Our deletion functionality is fully compliant with the requirements for user deletion as outlined by GDPR. When you delete participants, our system will delete within 30 days all PII that has been stored for those participants within our system and its subprocessors. You can retrieve a full list of the PII stored for a specific participant using the Lookup Using PII API method. Participants can be deleted from your program either individually or in bulk.
Do Not Track
Do Not Track is a configuration option during participant deletion. If selected, the deleted participant cannot be re-registered in our system. Any attempts to recreate the participant will fail.
Preserve Empty Accounts
Preserving empty accounts is a configuration option that you can use when deleting participants in bulk, via REST API, or via GraphQL. To preserve empty accounts, include the
preserveEmptyAccountfield with your deletion file or call.
The Advocate REST API provides two methods to delete participants:
Delete an account. Use this method to delete an account, and all the participants on it.
Delete a participant. Use this method to delete a participant on an account without deleting the account itself.
From the left navigation menu, select Participants.
Search for the participant you want to delete.
Select their name to open their participant profile.
Select the Delete button below their name.
Choose whether to add the participant to the Do Not Track list.
Select the final delete button if you are sure you want to delete the participant.
Warning: This process will permanently remove the selected participants and all of their historical data, including referrals and rewards, events, custom fields and more. Deleted data is not recoverable. Before starting the deletion process, we recommend confirming that all participants in your upload file should be permanently erased from your Advocate program. See our document on Participant Deletion for more information.
Advocate accepts imports submitted in .csv or .jsonl file formats. Please reference our sample CSV import file and sample JSONL import file to view the required file structure for your import. We recommend that each import does not exceed 500,000 entries.
From the left navigation menu, select Reporting → Imports & Exports.
Select
Import.Under Choose an Import Type, select Delete Users.
To upload your file, select Select File.
Select Start Import.
When the import completes, a confirmation email is sent. Imports may take up to 30 minutes, depending on queue and file size.
Bulk user deletes require only an id and accountId for the users to be deleted, and have some optional fields depending on the behavior required. Fields are case sensitive. See the below field reference for further information.
Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
accountId | String Required | The unique identifier of the Account that this user belongs to. |
id | String Required | The unique identifier provided for this user. |
preserveEmptyAccount | boolean | If the user’s account is left with no users, by default the account will be deleted. If set, this field will result in the empty account being preserved. This will override the global |
doNotTrack | boolean | Specify |
We notify you by email when your import is complete. You can download the results from Reporting → Imports & Exports.
If the import completes successfully, a file with the account and user IDs of the deleted participants will be generated and emailed to you.
If any errors are encountered during the import, then an additional file will be generated. This errors file includes entries for each error that occurred, including the row number of the record (from the initial import file) that failed, and any associated error messages.
In the unlikely event that a system error occurs and the import is interrupted, then the import will appear as aborted and will not recover. Please reach out to our Support team if you need further assistance.
Multiple areas of the system may be impacted as a result of deleting a participant.
Share links
When a participant is deleted, all of their PII (including their referral code) is deleted as well. Share links work differently—the share link itself is not deleted, but its association with a specific participant is removed. The deleted participant’s share links will no longer attribute a referral, but will still allow newly-referred participants to visit your program’s landing page.
Referrals
If deleted participants have made referrals or been referred themselves, then the referral history displayed in other participants’ widgets or microsites will change. In these cases, the referral still counts for reward purposes, but visually the referral will be shown as having come from an anonymous participant.
Analytics
Analytics are collected as participants perform actions like loading widgets, sharing links, or making referrals. When participants are deleted, all analytics attributed to them are removed, which will affect the statistics displayed in the Reporting section of your Advocate program in impact.com.
Platform
Deleted participants no longer appear on the Participants page. If the deleted participant was part of a referral, then the referral table on the other participant’s profile will show that a referral exists, but that it was from a deleted participant. If a reward had been given as part of the referral, then the rewards table similarly indicates that the referral is linked to a deleted participant.