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What are the ramifications of disabling a staff account versus deleting a staff account?

Environment:

Staff Accounts, All versions

Resolution:

When working with staff accounts, each record in the accounts table contains the staff member's name and a unique account ID number (acct_id). It is actually the acct_id number, not the account name, that is referenced elsewhere in incident thread and transaction records.

Deleting individual staff accounts:
When a staff account is deleted, the account table is updated and the acct_ID value is removed from the transactions table. This means that the incident thread and transaction records are no longer associated with that account ID and the transactions indicate the account name is Unspecified. 

Incidents assigned to the deleted staff member remain assigned to the account group, but are no longer assigned to a specific individual. If you delete several staff members, it can be more difficult to determine which specific staff member provided support to the customer.

Report schedules that are set to run from this account will also be removed.

Please note, we do not have an automated restore process for deleted staff accounts, so you will need to engage the services of our Oracle Consulting team for assistance.

Deleting a staff account group:
You cannot delete a group if there is an account assigned to that group. You must first either delete the staff account(s) or move the accounts to another group.

If you delete a group, any incidents assigned to that group are basically orphaned with regard to who the incident is assigned to. For each of these incidents, the Assigned field will display No Value or Undefined.

If you decide to delete a group, before doing so, determine how many incidents are assigned to that group and evaluate whether those incidents should be reassigned elsewhere. Specifically, evaluate any incidents that have a status type that is Unresolved or Waiting. Similarly, all transactions associated with the group will display as Unspecified or Undefined after the group is deleted.

Deleting a profile:
Similarly, if you delete a profile, the profile ID is removed from the database.  Therefore, any reports based on profiles will no longer show data for that deleted profile.  Note: It is not possible to delete a profile that has accounts associated to it.  Staff accounts must be re-associated to alternate profiles prior to deletion.

Alternatives to deleting records:
Instead of deleting accounts or groups, consider reassigning the accounts to a special new group such as Former Staff. You could then disable their account. This allows you to retain these staff records in the database and the past transaction and thread records would still be attributed to the disabled staff account. For profiles, consider renaming them to 'Former Profile - Do Not Use'.

You can edit the staff account and check the Account Locked checkbox to prevent the staff member from logging in or you can check the Permanently Disabled check box to permanently disable the account.

Note: Any staff accounts marked as Disabled from Assignment, Disabled from Assignment/Report Filters, and Permanently Disabled, will not count towards your licensed users. You will be billed for the staff accounts that were enabled at the peak count of a service month. Also, any staff accounts that are locked by the administrator will not be counted.

For more information on disabling staff accounts, refer to Answer ID 570: Disabling a Staff Account.

For more information on how disabling staff accounts affects other records, refer to Answer ID 2474: Actions to take when disabling a staff account.