT .PDF
File –	Exclude file extensions here	Same rule applies as File +
Other Criteria	Default is The uploaded date is older than. Cannot be changed.
Time Amount	The amount of the unit specified
Time Unit	Select your unit to measure the time amount: days, weeks, months, years
JavaScript	Include any JavaScript here to customize the policy (contact support@hostedftp.com for additional assistance)
Active	Check marking this option will enable the policy. Un-checking the option will disable the policy.	The rule will only run once a day, overnight.

Once your settings have been confirmed, please click on Save to keep your policy saved. If the Active checkbox is enabled, as a result, it will also turn on the policy immediately. The policy will run only once a day overnight, you will not see the results until the next day.