Have you ever called, emailed or sent a chatter message to a Salesforce record owner only to find out they are no longer with the company? When this happens, it can be a real problem if that exited employee owns many records in your Salesforce instance. When a user leaves a company, a best practice is to transfer the records they own to another active user. Sometimes though there is not an obvious candidate user to transfer all of those records to. In such a case, we recommend you inactivate the exited user until a replacement user can be assigned and let your active users know the status of the exited user with the following methods:
Salesforce Classic
When using Salesforce in Classic Mode you cannot easily tell whether a owner of a record is active or inactive.
Here’s a helpful tip: add the word “Inactive” (or another descriptor that makes sense for your organization) to either end of the user’s first name or to the beginning of their last name. This little addition will now give your active users a visual identifier that another user is no longer active in that Salesforce instance.
Salesforce Lightning
If you have already upgraded to Lightning in your Salesforce instance, you will be happy to know that the User compact layout shows you the active status of the user by default. All you need to do is hover over the user name to see the status.
If you do not see the ‘active’ field in the pop-up window, you may want to ask your Administrator to add that field to their custom compact layout, as needed for your profile(s).
Even with the above administrative work done, it may not be obvious to the hurried or casual user on the status of the user designated as record owner. Following this technique will make it very clear at a glance what the status of that user is.
Some other Considerations
If a user is inactivated in the system, and the record ownership for that user is not transferred to another active user, some bad things can happen. Included in the list are the possible failure of integrations that involve that record, or in some cases the failure of triggers that impact that record. Wherever possible the record ownership should be transferred to another active user, but the above techniques are a helpful way to add additional clarity for your population of active Salesforce users.
If you have any other questions regarding what to do when a Salesforce user leaves the building or would like to learn more about our Salesforce implementation services, contact us today.