When the time comes to remove a user from a G Suite domain, administrators are faced with 2 apparently mutually exclusive goals:

  • Delete the user account to recover the almanac seat license fee
  • Preserve all the information in the user account in the outcome that the data is still needed

K Suite domain administrators tin square that circumvolve with these unproblematic deprovisioning steps.

ane. Alter the Departing User's Countersign

Changing the parting user's password accomplishes two goals. First, information technology locks the user out of the account, preventing any post-departure access (malicious or otherwise). 2nd, it allows you, the admin, to log into that business relationship to perform any changes or data transfers not possible from the G Suite Administrator Command Panel. (If the account has 2-Pace Verification installed, you'll need to disable it, as well.)

You tin change the user's password from the Users & Organization Tab in your Control Panel. After selecting a new countersign, be sure to click the Reset Sign-In Cookies link to finish any logged-in sessions the parting user may still exist running.

two. Download a Snapshot of the User Account for Safekeeping

Downloading the consummate contents of a user account to an offline file is a best do earlier altering or deleting the business relationship. This preserves the information in the user'southward core G Suite—Gmail, Contacts, Calendar, Bulldoze and Sites— as it was earlier the deprovisioning process, maintaining records-retention compliance and ensuring no vital data is lost.

To consign your user's data, Google recommends the following:

  1. Open the data consign tool.
  2. Tip: To practice this from the Google Admin console: at the tiptop right, click Open Open, and nether Tools, click data export.
  3. Click Start export.

3. Place an Business relationship "Executor"

Someone at your organization is going to inherit the departing user's responsibilities, and thus their data—at least in the short run. Identify that employee, as he or she will go the Executor of the data in the departed account, transferring or responding to it as needed. (In many cases, the Domain Administrator and the Executor are one in the aforementioned, and so you may be giving all these permissions to yourself.)

4. Fix the Departing User's Holiday Machine-Responder

Log into the departing user'southward business relationship with the new password, then gear up the vacation auto-responder to inform correspondents that the user is no longer with your organization, and to identify to whom they should straight all future inquiries. (Likely this volition exist the aforementioned Executor). Be sure to enable the auto-responder for recipients both inside and exterior your domain.

v. Consul Admission to the Parting User'due south Electronic mail

The account Executor will need admission to whatever awaiting correspondence in the parting user's mailbox, peculiarly if the departure was sudden or occurred on less than friendly terms. Fortunately, y'all can designate access to a G Suite mail account to anyone else on your domain.

The delegate—who, again, will probable be the Executor—won't be able to change account permissions, passwords or chat on the original user's behalf, but the delegate tin ship and receive mail from the business relationship until it is suspended or deleted. To delegate postal service admission, log into Gmail every bit the departed user and follow the delegation instructions in the Mail Settings menu.

six. Transfer Ownership of the Departing User'south Google Docs

When the business relationship that owns a Google Doc, Google Canvass or Google Slide is deleted, that certificate is deleted likewise—even if it was shared with other domain users. Put more only, deleting a user deletes every critical document that user always created.

Fortunately, the G Suite Administrator Control Console offers a method to bulk-transfer buying of all a user'south Google Drive documents to some other domain user'south business relationship. In other words, yous can make the Executor the owner of all Docs from a departing user, in a thing of seconds, ensuring that this information stays online and accessible even after the original owner is de-provisioned. The Executor tin can then transfer individual certificate ownership on a instance-by-case basis.

vii. Add together the Departing User's Contacts to the Thou Suite Directory

If you have enabled contact sharing to create a mutual G Suite Directory of business organisation-oriented contacts for your domain, y'all may want to add at least some of the parting user's Contacts to the Directory. If the departing user was the exclusive point of reference for a key customer or partner, you may want to brand that external contact'due south accost bachelor to everyone. In that location is no native functionality for adding external contacts to the Directory, simply the free version of SherpaTools allows administrators to import contacts in bulk to the Directory, and for individual users to share contacts with the Directory.

