Plan a staff departure across email, shared files and connected applications before deleting the account. The business needs to remove access at the agreed time while preserving authorised records and transferring ongoing responsibilities.
IN THIS ARTICLE
01 Coordinate the departure
- Obtain the approved departure timing and data-handling instructions from the responsible business owner. Identify any retention requirements before making irreversible changes.
- Inventory the employee's mailbox, aliases, groups, calendars, shared files, administrative roles and third-party accounts.
- Assign new owners for business documents, meetings and ongoing conversations. Transfer resources through the product's supported ownership controls.
- At the approved time, suspend or block sign-in as appropriate and revoke sessions, tokens and delegated access. Review recovery contacts and externally shared resources.
- Set an approved routing or reply arrangement for continuing business enquiries. Keep access to the former employee's information limited to authorised people.
- Verify that the replacement owners can perform the required work and that the departed person no longer has access.
- Delete, archive or retain the account only after the data and licensing implications have been reviewed. Record the completed actions and remaining commitments.
02 Example: hand over a departing employee’s mailbox responsibly
Before changing access, agree who is authorised to receive new mail and review retained business records. Follow your organisation's retention and privacy rules. Account departure should not become an unreviewed transfer of all personal or confidential messages to another employee.
Make a handover list covering the mailbox, shared files, calendars, recovery addresses, application passwords and connected devices. A password change may not revoke every existing session or third-party integration. Use the product's supported access-revocation and delegation controls, with the required administrator permissions.
How can we keep customer enquiries from being missed?
Choose an approved method such as a role-based mailbox, delegated access or a carefully worded automatic response. Test the chosen route with a non-sensitive external message. Confirm who owns the response and when the temporary arrangement will be reviewed.
Record any licence or storage implications before deleting a user. Some actions can remove data or change access in ways that are not easy to reverse. Contact us with the email product, affected account and intended outcome if you need help planning the transition. Please do not send the departing employee's password or an unfiltered mailbox export to our team.
Common questions
Does suspending an account automatically stop billing?
Do not assume that. The account state and subscription commitment are separate, so check the ordered service's terms.
Will shared files always survive user deletion?
It depends on ownership and the product's deletion workflow. Verify transfers before deleting the source identity.
Should the manager receive the former employee's password?
Use approved delegation, export or ownership-transfer controls. Passing on the password obscures who accessed the account and can expose unrelated credentials.