Nuxeo: Managing Deleted Documents

In Nuxeo Platform 7.0, navigate to a document which is ready to be deleted. Then navigate back to the parent document’s Content tab. Check the box next to the name of the document to be deleted. Multiple documents could be selected at this time to be deleted simultaneously. A series of buttons should appear at the bottom of the list of contents once an item is checked. Click the “Delete” button to delete this document (or documents). Then confirm by clicking “OK”.

The parent document can also be deleted. Navigate up a level in the navigation tree, select and delete the parent as well.
Once these documents are deleted, they will no longer appear in the Content tab of the parent document. They will no longer appear on the left navigation tree, either. In order to manage the deleted documents, navigate to the parent of the document that was deleted. In this case, that parent is the Granite Horizon Workspace. Then click the “Manage” tab, and then click the “Trash” subtab.

The action button that is available is “Empty trash”. Select the checkbox next to the parent document (in this case, Granite Horizon Folder) and the options “Permanent delete” and “Restore” appear. Click “Restore” to restore the parent document (Granite Horizon Folder) and all of its subitems. Or, click “Permanent delete” to permanently delete the parent document and all of its subitems. Note that the original child document(s) that were deleted are not listed. Click on the parent document (Granite Horizon Folder) to view the deleted subitems. If the subitems are restored, the parent will be restored as well.
Note that the location where the deleted documents are accessible is the immediate parent document’s Manage/Trash location. In this example, the Granite Horizon Workspace contains the Granite Horizon Folder in the trash. However, the Granite Horizon Workspace’s parent, Workspaces, has nothing in the trash. This may be inconvenient, as it might mean navigating through many documents to find a deleted document. One way around this is to implement a “Domain trash” or a “Workspace trash” at a high level using Nuxeo Studio. This could contain all the deleted documents for that domain and/or workspace. One simple solution to this is to create a content view that shows deleted documents where the path “STARTSWITH” the current document path. The Query filter would look like this:

ecm:mixinType != 'HiddenInNavigation' AND ecm:isCheckedInVersion = 0 AND ecm:currentLifeCycleState = 'deleted' and ecm:path STARTSWITH ?

and the Query parameter is

#{currentDocument.path}

In order to make this behave like the default Trash tab, add a couple user actions called “Restore” and “Permanent delete”. These can be added directly to the Content View by clicking on “Results” -> Enable additional actions -> Create a new action.
Then add this content view to a Tab on the document desired. Enhance this by adding a search filter.
Out of the box, Nuxeo allows users to delete documents, delete parent documents, restore subtrees and permanently delete subtrees and individual documents. With some customization, some high-level management of deleted documents can be added. Worth noting is that Nuxeo’s delete feature can be controlled by ACLs. In addition, a document’s versions can be deleted using the History -> Archived versions tab. This can also be managed by ACLs.
Any questions or comments? Please chime in!