It’s never easy having a colleague leave your organization, but after you throw the party and eat the cake, be sure to take care of her Salesforce account. Accounts are valuable. You don’t want someone who is no longer there taking one up. Above all, for the sake of security, you don’t want someone who has no defined connection to your organization having access to your constituents’ names and giving histories.
Luckily, this is simple to take care of. When a User leaves your organization, don’t delete them. You can simply uncheck their “Active” box:
Setup > Users > {User Name} > Edit > Active
However, if a “Super User” leaves, it may be a little more complicated. If the staff person is the “owner” of a large number of records, you should change the ownership before de-activating the user. Be sure to update both the Contact AND the Account.
This can be done one at a time, or you can use a data loader to update these on a mass scale.
Finally, the Super User may be the first person to have set up your Salesforce. In this case, the person will be assigned to several other roles that have to be re-assigned before the User can be de-activated:
- Default Workflow User
- Default Lead User
- Default Case Owner
- Online Case User
All of these roles need to be re-assigned to another User.
NOTE: This solution is not for everyone. If you’ve already assigned your 1en free licenses, you probably won’t want to pay for one just to avoid updating Owner’s credentials. But it is a convenience if you have an unused license
Default Workflow User
Setup > Process Automation Settings > Use Lookup to change name of Default Workflow User
Default Lead Owner
Setup > Lead Settings > Use Lookup to Change Name of Default Lead Owner
Default Case Owner and Automated Case User
Setup > Case Assignment Rules >
- Click as indicated
- Use Lookups to enter names, if you use Cases
After re-assigning these roles, you can proceed to de-activate the User.
Once you have gone through this, you may want to avoid having to do it again. If that is the case, you will need a spare User account to create a dummy User to fill all these roles.
The first step to creating a dummy user is to create a new email address, preferably one that multiple managers have access to.
Use that email address to create a new User:
Setup > Users > New User
- Be sure to indicate User License = Salesforce
Now you can have this dummy “Super User” fill all the roles above, and it will never have to be updated as long as people have access to the email address, login, and password.
