Hello @A_Flower . Funny, just had a similar question on another post. This is one part I copied (below). You really should delete pubs for items before the discontinued date is a current date. Once the pubs are deleted, you can discontinue and if you like, unlink them so they are not accidentally used on another hierarchy. The main idea here, as noted below, once the Discontinue Date is current, the item will de-register with the Global Registry which will prevent further synchronization. If not performed in the correct order, customers see tons of error messages in their worklist when updating an item that is still published with a current Discontinued Date.
There are a couple of important things to keep in mind to ensure you are not negatively impacting your trading partners and your reporting:
1) When your Discontinued Date for an item is current (no longer in the future), IM will de-register the item with the Global Registry. As a result, you should never have an item with an active publication and a current or past Discontinued Date.
2) You should use the Discontinued Date as a future update for your trading partners for items that are published. Remove the publication for your items before that date becomes current. If you need to delete publications for a discontinued item, there is a process we can work with you to complete so this can be done.
When you are ready to remove these items, you can ask us to delete them from IM for you via our GTIN Delete process. You can simply complete the attached sheet and email it to us and we will process the GTIN deletes.
