Orphan Entities

Unknown

Orphan Entities

Unknown

I was looking for some Entities but, I was not able to locate them in the folder that they should be stored. I could not locate them in the folder but, I was able to see them in the report that looks for those entities. I added the Entity Folder ID Field in the report and I see that there are many that do not have any information in that field. I use the “Edit” entity step in my flow but, I am not calling the Folder ID in to the Edit step.

Question 1: Is this the cause of the Entities not having a folder ID?

Question 2: How is it possible that these Entities could live outside of an Entity Folder?

While trying to find the cause it was discovered that there is a report called Orphan Entities but, I could not locate the entities I was looking for in there, which leads me to my last question:

Question 3: Could someone just explain to me the process of items going to the Orphan Entity Folder?
From what I can decipher in the Documentation pages is that the entities become “Orphaned” when the folder they were located no longer exists.

Unknown

Hello, I will just post the question number and the answer next to it. Please let me know if you need any further clarification:

Question 1: Yes, if you are missing a folder ID then they will not show up in the portal. To fix this, you can always go back and add in a folder ID and that should allow you to repopulate it in the portal.

Question 2: The data actually lives in the database, the entity folder and its ID just allows you to find it quicker in the portal, if that makes sense.
If there is an edit entity step on the flow and the folder ID field is set to null or ignore, it will remove the ID, which will cause all sorts of issues.

Question 3: Your current understanding is correct. Basically, whenever a folder is deleted, if a “complete” delete isn’t selected, then the contents of that folder will become orphaned as they will no longer be tied to an entity folder. If there is no entity ID they will not show up in the orphan report, as they are not technically “orphaned”

Unknown

Thank you for the 3 answers.
I have 2 more questions:
3bis/ if I understand correctly, the entity which folder still exists but folderId has been deleted wont show up in the orphan entities list => I guess this is more like a bug, isnt it ? (even if I understand the 2 different processes that lead to 2 different situations)
4/ I have hundreds of orphan entities that are "preview images" (of the flow) or "backup of preview images" ==> is there a way to delete these easily and why are they stored at all? It populates >95% of my orphan entity list
thanks