Data cleansing in Converia

Administration -> All conferences -> Data cleansing

With the help of data cleansing, personal data can be deleted from the system in compliance with the GDPR.

This feature is only available in consultation with Converia, for customers with a framework agreement without ticketing service. For customers with a framework agreement without access to the feature, data cleansing by Converia employees only takes place after notification or consultation.

Definition

Data cleansing	Option to delete conference and personal data in accordance with the GDPR
Conference data	Contributions and bookings of a person in an event
Personal data	Includes the personal data record incl. login
Deletion period	Period that specifies the point in time from which data is to be deleted. Example deletion period 24 months: Data that is older than 24 months and fulfills the other conditions (see below) is deleted.

Important Note on Execution

Deleting records in the database is a relatively resource-intensive action and requires updating the corresponding table indexes. This can block certain other actions on the database. Therefore, with many other concurrent write accesses and larger databases, both the deletion process and other accesses can significantly slow down.

The data cleansing should always be performed outside of regular business hours.

How Data cleansing works

Events and Persons

In Data cleansing, a distinction is made between deleting events (conference data) and persons (personal data). It is advisable to delete in the events section first, as personal data is only deleted if they are no longer associated with any conference data.

Fig. 1: Events area in data cleansing

What happens when deleting an event?

When an event is deleted, the following occurs:

• Bookings, contributions, sessions, etc., are permanently deleted.

• The framework (the structure for subportals) remains but is marked as deleted in the database, making the event no longer accessible in the backend or available in selection lists.

• The (inactive) subportals with configurations and CMS content remain and are theoretically still accessible/activatable in the backend. However, they cannot be used further as a template.

• In the media browser, items such as PDF templates remain. These can still be linked in future events if the original event was used as a template. Other system folders in the media browser containing personal data are deleted (papers, invoices, person-files, etc.).

What happens when deleting a person?

• Personal records are permanently and irreversibly deleted, similar to the associated conference data when deleting events (usually the previous step).

• Special case merged records (Deduplication): During merging, two personal records A and B are marked as deleted in the database and combined into a third record C. The old records marked as deleted are also intended for complete deletion during data cleansing and are included in the cleanup. From the moment of merging, they automatically meet all criteria for deletion within the framework of data cleansing.

Requirements for successful deletion

Events

• Events must be deactivated in the basic settings before they are proposed for deletion.

• A start and end date must be defined in the basic settings.

• The end date is used to determine whether the event falls within the deletion period.

Persons

• Personal records are marked for deletion if they have not been active within the specified period, meaning no new conference data for or by them has been generated in the backend.

• Logging in on the frontend does not count as activity.

• Personal records are only deleted if they no longer have associated conference data. Otherwise, a message such as the following will appear:

Fig. 2: Person has been flagged for deletion, but cannot be finally deleted

Deleting personal date

There are three selection options when deleting persons and their personal data.

Fig. 3: Selection options for deleting persons

1 - Deletion without event assignment

Recommended approach for large-scale data clean-up. Without filtering, simply select options Select visible. For deleting over 5000 personal data records, proceed in 5000 increments. Adjust the pagination at the end of the list to 5000, then select Select Visible and initiate the deletion process.

If no conference selection is made in the filter, personal data records will always be targeted for deletion without event association.

2 - Deletion Related to Events - Persons Assigned Exclusively to the Event

This allows for the targeted deletion of event-related records, purging all personal data sets that have conference data solely in the selected event. If a personal data record is also linked to another event (Note: Conference data does not matter in this context), it will not be proposed for deletion.

If deletion is performed in this manner, there is a risk that individuals with multiple event connections will never be considered for cleanup and may fall through the cracks.

3 - Deletion related to events - All persons assigned to the event

This allows for the targeted cleaning of a specific event and all its contained personal data sets, irrespective of whether there are links to other events, as long as no relevant conference data is present, preventing deletion.