Removing User Access to the LXP (Expiration vs. Deletion)

Prerequisites: You need to be an org admin or a user manager to remove a user's access to the platform.

Summary: To remove a user's access to the platform one can either delete or expire the user's account. This is an important decision as there are implications to both approaches. In general, Learning Pool always recommends expiring user accounts rather than deleting them.

There are two different ways to remove a user's access to the platform;

• Delete the user's account
• Expire the user's account

Before we address the "how to" for each, it's important to understand the implications of each approach.

Expiration vs. Deletion

When a user account becomes expired due to the date set in their account's Expires At field being in the past, the following for that account holds true:

• Expired users are prevented from logging in to the system but their data is still retained.
  • Enrollments are not affected for expired users.
  • Expired users will still be a part of reports generated by the platform.
    
    • Expired users can be excluded from My Team reports by an administrator activating Remove expired users from the My Team reports in the UI/UX service.
      
      
      
      
• Emails generated and sent to users (notifications, etc.) are not suppressed for expired users.
• Expired users can be easily reactivated by admins without the need to contact Support.
• Expired users maintain historical reporting data in Analytics.
• Expired users do not incur any usage or seat charges, as they are no longer considered active users. As such, expiring user accounts accomplishs the same thing as deleting user accounts from a billing perspective. 

Alternatively, user accounts can be deleted from the platform using the Remove User action on the Users page of the Administration panel. The following holds true for deleted accounts:

• Deleted users are soft-deleted, meaning their data is still in the system but not visible. To restore a deleted user, administrators need to open a Support case with Learning Pool and we can recover the user.
• No user is ever fully purged from the system unless there is a specific GDPR deletion request sent to Learning Pool Support.

Given the above, expiring user accounts allows administrators flexibility to easily reactivate accounts, maintain better data integrity for reporting, and prevent accidental permanent data loss, and as such is the recommended approach to removing user access to the platform.

Expiring a User Account

The expiry status of a user account is dictated by whether the date entered into the Expires At field in the user's profile has passed or not. As such, to "expire" a user account enter a date into the Expires At field that is in the past. 

In turn, a user account may be "unexpired" and access restored by removing the date from the Expires At field, leaving it blank.

Deleting a User Account

User accounts can be deleted manually by locating the user account on the User page of the Administration page and selecting its Remove User action.

Remember: Deleting a user account in this manner can only be reversed by contacting Learning Pool Support.

If desired, setting an Expires At date or performing the Remove User action can be performed in bulk via CSV import as detailed on the User provisioning via CSV article.