An inactive user would be any user that has not signed onto a site for a period of time. Their data is still in your system, but they are no longer active or engaged with your app. And this could be due to a variety of factors, including users taking some time off or losing interest. Inactive users cause many issues for administrators. 

When one user registers, they could be set inactive but never erased. Most companies wind up with even more inactive than active users over time. 

An inactive user can stay attached to your company in many different ways. For instance, can also observe members and get messages. In addition, you can use subscriptions.

These users are sometimes called ‘zombie’ users. They can make app development, debt cleaning, and corporate splits and mergers harder.  They also lead to many security risks. Finding and removing any links with such users from the company can be a difficult task. This is because they link by username, email, or ID. It is best to spot these users and erase their connections. You can also swap them with current users.

Let’s have a glance at where we may find inactive users and how we should manage them.

What Are Inactive Users?  

Inactive users are any accounts that don’t need access to your services. Think of yourself as a social media feature. You enable users to quickly plan and respond to content. They may only understand the value of your product. They will continue to pay for it when they use the feature to complete their goals.

Some people log in but don’t perform the functions for which the product exists. In fact, should still label them inactive.

You can spot inactive accounts by the fact that the users aren’t using them. You can understand this if they sign in to your system for a long time. Besides that, inactive users link to sign-in activities. So you can find them by using the timestamp from the most recent successful sign-in.

The test of this strategy is defining what “for some time” means in your situation. For instance, people may not log in to a system over a period of time during a holiday. When under your delta on inactive user profiles there is something to consider. Think about any reasonable grounds for not logging in to your system. The delta for inactive user accounts in many businesses is around 90 to 180 days.

The more recent sign-ins help provide relevant insight. You can understand a person’s ongoing demand for resource access. It can also assist in deciding whether they need memberships or access or if you should delete it. One can understand whether an exterior user is still functional or if you should remove it.

How to Manage Inactive Users  

Before managing these inactive users, first, understand the process. You should keep clear instructions on the situations that need management. They should keep this in mind when their employees leave your company. Also, you should track whether they are on leave or if the employee won’t be returning.

You can disable users that have not signed in for a specific number of days in a row. If your work is project-based, automated deactivation might be especially handy. When a project is live, your users need access to essential online data. They also need certain tools for working with other companies. You must limit access to sensitive data between projects.

You can deactivate users that will not work with you in the future. Remove users with whom you won’t be working again.

Users who you deactivate don’t have any access to your company’s data. They are unable to sign in or perform API requests. You can also activate these accounts again. This is to recover their former access, privileges, and settings if necessary.

9 Ways to Bring Back Inactive Users 

Inactive users typically sit on the edge. So if you make the right moves, then you can revive them. Several of them will lose interest if left alone.

Important steps to create curiosity about your product:

• Try segmenting to pinpoint users who are leaving. You can give them in-app assistance.

• Use marketing emails to re-engage with such users.

• Allow customer service to contact users before they lose interest.

• Inform users of any key onboarding tasks they may have overlooked.

• One more chance. Give them a reminder and set off FOMO.

• Gather input from dissatisfied consumers and make improvements during trade-offs.

• Ensure account reactivation is as simple as possible for such users.

• To re-engage idle users, send a “what’s happening” email.

• Make important users feel special by offering them discounts, coupons or special prices.

How to Remove Inactive Users 

Cleaning up such users is as important as just deactivating them. Even after they are no longer in use, their presence may still create problems within your system.

• User Privileges:  When you deactivate a user, you must erase any permissions. You can do this through the Setup or Settings Menu. If you need to reactivate the user, later on, you can grant them privileges based on the new status.

• Account licences: Accounts are also associated with a variety of licences. For instance, permission set licences, package licences and licences. When you remove an account, you should also delete the links to these licensed objects.

• Data Access: Users are commonly linked to other accounts. Current users having to report to a manager that is inactive creates problems. It can generate security issues for the current user. 

