Best Practices for Departing Faculty/Staff

Overview

When a Faculty/Staff member departs from an institution, it is important to ensure a smooth transition. Here are some best practices to consider in such situations. By design, users cannot be deleted and fully removed from the SS&E database, as further described here.

General

• Change/remove user information on the day that the staff/faculty changes positions/retires.
• After making changes, search for the user record to verify what is in the system, and impersonate the user to verify what the user can do/see if/when they login.

User’s Role Changes

• If a staff/faculty member position changes, it is recommended to remove prior roles and leave only the current role(s).

User is no longer working at the Institution

In general, although SS&E cannot fully "remove a person record", the following options are available within SS&E Administration:

1. Assigned roles can be removed from a person's record under Admin > People. Select the user and remove all roles that do not apply.
   Note: If the departing Staff/Faculty user is also a past student, the best practice is to allow them to keep their Student role, with no other roles assigned.
   (i) If the departing staff/faculty is not a past student, all roles are removed.
   
   
2. Users that should no longer be included in SS&E (i.e. are not past students) can also be set to Inactive. Under Admin > People > Search for the user. Select the user’s record and hit the Deactivate button at the top.
   Note: Inactive users cannot log in to SS&E and cannot be impersonated.
   (i) Deactivating users can also be done via the SIS Import by setting the "enabled" field to false on the person data feed.
   
   
3. So that Inactive Users are more difficult to be identified, some personal data can be removed from the person record, such as the user's primary email address, username, and secondary email address. To remove such personal data, under Admin > People, select Override at the top and enter blank spaces on the inactive user's Person Override menu.
   
   
4. If a user returns as faculty/staff or in some other capacity, the same user account can be reactivated in People Administration or a brand new account can be created with the appropriate roles (as long as the person’s email address is only associated with one user record in SS&E).
   
5. If a user was assigned a SMS number, that number can be removed from their user account by navigating to Admin > Messages > SMS Configuration > Twilio > Phone Number Usage. Locate the name in the Person Column select the corresponding trash icon. A prompt to confirm the number deletion will appear, once that deletion is confirmed, if the Phone Number Usage does not update, please try refreshing the page.