Delete users capability removed from Admin Center - UPDATE March 7th

MCorbin

Adding my 2 cents.... I liked having both options. Some users are fine to just delete - unlicensed users or licensed who weren't building anything (I track that). But I loved having the ability to deactivate a user who had created dashboards, reports, Dynamic Views, Pivots, etc. I can handle the Deactivate option, but would have preferred to keep both.

Lekshmi Unnithan

UPDATE AS OF MARCH 7, 2023:

Based on common feedback from our customers, we are enabling the delete action between 10:30 AM PST - 6 AM PST daily via our public API and Legacy Admin Center UI. This should allow customers with critical needs to delete users while maintaining the stability of our application. 

Please note that Enterprise customers can continue to deactivate users at any time, and we are working to provide access to deactivation for all plans. We are also evaluating additional strategies to support customer needs, and updates will be provided as we have them. Thank you.  

Marc Swenson

Is that time window correct? Seems a little odd.

Jeff Reisman

@Marc Swenson It seems to be correct. I did not see the option in the old user management until after 1:30pm EST.

The old user management does not recognize the "deactivated" status, so to see deactivated users you have to have another window open to the new user management (and of course, there's no way to sort the list to show all the deactivated users together...)

Marc Swenson

True, however my goal was to delete outstanding "Pending" users, not deactivate them. IMHO, good security practice purges unused accounts and does not leave them out there, even in a deactivated state.

Jeff Reisman

IMHO, good security practice purges unused accounts and does not leave them out there, even in a deactivated state.

@Marc Swenson Amen to that!

In my case, I was finding all the users that had been deactivated since the removal of the delete function, so that I could delete them.

@Lekshmi Unnithan I haven't seen an answer on this post to my questions below. Can you help find answers?

I don't see how deleting a user would be a problem, even if that user did happen to come back. Why wouldn't someone be able to create a Smartsheet account with the same email they used in the past, when that account was deleted from Smartsheet and now doesn't exist? Is it something with the auto-provisioning process, where it keeps some record of the deleted account and won't re-provision it? Couldn't we force it by adding the account back from within User Management?

ker9

As I understand it...Deactivate is always available

No delete between:

06:00-10:30 PST

08:00-12:30 CST

09:00-13:30 EST

Delete may occur between:

10:30-06:00 PST

12:30-08:00 CST

13:30-09:00 EST

@Jeff Reisman - we have added people back with the same email after deleting them, however, I believe it was more than 1 year after the delete. I don't know if the timing mattered or not.

Jeff Reisman

...we have added people back with the same email after deleting them, however, I believe it was more than 1 year after the delete. I don't know if the timing mattered or not.

@ker9 thanks. Do you have user auto-provisioning enabled for your domain? When someone with an email address in our domain creates an account, they are automatically added to our org, show up in our user management, etc. I'm wondering if that affects someone creating an account with an email address in our domain that was previously provisioned and then deleted.

ker9

@Jeff Reisman - yes we do have auto provisioning handled by our IT dept.

Jeff Reisman

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/366504#Comment_366504

Thanks. We've only had it in place for less than a year, so we haven't encountered a situation where a user account was deleted and then needed to be used again. Good to know it didn't cause any issues for you... which still leaves the question of WHY they made this change in the first place.

TJohnson

I would like to voice my displeasure with the removal of the delete user option. This does not help me as a System Admin. I wont go on a long rant, my reasons are the same or similar to every commenter who has posted before me.

Let this be my vote to reinstate the delete user option.

-Terry

Jeremy Warren

This is inane. I too would like to join the chorus of folks who want the delete option back! Give me an "Are you sure?" - "This may cause problems" - "Are you Really, Really Sure?" but let me manage my accounts how I see fit, as opposed to allowing you to artificially inflate your user count for investors.

Laura R

As a follow-up to @annielowry89, I agree the Pending User scenario is a real problem.

Smartsheet needs to add the option to Cancel Pending Request to User Management on each user (Smartsheet can grey it out for any user not in Pending Status).

Selecting Cancel Pending Request should not send an email (as in most cases, the user is no longer with the company) and change the user’s Status to Deactivated User.

This is would help close a gap created by the developers when the delete option was removed.

JFBinari

Deactivating a user doesn't seem to prevent the ability to see or assign them tasks, this is useless to us and, in fact, is a risk that a task will be assigned to a resource that doesn't exist. What if Jane Smith is deactivated and we hire another Jane Smith (are we supposed to change our email naming convention to fit this restriction)? What about our own security policies of deleting (not deactivating) unused or removed user accounts? It is such a bad look to be able to see accounts of people that aren't actually employed by my Firm and really hard to justify why this product prevents us from operating within our agreed upon protocols. Did a group of actual Smartsheet users recommend this? Is there value to this that isn't readily apparent?

ker9

@JFBinari - thank you for pointing that out - I had not realized you could still select a deactivated user.

That's bad. Everything about this is bad.