Bulk Deletion of a Thing

[Bennn]

Hi -

I’m wondering what the current consensus is around deleting items in bulk. What is the most efficient method in terms of WU? Deleting one thing at a time using a recursive workflow with half second delay? Or deleting items until ~#50 and scheduling again after4-5 seconds?

Any thoughts appreciated.

Thanks

[adamhholmes]

if it’s less than a few thousand then use a single ‘Delete a List of Things’ action.

If it’s more than that, but less than 100k, then running a workflow on a list of things will be best.

More than that, then you’ll have to use some kind of recursive workflow (but definitely not to delete one item at a time).

[Bennn]

Got it Thanks.

How should I set this up? Schedule workflow on a list of all items I want to delete, send to backend workflow where it deletes first item and loops until is not > 1?

I think i’m missing something… How is this different then looping a non list workflow?

[adamhholmes]

No. … there’s no looping involved.

Just create an API workflow that deletes a thing, then schedule that workflow to run a on a list of things.

How is this different then looping a non list workflow?

for one, it runs in parallel … so there is no looping involved.

For that reason it’s multiple times faster (for large lists it can be faster by several hours), and it’s also a lot less costly in WUs.

[Bennn]

Thanks sir