Strategy for Bulk Decommissioning of Legacy Assets (2010–2025) and Disk Space Optimization

Hi Appian Community,

I am working on a large-scale decommissioning project for a legacy system that has been active for over 15 years. We are currently on Appian 25.4 and are facing significant disk space consumption (approx. 12GB in Process Model definitions and 11GB in Engine KDBs).

A major challenge is that these legacy assets do not follow any standard naming conventions or abbreviations and are scattered across multiple applications. We are currently trying to define the best criteria to categorize which objects are "Dead" and safe to delete versus which are still "Active."

I am seeking best practices and recommended utilities for the following:

1. Categorization & Filtering Strategies Since naming conventions are unreliable, what parameters are most effective for identifying legacy artifacts?

• Are there ways to bulk-query metadata (like Last Run Date, Last Modified Date, or Total Instance Count) to distinguish between legacy and active objects?

• Is there any Plug-in that can generate a list of "Orphan" objects (Interfaces, Expression Rules, Query Rules) that are no longer called by any top-level process models?

2. Instance Management (Running & Archived) The legacy architecture kept many parent processes "Live".

• What is the most efficient way to Terminate and then Hard Delete thousands of instances (Running, Paused, and Archived) across different models?

• Should we use a specific batching strategy to avoid engine performance issues during a mass cleanup?

3. Identifying Hidden Dependencies We need to clean up related DB triggers, Stored Procedures, and filesystem documents.

• Are there recommended methods to map an Appian Process Model to its specific database triggers or Knowledge Center documents when names are not linked?

Any advice, plugin recommendations, or strategy frameworks would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!