What does delete user actually do in Jira On Demand

[Vicki Lea Tsang]

I've been asked by a user about deleting user accounts in Jira and have been having a very difficult time finding an actual concrete explanation of what exactly happens. People seem to suggest that it shouldn't be done since it will ruin history, but I tried to delete a user via the UI in our cloud version and found that it didn't appear to do much of anything at all. The only impact of deleting a users appears to be that "[X] Inactive" appears by the name and the user does not appear in the user management.

However, I also found that nothing else was touched - all the comments are still present, all the tickets are there - none of the history seems to be ruined at all. And users can still click on the username and see information about that user. So what gives? How is delete user deleting anything at all?

[Joe Pitt]

I don't use cloud so it may just inactivate users when you click delete. The server instance actually deletes the user. I suggest reviewing the cloud documentation

[Vicki Lea Tsang]

Thanks Joe.  Good to know about the server version. Unfortunately I can't seem to find a definitive explanation in any of the cloud documentation. 

[Syauqi]

Hi Vicki,

Deactivating/Deleting the user from user management would only prevent the user from accessing the site. The work that was done on the Cloud will still exist to prevent confusions for other users.

To preserve institutional knowledge, project authorship and business records and to prevent confusion for other people who use your site, we won't automatically delete the following (but you or your administrator can do so on a case-by-case basis): 

• Your projects, issues, and comments. You can delete the projects and issues you've created yourself before you deactivate your account. For more information on deleting issues, see Editing multiple issues at the same time. For more information on deleting projects, Jira Cloud administrators can see Creating, editing, deleting, and hiding projects.
• Personal data in free-form text. If you or someone else includes personal data, such as your name, email address, or phone number, in a Jira Cloud project or issue field, it will remain in Jira Cloud until the project, issue, or your site is deleted. You can use the global search function within the product to locate specific personal data terms in free-form text and remove it using the edit tools where permitted. To manually edit and remove data from an issue and its history, edit the free-form text field, clone the issue, and then delete the issue. 

However, personal data will be removed once user(s) is deleted from the user management which includes:

• Your full name

• Your nickname

• Your job title
• Your department
• Your organization
• Your location
• Your time zone
• Your email address
• Your Atlassian profile picture

You can find out more on from this documentation: Jira Cloud: Right to erasure or in general: Atlassian Cloud: Right to erasure.

Cheers, Syauqi

[Joe Pitt]

To build on @Syauqi; 

Users should be made inactive not deleted. JIRA uses a pointer to the user’s DB entry to display user information. If you delete a user when you open a JIRA issue the user worked on anywhere the user that would be displayed will cause a SQL error. Even if the user never logged on, if they were assigned a ticket the history of the ticket will get an error when you display it.

[Vicki Lea Tsang]

Thanks for the responses Ahmad and Joe, however, I'm still confused. If deleting a user creates such errors - why does the UI allow me to do it? And secondly, I still see email address, Full Name and potentially timezone of the user after deletion (this was a dummy user, so I don't think any of the other fields were filled out).

In general, I never delete users - just deactivate, but I'm being asked for GDPR purposes so deactivation doesn't go far enough, which is why I started to look into deletion. The impression I get is that it's up to the individual user to obfuscate their identity in Atlassian ID and there is not much I can do as an admin (since we dont manage accounts). My next question then is - since users now have centralized Atlassian IDs - what happens if a user only wants to be erased in one of the instances their account is associated with?