Data export and deletion

People can take their data with them and leave, and workspaces can be deleted without being lost to a slip of the finger. This page describes what staff can do and what people can do themselves. For the user's side, see Account and security.

Who can do what

Action	Users themselves	Owner / Admin staff
Export a workspace	its workspace admins	–
Export their own data	everyone	–
Delete a workspace	its workspace admins	✓ (Admin → Workspaces)
Restore a deleted workspace	its workspace admins	✓ (Admin → Workspaces → Deleted workspaces)
Delete an account	everyone, their own	✓ (Admin → Users → Delete user)

Support and Auditor staff can't delete or restore anything.

Exports

Workspace export

Workspace admins export a workspace under Settings → Workspace → Import & export → Export workspace. It's a ZIP with the workspace, its members (names, usernames and roles — no email addresses), every board with its lists, labels, tasks, descriptions, checklists, comments and activity, time entries as CSV, and all attachments. Deleted boards and tasks are left out; archived ones are included and marked.

Staff can't export a workspace from the admin area; only its workspace admins can.

Personal export

Everyone can download their own data under Settings → Your data → Download my data: profile and preferences, sign-in methods, memberships and join requests, their comments, time entries, notifications, sessions, passkeys and API keys (without any secrets), the audit log entries about them (sign-ins and security changes, with time and IP address), the devices and places they signed in from, and their profile photo.

How exports work

• The export is prepared in the background. When it's ready, the requester gets a notification and an email.
• Only the person who requested it can download it — for a workspace export, only while they're still an admin of that workspace. Nobody else, staff included, can download it.
• It's available for 7 days, then deleted automatically. Failed exports are cleaned up after 7 days too.
• One export at a time per workspace and per person, and at most five requests an hour per person.
• Exports are recorded in the audit log.

Exports are stored in the instance's file storage (see Storage).

Deleting a workspace

Deleting a workspace makes it inaccessible at once, but it can be restored during a grace period. Only after that is it purged for good.

To delete a workspace as staff:

1. Open Admin → Workspaces and find the workspace.
2. Choose delete, and type the workspace's name to confirm. For a private workspace you can't see, type the word delete instead.
3. Confirm it's you (a recent sign-in) if asked.

Workspace admins do the same under Settings → Workspace → General → Danger zone. The last live workspace of the instance can't be deleted.

What happens:

• Everyone loses access immediately; its address is freed.
• Every admin of the workspace gets a notification and an email with the purge date and a link to restore it.
• The deletion is recorded in the audit log.

Grace period

Set it in Admin → General → Data & legal → Keep deleted workspaces for (days): from 1 to 365 days, default 30. A change applies to workspaces deleted from then on.

Restoring a workspace

To restore a workspace as staff:

1. Open Admin → Workspaces → Deleted workspaces. Each entry shows when it was deleted, by whom, and when it will be purged. Private workspaces are listed without their name.
2. Choose Restore.

It gets its old address back, or the next free variant if that has been taken in the meantime (the confirmation says so). Workspace admins can restore it themselves under Settings → Your data → Deleted workspaces.

Purge

Once a day, workspaces whose grace period has ended are purged: all files in storage, boards, tasks, comments, checklists, time entries, activity and notifications are deleted, and the purge is recorded in the audit log. A purge that is interrupted is finished on the next run. Only workspaces that were deleted and whose grace period is over are ever purged.

danger

A purged workspace can't be brought back from within sol2flow. Only a backup taken before the purge still contains it. See Backups and upgrades.

Deleting an account

People delete their own account under Settings → Your data → Delete account, by typing their username and confirming it's them. Owner and Admin staff can delete an account in Admin → Users → Delete user (see Users and sign-up). The rules are the same:

• Blocked while the person is:

  • the only admin of a workspace that other people still use (in a private workspace, only explicit admins count);
  • the last Owner of the instance.

  Someone else has to become admin or Owner first. The dialog lists what's blocking.

• Workspaces where they're the only member are deleted with the account, with the normal grace period, so staff can still restore them.

What is deleted and what stays

Deleted: the account and everything personal — sessions, sign-in methods, passkeys, two-factor setup and recovery codes, API keys, notifications and preferences, workspace and board memberships, pins, task assignments and task memberships, follows, pending join requests, their exports, their profile photo and unfinished uploads. Invitations they sent and that are still pending are revoked.

Kept, anonymized: tasks, comments, checklist items, boards, workspaces, files and time entries they created stay in their workspaces and are shown as "Deleted user", also in timesheet exports and data exports. Audit log entries keep the account's ID, time and IP address until the audit log retention removes them, but no longer its name: they read "Deleted user" too. Names inside other people's content (a mention, a comment text) are kept.

Kept for legal reasons: invoices, credit notes and payments belong to the organization, not to a person, and are never deleted with an account: tax law requires keeping them (in Germany for 10 years).

The person is signed out and gets a confirmation email. Account deletion can't be undone.

note

Disabling an account in Admin → Users is the reversible alternative: it blocks sign-in without deleting any data.

Terms and privacy

If you set a Terms of service URL or Privacy policy URL in Admin → General → Data & legal, they're linked on the sign-in and sign-up pages, and new accounts must accept them. The time of acceptance is recorded and included in the person's data export. An Imprint URL is linked there too, without a checkbox. Signed-in people find all three under Settings → Your data → Legal. See Instance settings and Privacy and GDPR.