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How to Make External Users Inactive or Delete Users
Who is this article for?Please Review Users deleting and making users inactive.
Please Review Administrators have permissions to delete users.
Making external users inactive allows organisations to restrict their access while preserving their data, making it an ideal choice when a temporary suspension of access is needed. Deleting external users permanently removes their presence and data, ensuring a clean and controlled user management process within the platform.
Making External Users Inactive or Deleting External Users
Most external user directories have a concept of a user being active/inactive or enabled/disabled and this is mapped into Please Review so, once synchronised, the user will automatically be set to inactive in Please Review when they are deactivated in the external directory.
For external user sources which can synchronise user details, it is not possible to make an external user active or inactive from within Please Review itself. This does not apply to external sources such as SAML2 where the authentication details are manually configured.
Note: Before the synchronisation process has run, the external directory will refuse to authenticate an inactive user, so they will be unable to log in once they are deactivated.
It is possible to use the ‘delete’ button to permanently delete an external user from Please Review. However, if using locked workgroups and the user still exists in the external directory, that user record will be re-created in Please Review (with a different unique ID number) when next synchronised.
It's possible to disable a user from being authenticated via a given login method by using the ‘edit’ link next to the login name field on the edit user screen. This will prevent a user logging in using that method. If a user has no login sources available, they cannot login and will not take up a user license. Any reviews they own will be completed and the user will be treated as being inactive within Please Review.
However, if the user is edited in this fashion and they are a member of any locked workgroups, the automatic synchronization process will cause the third-party login authentication to be added back onto their Please Review account. This will (normally) re-activate their account and cause the user to take up a license again.
Note: Temporarily disabling users to artificially manage licenses in a standard named user license is against the terms of any license agreement.