How to deactivate or archive users

[Michael-Wolf]

Bitbucket does not seem to have deactivate or archive users option. How can one temporarily archive or deactivate a user without necessarily deleting the user and tempering with the repositories connected to their account? 

[Caterina Curti]

Hi @Michael-Wolf,

Let's start by understanding which User directories are in place. Are all users internal or are you also using external user directories?

After this we want to understand if the users are getting the "licensed" user permission because they are added to the Global Permissions directly as users or via a group they belong to.

If the users are from an external directory and they are licensed users because of a group that they belong to in the external directory, the change will need to be done in the external directory and synchronized in Bitbucket Server.

Checking for user details

For each user, you can check the source directory (internal or external) by accessing the users' list:

<Bitbucket URL>/admin/users

By browsing to each user, you can then see if the user is a "BITBUCKET USER" or UNLICENSED. Simply click on the user name from the user list or browse to the user directly:

<Bitbucket URL>/admin/users/view?name=<username>

Overview of licensed users

We have an article about How do I find which users count against my Bitbucket Server license?. This contains a handy tool to retrieve the full list of licensed users.

Use case check

Can you share the use case for deactivating users in Bitbucket Server?  

Cheers,

Caterina - Atlassian

[Amit Kumar]

Hi @Caterina Curti & @Rodrigo M ,

I also have the same question. So we are using Internal LDAP Directory to delegate the authentication. So, as per my understanding if we have provided the group which has been configured in the 'Default Group Memberships' then he would be utilising a license and if that group has been removed then it wouldn't consume license. If it is true then it should hold true for Admins as well. But in our case when we remove the groups from the Admins then they the license count is not decreasing.

[Rodrigo M]

Hello Amit!

I would suggest checking:

• confirm the user/group has been removed from the external LDAP directory
• Go to Administration -> User Directories and hit synchronize on the related external directory
• Make sure the user or group is not listed on the Global Permission page
• Check the license count

You can check all users consuming a valid license in the How do I find which users count against my Bitbucket Server license? document.

Cheers!

Rodrigo

[Johannes Kilian]

> Confirm the user/group has been removed from the external LDAP directory

That's not an option - as all users, which are still in our organization have to be part of our central LDAP directory and Bitbucket is not the only user for this LDAP directory.

We have quite a few colleagues, who once needed Bitbucket - but don't need it anymore (for example after switching the department). Those Licenses should be able to be freed without removing the user from LDAP directory.

[Rodrigo M]

Hello Michael

If you would like to deactivate a user, you can simply revoke the Global Permissions for that user. So the user will still exist in your User Directory but will not be able to access BitBucket Server as the user does not have any Global Permissions assigned.

In addition, removing a user's Global permissions will free up his license. It won't remove, on the other hand, any other permissions (i.e. Project, Repositories, Branches) for that user.

Regards
Rodrigo

[Michael-Wolf]

Hi Rodrigo

Thank you for your response. However that does not seem to work. In as far as revoking Global Permissions - it only removes the user's Global Permissions and removes them from the list of users with global permission but does not necessarily free there license. In essence the user still occupies a seat just without global permissions