When an employee leaves the organization, companies often perform various tasks to safeguard the assets they manage, both at the hardware level and their data. With respect to this last point, electronic mail is generally one of the most important parts of the information that is handled.
Following Microsoft best practices, there are several steps you can take to manage an employee when unsubscribed from Microsoft 365, including:
-The first step is to log out and lock the user’s account. This can be done by selecting the user from the Microsoft 365 admin center -> Active users -> Block sign-in. If Active Directory synchronization is implemented, you will need to lock the user from the Active Directory Users and Computers window and the changes will be replicated to the cloud.
– Optionally, it is advisable to delete the groups to which the user belongs, permissions on SharePoint sites, delegations of shared mailboxes, and other information that is no longer needed, eg: the manager of the former employee.
– To preserve email messages, you can convert that user to a shared mailbox. In this way, up to 50GB of messages can be stored without the need to occupy a license. Other users can later be given access to read the contents of that mailbox.
– For OneDrive, even if the Microsoft 365 license is removed, it keeps the content hidden as long as the user is not removed from the system. In this case, the recommendation is to first assign permissions to other users so that they can read and / or backup the information they need from the former collaborator. This can be done by logging into the user’s OneDrive -> Settings -> More Settings -> Site Collection Administrators
– Finally, some applications such as Stream or Planner allow the information to be exported or downloaded, while others do not allow it, so it is always advisable to maintain the user’s account.
In case of doubt you can always change the password, re-enable the login and assign a license to search for any important content.
