How do you properly delete personal data?

Required tools

• Dynamics 365 — With permission to delete entries.
• Defined retention periods — What needs to be preserved, and for how long.

Before you delete

1. 1.Determine what needs to be preserved

   Invoice documentation is subject to statutory retention requirements. If you delete it, you will be violating the Bookkeeping Act while trying to comply with data protection regulations.

2. 2.Find all the places

   The contact, activities, cases, emails, attachments in SharePoint, and any marketing lists. If you only delete the contact, everything else remains.

3. 3.Consider anonymization instead of deletion

   Replace the name and contact details with a placeholder, and retain the transaction. This allows you to keep the accounting records and reports without retaining the person's data.

Complete and document

1. 4.Delete in the correct order

   Delete the underlying records first and the main record last. Doing it in the opposite order results in reference errors, and a partially completed deletion is worse than none at all.

2. 5.Check the result

   Search for the name and email address afterward. If anything comes up, the job isn't finished.

3. 6.Document that it was done

   Who requested it, what was deleted, when, and what was retained and on what grounds. This is the documentation you will need if anyone asks later.