Recycle Bin: Recover Deleted StratNav Project Items

Mistakes happen, even in well-managed strategy projects. Someone may delete an initiative too soon, remove a useful insight by accident or discover that a discarded file still contains valuable information.

The StratNav Recycle Bin gives Pro users a straightforward way to recover deleted project items. Instead of reconstructing lost work from memory, you can review what was deleted and restore the item to your project.

What is the StratNav Recycle Bin?

The Recycle Bin is a project-level recovery feature in StratNav. It keeps a record of supported items that have been deleted, allowing authorised Pro users to inspect and restore them.

Each entry shows three essential details:

• The name of the deleted item
• The type of item
• The date on which it was deleted

The most recently deleted items appear first, making it easier to find something removed during recent project work.

This is especially useful in collaborative strategy projects. As more people contribute insights, update plans and maintain project records, the possibility of deleting something prematurely naturally increases. The Recycle Bin provides a practical safeguard without disrupting the team’s work.

What deleted project items can you recover?

StratNav supports recovery across the main elements used to develop and execute a strategy.

Strategic analysis and design

You can restore items used to understand the organisation and explore its strategic choices, including:

• Insights
• Scenarios
• Business model elements
• Strategy alternatives
• Evaluation criteria
• Evaluations
• Products and Services

For example, your team might remove a strategy alternative after deciding that it is not currently viable. If market conditions change, the alternative may become relevant again. Restoring it can be much quicker and more reliable than attempting to recreate the original thinking.

Goals and execution

The Recycle Bin also covers the elements used to turn strategy into action:

• Goals
• Objectives
• Key performance indicators
• Initiatives

These records often contain more than a title. They may reflect decisions made during workshops, planning sessions or management reviews. Recovering the original item helps preserve that context and reduces the risk of rebuilding it incorrectly.

Governance and project management

You can recover records that support strategic governance and delivery, including:

• Risks
• Actions
• Issues
• Decisions
• Meetings
• Reports
• Expenses

Consider a risk that appears to have been resolved and is therefore deleted. If the underlying conditions return, restoring the original risk record may provide useful context about how the team previously assessed or treated it.

People and organisations

StratNav can also restore project records relating to:

• Organisations
• People
• Groups
• Relationships

This can be helpful when project participation changes or when a stakeholder who was thought to be out of scope becomes relevant again.

Files and links

Files can be restored through the Recycle Bin, along with eligible links between active project elements.

Recovering these connections deserves particular attention because a link depends on the status of the items at both ends.

How do you restore a deleted item in StratNav?

To recover an item:

1. Open the relevant StratNav project.
2. Select Recycle Bin from the project menu. (Click on the name of your project, which is typically the second item on the main menu.)
3. Locate the item you want to recover.
4. Click Restore.
5. Confirm that you want to restore the item.

StratNav then returns the item to the project and removes its entry from the Recycle Bin.

Before restoring an item, check its name, type and deletion date. This is particularly important when a project contains similarly named goals, initiatives or files.

How does recovery work for deleted links?

Links express relationships between elements of your strategy. A link might connect an objective to an initiative, an insight to a goal or one strategic element to another.

When an item is deleted, links involving that item may also be deleted. However, StratNav only lists a deleted link in the Recycle Bin when the items at both ends of that link still exist and are active.

A deleted link might be described as:

Link from Improve customer retention to Customer satisfaction

This rule prevents you from restoring a relationship that points to an item that remains deleted. In other words, StratNav checks that both ends of the connection are available before offering the link for recovery.

If you cannot see a link that you expected to find, check whether one of the connected items is still in the Recycle Bin. You may need to restore that item before reconstructing the relationship.

When should you use the Recycle Bin?

The feature is useful in several common situations.

An item was deleted accidentally

A misplaced click or misunderstanding can remove something the team still needs. The Recycle Bin allows an authorised user to correct the mistake without rebuilding the item.

A discarded idea becomes relevant again

Strategy is not static. A scenario, initiative or alternative that looked unsuitable six months ago may become valuable after a change in customer behaviour, regulation, technology or competitive conditions.

Restoring the original item also preserves the team’s earlier thinking. That can be more useful than starting again with no record of the previous discussion.

Project priorities have changed

Teams regularly pause, replace or remove initiatives as resources and priorities shift. If the organisation later reverses that decision, the Recycle Bin provides a faster route back to the earlier project structure.

You need to review recent deletions

Because entries display their deletion dates and are ordered with the newest first, the Recycle Bin offers a convenient view of recently removed material.

This can help project leaders understand whether an important change was intentional before deciding whether to restore anything.

A strategic relationship was removed

Individual items may remain active even though the link between them has been deleted. Restoring that link can recover important context, such as how an initiative supports an objective or how one element influences another.

Good practice when restoring deleted items

The Recycle Bin makes recovery simple, but restoration should still be deliberate.

Before restoring an item, ask:

• Is it still relevant to the current strategy?
• Was it deleted accidentally or as part of an agreed decision?
• Does restoring it create duplication?
• Should the project team be told that it has returned?
• Are related items or links also missing?

For material changes, it may be worth checking the relevant meeting notes or decision records first. Recovery should preserve useful work without quietly reversing an intentional project decision.

Who can access the Recycle Bin?

The Recycle Bin is available with the StratNav Pro plan.

Access is limited to Pro users who also have "administrator" or "contributor" permission to access the relevant project. This means the recovery process remains within the project’s existing access controls.

Protect your strategy work without slowing it down

Strategy development is iterative. Teams explore alternatives, change priorities and refine their plans as new information emerges. Occasionally, something useful gets deleted along the way.

The StratNav Recycle Bin provides a practical safety net. It lets authorised Pro users review recent deletions, restore supported project items and recover eligible links without recreating valuable work from scratch.

Try StratNav to manage strategy development and execution in one collaborative platform.