Anonymisation Tool - CS

You may be requested to delete a data subjects personal details from your database. This is where the anonymisation tool can help you.

In Clik Service, nothing can be truly deleted, but it can be wholly anonymised and unreadable. Remember though you may have good reason to keep the data, for example, invoices for HMRC purposes should be held for six years from the end of the last financial year with the details of whom you invoiced.

Please seek legal advice if you need to understand GDPR a little more, and how it impacts your company.

Set Up The Privilege For The Anonymisation Tool

Go Settings > Staff

Select the user from the left-hand list and click allow on the 'Can access the anonymisation tool' privilege.

Staff Anonymisation

Go to Tools > Anonymisation Tool

The 'Staff' tab is where you can select users who you either may need to anonymise or export for a Subject Access Request.

Depending on your retention policy of keeping employment records, select the period from the leave date in the 'Exclude staff that left less than' box.

You can either select an individual or select all under the date criteria by going to Selection > Invert Selection.

Next, click 'Anonymise & Archive selected Staff Member/s'. You will be prompted with a list of the staff members you have selected. Click 'OK' to proceed.

You will be given a log to show you’ve deleted them when clicking on 'View Log'. Click Close to finish.

Contact Anonymisation

Go to Tools > Anonymisation Tool

Select the Contacts tab.

Depending on your retention policy of keeping contact records, select the period from the last call date by entering a year/month range in the 'Exclude contacts with call history within' box.

You can either select an individual or select all under the date criteria by going to Selection > Invert Selection. 

Next, click 'Anonymise & Archive Selected Contact/s'. You will be prompted with a list of the staff members you have selected.

Click OK to proceed.

You will be given a log to show you’ve deleted them. Click 'Close' to finish.

Company Anonymisation

Go to Tools > Anonymisation Tool

Select the 'Companies' tab.

You may see companies you’ve deleted before, but they’ve only been archived, so it may be a good start to anonymise them, they will all be ticked as deleted. 

Depending on your retention policy of keeping company records select the period from the various filters as shown below.

You can either select an individual or select all under the date criteria and go to Selection > Invert Selection.

Next, click 'Anonymise & Archive Selected Company/s'. You will be prompted with a list of companies you have selected. Click OK to proceed.

You will be given a log to show you’ve deleted them. Click 'Close' to finish.

Exporting Data For A Potential SAR

This will help you export as much information about a staff member, contact or company if they’ve requested a SAR.

Please remember Clik can’t do any retracting.

Go to Tools > Anonymisation Tool

Select the tab you want to extract information from. In this example, we will use the 'staff' tab. Remember this will only show staff that have been ticked No Longer Employed in the staff database.

Select the staff member that requires the information and click 'Export Staff Member Details'.

Save the spreadsheet of details to a location of your choice.

The information will then be saved as an Excel spreadsheet in the location you selected.

Watch the Anonymisation video

Watch the Password Policy & Security Audit Tool video

Published: May 2018
Last Updated: October 2020