8. Delegate Access to the Departing User's Calendars

If the parting user managed a shared agenda, or but had a serial of company appointments that the Executor must at present manage, information technology is of import to transfer control of those calendars. Only log in every bit the parting user, and so follow the Share With Specific Users instructions to give the Executor the Edit Events And Manage Sharing admission level for the advisable calendars. The Executor can then dole out agenda permissions as needed.

9. Transfer Ownership of the Departing User's Groups

From the G Suite Administrator Command Panel, select Users, select the departing user'south business relationship, then select Groups to run across a listing of all groups of which the departing user is a member. Then click the Edit Group Membership link. Add the Executor as a member to each of these groups and, if the parting user is the Owner of the group, elevate the Executor to Owner status. The Executor tin can then later assign Ownership to the appropriate employee(s).

10. Inspect the Parting User'southward Non-Core G Suite Services

While Thou Suite domains direct command a user's Gmail, Docs, Contacts, Calendars and Sites, a G Suite domain business relationship can exist used to access dozens of non-core M Suite services, including AdWords, Google Analytics, Blogger, Feedburner, Google Voice and YouTube. When you finally delete the departing user, his or her non-cadre accounts will also be deleted—along with all the content in those accounts. Yous don't want your website'due south Feedburner RSS feed or Google Analytics account to disappear when you lot delete the parting user.

Most of these not-core services have straightforward methods for transferring ownership of, or access to, an account. Virtually all of them enable adequate data consign via Google's Takeout. Log into every non-cadre Google service your system uses with the departing user's credentials, so assess whether fundamental data needs to exist transferred before y'all delete the departing user.

You should perform the same steps for any G Suite Marketplace products installed on your domain to ensure no critical functionality or data is lost when you lot remove the departing user's account. All the Marketplace Apps installed on your domain are listed in the 1000 Suite Administrator Command Panel.

11. Set a Calendar Reminder For Yourself to Delete the Departing User In xc Days

While you're probably broken-hearted to delete an account and immediately recover the $50 annual seat license fee, it's a smart idea to keep the account around for a few months but to make certain that

  • The parting employee isn't reinstated
  • No critical information is placed out of easy admission while your organisation adjusts to the divergence
  • Your not-core services audit was authentic and consummate

12. Delete the Parting User'south Account

Yes, finally.

Here are the steps:

  • Sign in to your Google Admin console.
  • From the Admin console Dwelling page, go to Users.
  • In the Users listing, find the user. For details, run into find a user business relationship.
  • Betoken to the user y'all desire to delete and click More than and and then Delete user.
  • If yous're a delegated admin, cheque the boxes to ostend that you understand the bear on of deleting the account.

To transfer buying of user content, you must exist a super admin:

  • Bank check the boxes next to each choice that you want.
  • In the Transfer to box, enter the showtime few characters of the user'southward name or email address that you lot desire to transfer the files to. When you see the account you want, select it.
  • Click Delete User or Delete Users.

When the data is transferred and the account deleted, Google volition email the contacts you set in "Company contour" and then "Profile" and then "Contact information".

thirteen. Create a Grouping With the Aforementioned Mail Address As the Deleted User

Just because you deleted a departing user doesn't mean people outside your arrangement will stop sending him or her important emails.

While your domain's catch-all email address can handle these misdirected emails, you lot may non desire the catch-all recipient to exist the only person dealing with the departed user's correspondence. Instead, set up a Grouping with the aforementioned email accost equally the ane formerly used by the deleted user, then add the Executor and whatsoever other relevant recipients to the Grouping. This volition ensure that anyone who didn't receive the motorcar-responder has his or her mails routed to the appropriate recipient.

Follow these steps and you tin can remove a G Suite user from your domain with minimal adventure to your data and your business. Setting upwardly and editing external mail service servers in conjunction with calculation or removing users can exist a circuitous process.

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