Declutter and Purge Low-Quality Data

Your best tool for quickly identifying low-quality and purgeable data is the Health Assessment.

In the left navigation, go to Dashboards > Health Assessment.

View the Summary of Data Health Issues that were found in your database. The Incomplete Data and Invalid Data issue categories are the most helpful for surfacing purgeable data. Click a Grouping name to see the issue types found. 

The Incomplete Data category tracks records that are missing critical field data. For instance, in some digital-first companies, a contact that does not have an email address may not be a contact worth keeping in the system. 

The Invalid Data category highlights issues like names with invalid characters, US zip codes with less than 5 digits, invalid phone numbers, or SPAM email addresses.

Click the Description link or Review button for an issue type to take the next step. Each type of issue might require a different solution, so when you click Review, Insycle will load the appropriate module and template for fixing the issue.

For example, under Invalid Data, click the Review button in the row, Invalid zip code (less than 5 digits). 

The Grid Edit module will open with the Invalid zip code template loaded, showing the 6 results that were identified in the Health Assessment. 

From here, you can follow the Grid Edit steps to correct or purge the invalid data.

Learn more about what the Health Assessment can do.

The Health Assessment reflects data from Insycle's overnight sync, it's not up-to-the-minute data. The date in the first heading bar indicates when it was captured.

If you're looking for reports reflecting changes made to your CRM today, you can click the Recalculate button to temporarily update the data. When you leave the Health Assessment page the reports will revert to the previous night’s snapshot.

To temporarily update all of the Health Assessment reports, click the Recalculate button in the first heading bar.

Or, to temporarily update today’s data for a single issue, use the Recalculate button at the right end of an issue row.

To purge records from your database, go to the Bulk Operations module, then select the database and record type from the top menu. Then explore the templates for an existing solution that may be close to what you need.

When you're looking to clean up specific values, use the filter to work only with an appropriate subset of your data. You can filter your data using any field in your database.

In this example, we'll walk through deleting contact records that do not have an email listed.

In Step 1, set up a Filter to identify Contact records that do NOT have an Email address. 

Click Search to see the records that match these criteria at the bottom of the page in the Record Viewer. If you make changes to the filter, click the Search button again to reload the Viewer.

Under Step 2, select the Delete tab.

There are no further configurations or settings for the Delete tab. You already filtered the records you want to delete in Step 1. When run on your database, this will delete all records that match your filter and appear in the Record Viewer.

To select individual records to delete from the database, in the Record Viewer click the checkbox for a record row.

Preview Changes in a CSV Report

With the filters and delete option set, you should review the deletions that will be made to verify only the expected records will be purged before making the change to your live database.

Under Step 3, click the Review button. Then, in the Bulk Delete popup, select Preview and click Next.

On the Notify tab, add any additional recipients who should receive the CSV (and make sure to hit Enter after each address). You can add colleagues and additional context here.

On the When tab, click Run Now and select which records to apply the change to (in most cases this will be All), then click the Run Now button.

Open the CSV file from your email in a spreadsheet application and review the list of records that will be deleted. If any records are appearing that you didn't expect and don't want to delete, return to Step 1 and make adjustments to the Filter, then Preview again.

Apply Changes to Your CRM

If everything in your CSV preview looks correct, return to Insycle and move forward with purging the CRM records.

Under Step 3, click the Review button, and this time, select Update mode.

On the When tab, you should use Run Now the first time you apply these changes to the CRM.

Once you confirm the change, the update will be applied to your CRM. The Bulk Delete Result popup will list all of the deleted records.

Save Template and Set Up Automation

After you've seen the results in the CRM and are satisfied with how the operation runs, you can save all of the configurations as a template. This will save you time and provide consistent results in the future.

Then, you can set up automation so this delete operation runs on a set schedule. 

When you use the Bulk Operations delete action, the entire record is permanently removed from your CRM. If there's any chance you'll need to refer to this data or restore it later, you may want to export a Preview report that could act as a backup.

The CSV only includes fields that are visible in the Record Viewer. Use the Layout tab under Step 1 to add more fields and preserve all the data that might be needed.

If you are doing a large data cleanup effort and deleting a large volume of records, best practice is to do a data export directly from the CRM. This will be more comprehensive than what the Insycle report provides.

In the Group & Update module, select the database and record type. Then explore the templates for an existing solution that may be close to what you need.

Under Step 1, select the Field you want to group by and analyze. In this example, we've chosen the Free Email Provider Domain field. This is a unique Insycle field that looks at the Email field values for free email addresses such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. This helps surface less valuable contact records.

Click the Analyze button, and a preview of the value groups that match this criterion will load in the Record Viewer at the bottom of the page.

The Record Viewer lists the unique values contained in the field with a count of how many times each value is found. Here, the Free Email Provider Domain field has found 4 contacts using a free email provider (shown as True). 

Click the checkbox by a value to expand the group. This opens up a secondary Viewer below the first, where you can review the individual records.

Decide if you want to delete all of the records in the group, or individual ones. To delete all, click the checkbox next to the group in the main Record Viewer (in this example, the True group).

To delete only specific records, click the checkboxes in the secondary viewer.

Under Step 2, click the Delete tab.  Make sure the number on the Delete X Contacts button matches the number you want to remove. There is no preview for this step. 

When ready, click the Delete X Contacts button, then confirm the deletion in the popup.

When completed, the affected records will be shown in the Bulk Update Result popup.

You can download the CSV report from the Activity Tracker.

When you use the Group & Update delete action, the entire record is permanently removed from your CRM. If there's any chance you'll need to refer to this data or restore it later, you may want to add additional fields that could act as a backup. The CSV report can be downloaded any time from the Activity Tracker. 

The CSV only includes fields that are visible in the Record Viewer, so use the Layout tab under Step 1 to add more fields and preserve all the data that might be needed.

If you are doing a large data cleanup effort and deleting a large volume of records, best practice is to do a data export directly from the CRM. This will be more comprehensive than what the Insycle report provides.

Yes, the pre-existing data in the record will be deleted by the bulk operation. If you need this data for reference or restoration, it will be available in the CSV in the Activity Tracker.

Yes, but not directly. Not all fields for every deleted record will be available, just those included in the Layout settings. See the Pro Tip: Add Extra Fields to the Layout as a Backup above for details.

You can access the deleted data in the Activity Tracker and re-import the partial records if needed. 

The Health Assessment tracks many types of invalid and low-quality data that make great candidates for purgeable data.