Many accounts limit how many versions are kept before they're moved to trash. If multiple versions were created by the same person on the same device (e.g., clicking Save after every edit) within a short amount of time, these versions would quickly pile up and push relevant versions to the trash prematurely. Even if there are a higher number of versions available to users or infinite trash enabled on the domain, the storage is used up by keeping too many (almost identical) versions of the same file. Finding the correct version when researching changes would become tedious, if not impossible, due to the sheer number of similar versions to sift through.
To help keep the version count down, Egnyte employs version pruning to automatically purge some of these versions from the system.
How Does It Work?
Purging Versions without Moving those to Trash
When the same person from the same device saves a file multiple times within a 10-minute window, all of the versions are initially saved as a version in Egnyte. Every so often, Egnyte will prune (remove) the intermediary versions created within the window and only keep the last version and those created outside the 10-minute window. The pruning process does the same for other older versions of the file.
If another edit to the file is made later (outside the 10-minute window), a new version will be created.
Deleting Versions to Trash
This is applicable when the version limit is enforced. Admins can choose how many versions of a file shall be retained from Settings -> Configuration -> General -> File version policy.
Any of the file versions that exceed the applicable version count are automatically moved to trash.
Version pruning is applicable for domains with retention policies from Secure & Govern.
- The algorithm will not delete any new file versions uploaded with a timestamp set in the past.
- If there are multiple consecutive versions of a file with identical content, only the latest consecutive version will be kept even if the versions were uploaded outside the 10-minute window.
- Although these intermediary versions aren't kept as a version in Egnyte, they are still tracked for reporting and auditing purposes.