Stop Feeding the Beast–Why your AI and Rovo Strategy Depends on Cleaning Up Old Content
The AI (and Rovo) Paradox: Better Answers Start With Less, Better Data
Atlassian announced at TEAM’25 that many customer plans on Atlassian Cloud will now have Rovo included. Rovo brings the power of AI to the Teamwork Graph and is incredibly useful, so this is great news. Rovo scours your Confluence pages and Jira issues so they can serve teammates instant answers, write specs, and even draft test plans. But when obsolete or duplicate information lingers, Rovo does what any LLM does with bad inputs: it blends fact with fiction and can deliver the wrong advice—fast.
Left unchecked, stale content can easily:
- Mislead customers and colleagues—Rovo may cite retired product docs or deprecated APIs.
- Skew analytics and model training—garbage in, garbage (hallucinations) out.
- Create legal and privacy risk—exposing data that should have been purged under GDPR, CCPA, or ISO 27001 (2022) retention rules.
This is the crux of the paradox: you need plenty of content for Rovo to shine, but only the right content.
“Spring Cleaning” Once a Year Won’t Cut It for Rovo Users
Traditional knowledge‑base clean‑ups happen quarterly or annually. They’re manual, time-wasting, and prone to human error. And in 2025, that’s already too slow. Rovo continuously ingests Confluence, Jira, JSM and other connected content, and your teams expect real‑time answers. If outdated issues or pages survive even a few weeks beyond their usefulness, they quickly become fodder for every Rovo query.
The result if left too long? Rovo suggests long‑abandoned roadmaps, resurrects information from old incidents, or surfaces pricing Finance buried two re‑orgs ago. Every erroneous answer diminishes trust—and forces costly manual re‑work.
Enter Continuous Content Retention, with Opus Guard
Opus Guard’s Content Retention Manager turns retention from an occasional project into an always‑on safety net that helps keep Rovo’s knowledge base clean and pristine:
- Policy‑Driven Rules, Not Manual Sweeps
Define granular rules by space, project, or data classification—then let automation archive, anonymize, or delete when content hits its expiration date. - Rovo‑Optimized Index
By trimming noise, you boost retrieval accuracy for Rovo’s semantic search and generative answers. Cleaner corpora also means lower vector‑DB bills (Rovo’s “Indexed Objects” quota) and faster responses. - “Safe‑Preview” Mode
Not ready to delete? Simulate policy impact first. Review what would be archived or purged, adjust thresholds, and roll out deletion later with confidence. - Compliance You Can Prove
Every action is logged immutably. Need evidence for auditors? Export a tamper‑proof retention audit log in seconds—no spreadsheets required.
Beyond AI: Meeting the Letter of the Law
Regulations haven’t slowed down for your shiny new Rovo rollout. GDPR, ISO 27001:2022, SOC 2, and the latest U.S. state privacy statutes still demand:
- Defined retention schedules
- Timely deletion of expired / personal data
- Verifiable, immutable audit trails
Content Retention Manager embeds these data retention requirements into the same workflows that improve Rovo accuracy. Compliance stops feeling like a parallel project and starts feeling like a happy side‑effect.
Quick Wins for Rovo Customers Now
There are a few things you can consider doing immediately in order to prepare for an improved picture ahead, while you work towards effective data retention.
- Label Low‑Value Spaces
Identify sandbox, legacy, or “experimental” Confluence spaces and set a 90‑day auto‑archive rule. Rovo will instantly stop surfacing outdated drafts. Read our blog post on using Confluence native content management tools to get started. - Identify Dormant Work (fka, Issues)
Consider closing issues untouched for say, 3 or 5years. Your backlog gets leaner overnight and you’ll know what to target for retention and clean up next. - Enable Safe‑Preview
Install Content Retention Manager, model your retention policies, and run your first policy simulation. You’ll see exactly how much ROT is hiding in plain sight—and how it could be skewing Rovo answers.
Ready to Let Rovo Shine?
AI agents are only as smart as the content you feed them. Give Rovo (and every other model you deploy) a curated, compliant base of knowledge. Reclaim hours of manual cleanup—by installing Opus Guard's Content Retention Manager from the Atlassian Marketplace today.
👉 Start your 30‑day free trial via Atlassian Marketplace now
👉 Need a walkthrough? Book a demo with our retention specialists
Because the future of AI isn’t just about having more data—it’s about keeping the right data. Let Opus Guard help you draw the line and keep Rovo on point.