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Thanks to Henrik Nilsson for this little gem – this is the first thing on your list of things to do after installing FIM 2010 in your test environment. Follow these instructions to adjust how long Request objects will be retained in the system.

System Resource Retention Configuration

This is a special resource type in the portal that allows you to adjust how long request objects linger in the portal. Nothing will clog up your database and fill your drives like millions of request objects sitting around for 30 days (the default). And make no mistake, you will end up with millions of objects in a few short days or weeks depending on the item count you're working with. You find your way here by navigating to Administration/All Resources/System Resource Retention Configuration. Once there you'll see the object we're after:

As you can see from my example, I've already adjusted this to two days from the default of thirty. What you will notice if you click on this object is that you are not allowed to change the value yet! We first have to create a policy that allows members of the Administrators set to modify the value we need.

Creating the Management Policy Rule

Ok, you're going to create a new Management Policy Rule with the following specifications:

• Display Name: Administration: Administrators can update system resource retention service objects
• Description: Allows members of the Administrators set to adjust the policy for request object retention
• Permissions: Grants Permission
• Requestors: (Specific Set of Requestors) Administrators
• Operation: Modify a single-valued attribute
• Target Resource Definition Before/After Request (same): All System Resource Retention Configurations
• Resource Attributes: (Select specific attributes) Retention Period in Days

Once you're done, go back and click on the configuration object, now you should be able to adjust the value:

Once you submit the change, all new requests will have a 2-day expiration, whereas any previous requests will have the 30-day default. Observe:

…versus:

Notice that even the request to update the policy is stamped with the new policy. I am on a quest to understand exactly how they expire and if there is anything you can do to speed along old requests. There are a few promising looking stored procedures, but those could be very dangerous to an active system.