[horde] What to do when removing user

[Mike Bydalek]

Eric:

To reply to all your comments: I totally agree with you, but the fact of the
matter is, people aren't perfect.  I'm was just trying to play the Devil's
advocate by providing some worst case scenarios. I guess my main point is to
just keep the user informed.  If all that should be done is after clicking
to delete "jsmith" a warning saying "All data will be lost, etc. etc., are
you sure?" then so be it.

To me, Horde is great because of all the different options it presents, so
presenting several options when deleting a user wouldn't be out of line.  If
I have an employee who is a manager or something, and he leaves, it would be
great for me to just delete him and have all his objects now belong to me
(or his replacement, etc.) without having to go through and say "okay, what
turba objects did he create?  Kronolith calendars?  Nag lists?  Mnemo pads?
Etc."  Even when you delete a user in *nix, you are still presented with the
option "Do you wish to delete /home/<user>?"  If not, you go over it later.

> I'd rather that when I ask for it to delete a user's data, it 
> does so, then to have my DB grow forever with no easy way to 
> maintain it.

This I'm not sure I get what you are saying.  I didn't say "Don't ever
delete user data," just to have an option to or not.  If you don't opt to
delete their data, then at least get rid of 100% certain non-shared data
while keeping potentially shared data in tact with of course a list of it so
you can review it later.

Regards,
Mike

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eric Rostetter [mailto:eric.rostetter at physics.utexas.edu] 
> Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2004 3:02 PM
> To: horde at lists.horde.org
> Subject: RE: [horde] What to do when removing user
> 
> 
> Quoting Mike Bydalek <mbydalek at mobilemini.com>:
> 
> > If you really don't want to do this, then I would say at least one 
> > thing to incorporate when initially developing this is to 
> at least put 
> > an option to "Change all <jsmith> objects to me" (or something) so 
> > that way then nothing critical can be accidentally deleted.
> 
> What is to then stop you from deleting that critical info?  
> If the info is critical, you better know about it before 
> hand, and have a plan to deal with it before hand.
> 
> > The only reason why I say this is
> > because I can see someone deleting "jsmith" only to find 
> out later he 
> > owned the calendar for AR or payables or something important.
> 
> Or, they transfer ownership from jsmith to tsmith, only to 
> find out tsmith isn't authorized to view/edit that info, and...
> 
> > > I think we will delete everything for now, if someone 
> comes up with 
> > > a patch for a better solution, fine.
> > 
> > I think this is far too dangerous.
> 
> As I said above: have a plan to deal with important info, and 
> have it before it comes time to delete users.  Trying to 
> create a plan afterwards, or at the time of deletion, is just 
> asking for problems.
> 
> > Take a setup where one person installed
> > everything, from setting up the calendars, to creating the 
> task lists 
> > and importing all the turba entries.  This person leaves 
> and he gets 
> > deleted
> > (naturally) along with everything he did (doh!)
> 
> That would be considered a poorly run organization.  Perhaps 
> the one person who sets it up should do so under an 
> admin/operator account, that is under a generic account, not 
> under his personal account.  Then this account does not need 
> to be deleted (though of course you may want to change the 
> password, etc).
> 
> > this?  Deleting everything automagically is just too MS for me, ie. 
> > delete an exchange mailbox, and it deletes the NT user account!!
> 
> I'd rather that when I ask for it to delete a user's data, it 
> does so, then to have my DB grow forever with no easy way to 
> maintain it.
>  
> > Regards,
> > Mike
> 
> -- 
> Eric Rostetter
> The Department of Physics
> The University of Texas at Austin
>  
> Why get even? Get odd!
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