Deleting users

What happens when a member of our organization ceases to be a member of our organization?

Moreover, what happens when it ceases to be a user of the Dew-X system in general?
The latter case is particularly common for separate installations in a customer’s infrastructure.
You can read about how a separate installation differs from a shared installation here

How will the system behave? What about the history? What about pending tasks? Et cetera, etc.

Global (“shared”) version of Dew-X

1. Deletion of one’s account by a user will result in:

• such user will no longer be able to log into the system,
• the organizations that a given user owned (Owner) will be deleted along with all history, documents, instances, process definitions, namespaces, archives, etc. Each member of these organizations will receive an email informing them of this fact. The accounts of these users will not be deleted.

2. Deletion by the administrator or owner of the organization in question will result in:

• the user will no longer have access to the organization in question, including the ability to receive and execute tasks, documents, data, or the history of operations in which the user has participated,
• will still be a Dew-X user. He will be a member of other organizations and will be able to create or join more organizations.

Separate installation (on-premises)

Deletion of an account (by the user) or by the administrator will have the following consequences:

• that user will not be able to log into the system,
• a message about account deletion will be sent to his e-mail address.

Note: if this user was an Owner in some organization, deleting the account will delete this organization and all history, documents, instances, process definitions, namespaces, archives, etc. Every member of that organization will receive an email informing them of this fact, but their accounts will not be deleted.

That’s why we recommend that if installed on a customer’s infrastructure, users should not create “production” organizations that are relevant to the company. Even if their accounts are not deleted, they can still delete organizations created by themselves. Such organizations should be created by technical users. Of course, there is no obstacle to serial users creating for themselves any “test” organizations or for their own purposes.

What happens to instances of processes that are in progress or have been terminated?

In both of the above cases, provided that entire organizations have not been deleted:

• Completed instances in which the removed user participated: information about the actions performed by the user remains in the history,
• In-progress instances in which the deleted user participated: information about the actions performed by him remains in the history. If someone wants to undo a task to a activity performed by a deleted user, the undoer will have to select another existing user. If the task was to be undone automatically (failure to perform the task within the stipulated time) to a non-existing account, the task will remain where it was¹,
• Instances at the deleted user: tasks will wait until their execution time expires and, according to the process definition, roll back to the previous step² or terminate,
• Instances at the first activity – “remain in a vacuum”¹.

[1] The administrator of an organization can search for them and change their executor or delete them.
[2] If this step was with a contractor who is also no longer there, e.g. the same one, the task will “hang in a vacuum,” but see [1].