Archive Users

[Bhupinder1]

We have LDAP integration for importing user data in servicenow and over the time period user count has moved to large count while only 30% of the records are active and rest are inactive.

Just wanted to know if someone has archived user records specifically and even is it worth do so plus any forthcoming challenges if we move with the archival process?

Any ideas?

[bernyalvarado]

Hi, it all depends on the size of your user table and also a little bit on the business process you have in your company/organizations around your users.

If your user table is so big that you're facing performance issues, then probably it's a good idea to explore which ones could be archived or forever purged. If not, then you're probably good by just having the users set in an inactive state. Also, a normal use case I have seen is the need where an inactive user is required to be reactivated again after either a short or a long period of time. This is often a common use case and a good reason of why not to archive or delete the user records.

I hope this is helpful! Cheers!

Thanks,

Berny

[bernyalvarado]

I should have added that perhaps it's a good idea to make sure that your users are set to inactive in sync to whether they're active or not in your LDAP. In such a case, there's multiple ways companies/organization actually manage to set their inactive users in AD. Just to list some examples:

a) Disabled users are moved into a specific folder in the AD structure

b) Disabled users have a change on their names or on their attributes which flag them as inactive

c) Users are deleted in AD, which then requires some logic in ServiceNow to understand if a user has not been updated through LDAP after a period of time

d) A combination of the above.

Thanks,

Berny

[Bhupinder1]

Thanks Berny for your inputs.

Based on your inputs, I guess the major challenge is if the user gets reactivated again in the system (assuming we kick off the Archive process) and then we can restore the inactivated user. But if the same user gets deactivated in the system then ServiceNow cannot Archive the user record as it has been restored once.

[bernyalvarado]

Hi Bhupinder,

I believe it will be best to qualify what do you mean by archive. I'm going to assume for a second that archive involves deleting the user record.

if the archival/restore occurs on the AD side and the user records are never deleted from ServiceNow, then the scenario it's manageable since you can always leverage the coalesce on the user id (samaccountname) to associate the restored user in AD with the appropriate user in ServiceNow so it can then be turned into active. The piece that can become a big challenge is attempting to restore a user and all its related relationships when a user was previously deleted in ServiceNow. That's why i would strongly recommend to avoid deleting any user records in ServiceNow, unless there's a high certainty that the user information and its related information is not required in the future.

Thanks,

Berny