What is archiving?

Overview

Archiving lets you remove insights, opportunities, and solutions from your active workspace views without permanently deleting them. Archived items are hidden by default but stay in your workspace and can be surfaced again at any time.

Use this article to understand how archiving works in TheyDo and when to use it.

Archive vs delete

These two actions are not the same, and it's worth being intentional about which one you use.

Archive when the item is no longer actively relevant, but may be useful for reference later. Archived items are preserved in your workspace and can be unarchived if needed.

Delete only when the item should not exist at all — for example, a duplicate, a test item, or something created by mistake.

A simple rule of thumb: if the item represents meaningful work at some point, archive it. If it was a mistake, delete it.

Good reasons to archive

  • The insight, opportunity, or solution is no longer driving active decisions or work
  • An opportunity has been addressed or is no longer worth solving
  • A solution has been completed for a while and doesn't need to appear in active views
  • An insight is out of date but worth keeping as historical context
  • You want to clean up your workspace without losing anything permanently
  • You want to "park" items while evaluating whether they belong in your system of record

What happens when you archive an item

It's archived across the workspace

Archiving applies to the building block itself, not to a single card in one journey. If you archive an opportunity, it becomes archived everywhere — any cards for that opportunity will no longer appear in journeys by default.

Archived items are hidden by default

Tables and lists exclude archived items unless you choose to show them using filters.

Archived items become read-only

You can still open archived items for reference, but editing is disabled and actions like linking or unlinking are removed.

Hierarchy behavior when archiving

TheyDo is designed to prevent gaps in hierarchies when archiving.

When you archive a parent item, TheyDo may also archive its children to keep the hierarchy consistent:

  • Archiving an opportunity will archive its child opportunities and solutions.
  • Archiving a solution will archive its child solutions.

However, a child is not archived if it still has at least one active parent. This ensures the child doesn't disappear from active work if it still belongs elsewhere.

How to find archived items

You can control whether archived items appear in lists using filters. Most lists support three modes:

  • Exclude archived (default) — only active items are shown
  • Include archived — active and archived items are shown together
  • Archived only — shows only archived items, useful for browsing or restoring

Hierarchy behavior when unarchiving

When you unarchive a parent, its children are unarchived by default — but you can choose to leave certain children archived.

You cannot unarchive an opportunity or solution if it would become an orphan (meaning it has no active parent).

Notes and limitations

Archiving applies to insights, opportunities, and solutions. Other related items may not support archiving. For example, quotes are not automatically archived when an insight is archived.