Best practice for retiring users

[Steve Krehbiel]

Hello,

I'd like to know what the best practice is for retiring terminated users.  We'd like to keep their data (E-Mail, OneDrive) for later access, but I want to cut off the accounts from receiving new e-mails, etc.

Thanks!

[#2]

We:

1. Place mailbox on hold
2. Put an out of office reply message
3. Hide address from GAL
4. After 30 days remove the license at which time anyone e-mailing that account will get a bounceback message

[#3]

Thanks much,

If I de-license a user what happens to their OneDrive data??

[#4]

Their boss, as defined in Active Directory, will get an email with a link and then they have a week (or maybe it's 30 days now??) to get files out of it before it is removed.

[#5 · Accepted solution]

You can actually customize this for up to 3650 days now, obviously I havent been able to confirm that first-hand :)

To expand (or maybe correct) on what @Cary Siemers said, a mailbox that's put on hold can be provisioned as Inactive mailbox, allowing you do indefinitely preserve the content for no charge: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn144876(v=exchg.150).aspx

However, in order to actually make the mailbox Inactive, you need to remove the user account. Simply removing the license does not make the mailbox Inactive, instead it will be kept as is because of the hold setting (and will generate an entry in the "users with errors" view). It will also not prevent people from sending new messages to said mailbox.

If you want to keep the data around for quicker access (as getting it out of Inactive mailboxes takes some effort), a better option might be to convert the mailbox to shared.