Things you should know about disabling a worker (why not delete?)

From Cerberus Helpdesk Wiki

In the 'Workers' tab of 'helpdesk setup', you'll find that each worker has a 'Disabled' option. Is there any difference between disable and delete? This guide will help break that down for you.

The 'Disabled' option is an alternative to the 'Delete' button.

[edit] Disabled

[edit] Ins & Outs

• Login to the Helpdesk is locked.

Your e-mail and password won't work here.

• All existing "Next Worker" assignments (tickets, tasks, ... , opportunities) stay intact, but the worker is removed from the assignment dropdown everywhere else. This way no one can assign him more work. i.e. 'John Smith' will still be set as the "Next Worker" for tickets he was already assigned to, however his name will not be available to select from for tickets he is NOT assigned to.
• If the disabled worker was chosen for a 'Worker' custom field, that field will be unset (no selection). Just like "Next Worker", 'John Smith' will no longer be a selectable option.

John Smith will be deselected from "Who should handle the next reply?" and 'Worker' custom fields when possible.

• Watcher (E-mail Notifications) and Home Notifications are turned off and they will not receive any notifications. You don't have to disable each one by hand.

Watchers will automatically resume when the Worker is enabled again.

[edit] When to use

Workers can be re-enabled later and everything goes back to normal (with those couple of exceptions I noted). Even things like Workspaces are not purged and will be there in the 'home' menu upon returning. Basically take advantage of the disable function when a worker needs to take a leave of absence but is expected to come back to work one day.

But be careful if they are gone for an extended period of time. As mentioned before, tickets and tasks are not released back to the 'anybody' pool so don't let them go unanswered. It's very easy to forget about timely tickets since they don't appear in the unassigned areas of the 'mail' section, like Workflow and Overview's 'Open' sidebar.

[edit] Deleted

[edit] Ins & Outs

Deleted workers are pretty much everything disabled is, but permanent of course.

• Can no longer log in.
• Unlike disabled, all assignments (tickets, tasks, ... , opportunities) are dropped.
• Any objects in the Helpdesk that utilize and display the worker id will lose their referential integrity in the interface. You will no longer see their name, and in its place will be a substitute to imply removal. Remember this only affects the owner label and the actual content and date of creation will NOT be purged. The following examples assume I deleted "John Smith" at john@example.com .

• Sticky Note -> (Deleted Worker). For whatever reason, Comments are attached to the address id and thus the owner label will not be wiped.

Remember contact addresses like john@example.com can be replaced with the first and last names in the address book. So if I clicked into the comment address and saved John Smith, that's what would show here.

• Audit Log -> (auto). Therefore who made or created a property change on a ticket is lost.

Notice the Worker Id with the (auto) values and the fact that John Smith become an "Anybody" in one of the "Next Worker" properties.

• Time Tracking -> A worker. The description in the 'Time Tracking' tab of 'activity' is changed to a generic "A worker tracked # mins on activity Z".

The time entries stay but lose their recorder.

• Opportunities, Organizations, Tasks -> anonymous. Here I'm referring to the 'Notes' tab you see when clicking into an Organization or Opportunity. Task notes were added in 4.3.1 .

See how John Smith was replaced by anonymous in the notes.

• Worker data is removed from reports. You can no longer see his or her statistics in reports like 'Time Spent Per Worker'.

The John Smith bar graph and description box would be gone!

[edit] When to use

Deleting a worker is a good way to clean house in one swoop. Like I said there are a couple of exceptions where data integrity may be lost but generally speaking the actual content of past messages, comments, tasks, and notes, is kept. If you don't care about keeping performance reports and don't mind losing a couple of "who made this or that change", then deleting a worker may be something to consider.

With that said, why delete workers at all and just disable them to be safe? Normally you would be right, go for the disable lever first. But you may need to go with delete in one important situation...

[edit] Disabled workers take up a license slot (upgrade your license or delete your workers)

Most people rightfully want to err on the cautious side and never delete a worker out of the system. However there is one scenario where you might want to take that route against your better judgement. Our worker-based licensing is priced around how many total workers you have registered in your Helpdesk, and unfortunately the total includes "disabled" workers. Thus it's very easy to run out of free slots and the only way to effectively fix the problem is to go ahead and delete the worker OR to buy more workers for your license. If you can't afford the upgrade cost than you will need to delete workers...sorry.

Note that if you can afford an Unlimited license, you will be able to disable workers and add new ones as often as you like.