SAP Knowledge Base Article - Public

3555176 - Change Audit Reports capturing data older than the period set by Universal Retention Period in Manage Audit Configuration

Symptom

  • Universal Retention Period set to e.g. 730 days but Change Audit reports still capturing data up to 3 years old. 
  • Should Change Audit reports respect the limit defined under Universal Retention Period?
  • Does the limit set under > Manage Audit Configuration > Audit Retention > Default Retention Policy > Universal Retention Period apply to Change Audit reports?
  • Does this limit apply to all EC and MDF data? Are there any exceptions?

  

"Image/data in this KBA is from SAP internal systems, sample data, or demo systems. Any resemblance to real data is purely coincidental."

Environment

SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite

Reproducing the Issue

  1. Go to Manage Audit Configuration
  2. Set "Universal Retention Period" to 730 days. 

    • Default Retention Policy
  3. Then trigger a Change Audit Job. 
  4. The audit captures data older than the retention period. 
  5. No "Specific Retention Policies" have been created to account for the presence of data older than the Universal Retention Period. 

Cause

As per KBA 3286668 - What's the oldest date that can be pulled in Change Audit Report for an instance - the default Universal Retention Period is set to 730 days (2 years) and the maximum Universal Retention Period can be set to 1095 days (3 years).

When the default is being used, EC and MDF data is excluded from the auto-purging, unless explicitly confirmed by manually clicking the “Save” button again under > Manage Audit Configuration > Audit Retention > Default Retention Policy > Universal Retention Period.

Resolution


If customers would like to proceed with purging EC and MDF data older than 730 days, they must manually click the “Save” button again under > Manage Audit Configuration > Audit Retention > Default Retention Policy > Universal Retention Period. This action serves as a double confirmation, allowing the system to purge eligible EC/MDF data entirely. 

Note #1: This does not apply to EC Employment Information or EC Personal Information audit data. Even after confirming the retention settings, EC Employment Information (e.g. jobInfo, employmentInfo, Payment Information) and EC Personal Information (e.g. personInfo, globalInfo, phoneInfo) audit data is not included in the audit purge process. This is an expected behavior based on current system design.

-> Currently, EC Employment Information & EC Personal Information audit data can only be purged through the DRTM Master Data Purge job.

Note #2: Not all EC audit data is purged completely. For EC Personal Information audit data, the system always retains the most recent revision (i.e., the record with the highest revision number) even if it's older than the retention period. For example: If the “Date of Birth” field has 3 audit records (in year 2018, 2019, 2020), only the 2020 version (max revision) will be retained in the Change Audit Report, while the 2018 and 2019 records will be purged.

See Also

Keywords

SuccessFactors, Manage Audit Configuration, Universal Retention Period, Change Audit, 730, 1095, EC, MDF, Specific Retention Policy. EC Employment Information, EC Personal Information audit data , KBA , LOD-SF-PLT-CHA , Change Audit , LOD-SF-EC , Employee Central , LOD-SF-PLT , Platform Foundational Capabilities , Problem

Product

SAP SuccessFactors HCM Core 2411