In this demo, we’ll show you:
why you deactivate users rather than deleting them,
how to deactivate someone,
and what happens to their data.
You may have noticed that Salesforce lets you deactivate users but doesn't let you delete
them outright.
To see why, let's look at this example.
Matt is a Sales rep who just left the company.
He owns accounts, and leads, and groups.
And he's on various teams, so his departure affects several processes in our Salesforce
org.
Obviously, you no longer want Matt accessing his Salesforce account.
But deleting him could result in orphaned records and run the risk of losing critical
business information.
Deactivation is the way to go.
It removes his login access, while preserving his historical activity and records, making
it easy for you to transfer ownership to other users.
So, let's deactivate Matt.
Go to Setup...
Manage Users.
Click the Users link.
Then click Edit next to Matt’s name.
Uncheck the Active checkbox.
The popup message just reminds you that you'll still have access to Matt's records.
Click OK.
Then click Save.
You can remove this user from various teams as part of deactivation.
Let’s accept the default options.
Then click Save.
You can still see Matt in the Users list, shown as not active.
He’s still a member of public groups he was a part of.
Matt’s default sales and account teams remain.
However he is removed from other users' default sales and account teams.
Deactivating Matt doesn’t affect the records he owns.
He still owns them until they’re transferred to others.
For example, he continues to own opportunities and appear
in forecasts and territories.
If you disabled “Allow Forecasting” for this user, that would remove Matt from his
assigned territories.
His overrides remain but all of them are frozen.
In Chatter, Matt’s profile remains but shows he’s inactive.
And he no longer appears in people’s Following and Followers lists.
Matt owned this Chatter group and remains the owner.
However, I can assign a new owner because as an administrator, I have the "Modify All
Data" permission.
Sometimes, when you try to deactivate a user, you might see a message like this.
You can’t deactivate her because she’s the default lead owner, and someone has to
be the default for your organization.
That's easy to change, but what if you're in a hurry and you'd like to change the lead
owner settings later?
In the meantime, you can quickly prevent this user from accessing her account by freezing
it.
Go to the user record and click Freeze.
Now this user can't log in.
A little later, you're ready to update the processes and deactivate this user
Here, we’ll assign a new owner.
Once this is done, you can make her inactive Keep in mind that this restriction applies
in all of these cases, including for example, anyone assigned as the automated case user,
as the recipient of a workflow email alert, or as the Customer Portal Administrator.
Also, keep in mind that if an inactive user was an approver, you’ll need to either remove
the user from all approval processes... or reassign their approval responsibilities to
other users.
That covers the basics of removing a user’s access in Salesforce.
For more information, search for these topics in Salesforce Help.
Thanks for using Salesforce!