What are the options of using apex to delete protected custom metadata record from subscriber org?

Question

I know that I can use Metadata API and can use Apex to run Metadata API to delete metadata, like Custom Metadata records.

I know that I can leverage Metadata.Operations class to create or update Custom Metadata records.

What I struggle is to delete protected custom metadata record which was created by Metadata.Operations class from the managed package, since when I try to run this, I receive an error "No custom metadata named found". I tried to add namespace prefix and remove namespace prefix, but it doesn't work. Is there any workarounds or options for this?

The problem is that if we create protected custom metadata record in subscriber org and unable to delete it and refer to some custom field on subscriber org, then the subscriber will not be able to delete that custom field unless completely uninstalling our package, which is not the action we want to suggest to the customer.

I understand the problem is that Metadata API cannot access the protected metadata record from the package to delete that record.

Is there any elegant solution to this problem?

Answer 1

Looks like there is no available option to delete the protected custom metadata records.

The only viable workarounds here are:

1. Make the custom metadata records public.
2. Use protected list custom settings instead of custom metadata records.
3. We can use text fields instead of object and field references to allow customers to delete their referenced fields and objects. We can use Active checkbox on custom metadata records and set it to false instead of deleting the custom metadata record.
4. Also we can change the object and field references to be no longer required and clear their value when deactivating the record.