• EmailAn email (or electronic mail) is a method of exchanging communications through the internet. It is one of the most used features on the web and the number one mean... Address: If such users are not bad enough, then email addresses are worse. Their inactive email addresses are also hidden in your database somewhere. You can deactivate the user, but they will keep getting automatic emails. You could also disable their business email address. However, that won’t work for external partners and consultants.

• Group Members: We recommend that you discard such users from accessible groups. Remove these group memberships or transfer them.

• Sharing Folders: Such users have access to many resources in your company. For instance, email templates, report folders, documents, as well as dashboards. Think about deleting any users who are no longer active from queues, roles, and groups. 

• Record Possessions: Such users keep ownership of objects they generated. This is beneficial in some circumstances for record keeping. You may also want to change ownership of records to a trustworthy manager or a current member of the team.

Pros

Here are some pros to managing inactive users.

• Managing such users keeps your database as refined and fine-tuned as possible.

• Any queries or backup processes will occur much faster.

• It allows you to keep your privacy secured and minimises risks such as breaches of data.

Cons 

Here are some ways inactive users pose risk to your business.

• Such users put your businesses’ security at risk. Each of these profiles provides a means for a malicious user to gain access to information.

• Such Users also consume directory database space that you can bring back.

• Employees who have left the company may misuse their user information. They can gain access to the company’s network and resources.

• They can damage the network and compromise many important and classified accounts.

Tips 

Check out these tips for managing and deleting any inactive accounts that you find.

• You should do monthly checks for user profiles that don’t update their passwords in 6 months. 

• Before deleting any account, first, disable it for some time in case an employee needs to return.

• Move all these accounts to an OU and link them to a GPO. Thus removing all permissions and access.

• Make sure these inactive accounts are no longer part of any group memberships or teams.

• Keep HR in the loop on disabled accounts and the deletion process.

Best Practices

Are you looking for some of the best practices for dealing with and removing inactive users? Then refer to these points.

• User Privileges: Tidy up all permissions. You can also clean up permit and member links. Also, name such users as limited access profiles. Switch such users to a Limited Access profile. This is because you can’t delete the Account.

• Data Access: Delete such users from every group, role, or queue. Also, transfer inactive management and approver user access to active accounts.

• Links to Data: Swap out such users for people you can trust. You can also remove the data resources, but be mindful of unexpected outcomes. When the related user is inactive, certain data may stop functioning. The most well-known instance is the dashboard. It stops working when you deactivate the active user.

• Email Address: Replace old email addresses found in your data with current ones. In addition, usernames and email addresses frequently appear identically. To separate a username from an inactive email address, consult data API instructions.

• Sharing Folders: Remove mentions of such users from folders or sharing policies. These systems are already complicated. They don’t need all these users also weighing them down. Remove rules on manually sharing that relate to such users. This will simplify sharing adjustments and also improve company-wide sharing.

• Record Possessions: Wherever you need historical analysis, keep the records. However, consider swapping out such users with active group members. Re-locating data between different companies also has a big effect. One case in which this has a big effect is if you have to remap inactive owners to active users. Some deactivated owners also make divisions and mergers more difficult.

In Conclusion

An inactive user is one who has not logged in to a website for a period of time.

Although their data remains in your system, they are no longer active or engaged with you. This could be due to many reasons, such as consumers taking a break or losing interest.

There are ways you can manage such users. You can disable users that have not signed in for a specific number of days in a row. If your work is project-based, automated deactivation might be especially handy. Some people log in but don’t perform the functions for which the product exists. You should still label them inactive.

In some instances, accounts, cases, and opportunities could get granted to inactive users. In most situations, this includes historical data that you must not alter. These links are still helpful for reporting. 

You can issue package licences to such users. For this, you can find yourself paying for a sponsored product that you can’t use. While on the subject of losing licence money, there is another situation to pay attention to. This is when a current user has the necessary licence but not the necessary permissions. Or even the right permissions but not the appropriate licence.

Besides that, users present in roles and groups can have an effect on data access. It also affects its visibility. You should delete single memberships in groups and queues.

Which tips did you find the most relevant? Did you find this article helpful? Let us know in the comments below.