14.6 Deleting a Filr User

When users no longer need access to your Novell Filr site, you have two options to revoke their access to the Filr site: disabling or deleting their Filr user accounts.

IMPORTANT:Novell recommends that you disable user accounts instead of deleting them. When you delete a user account, the account can never be re-activated. If there is the slightest possibility that the user might return to your Filr site, disable the user account rather than deleting it. Disabled accounts do not count as a licensed user. For information on how to disable a user, see Section 14.7, Disabling Filr User Accounts.

When you delete a user, the following user information is deleted and cannot be recovered:

  • All profile information, including profile pictures

  • Access controls to workspaces and folders

Entries and information that the user contributed are preserved even after the user is deleted.

How you delete a user depends on how you originally created the user.

14.6.1 Deleting a Local User

Any user account that has been created manually (not created by the LDAP synchronization process) can be deleted as described in this section. To delete a user account that was created by the LDAP synchronization process, see Section 14.6.2, Deleting an LDAP User.

IMPORTANT:If you delete user accounts that were created by the LDAP synchronization process without following the instructions in Section 14.6.2, Deleting an LDAP User, new users with the same name are created the next time the users log in or the next time the LDAP synchronization occurs.

When deleting local users, you should be familiar with the following terms:

User Workspaces: User workspaces are a physical location in the Filr system where information related to the user is stored. When a user’s workspace is deleted, all information within the user’s My Files area is deleted. The user, however, can still access the Filr system.

User Account: User accounts refer to the actual user object in the Filr system. When a user account is deleted, the user’s profile is deleted, and the user is cannot access the Filr system.

To delete local users, (the user workspace only or the user workspace and the user account):

  1. Log in to Filr as the Filr administrator.

    1. Launch a web browser.

    2. Specify one of the following URLs, depending on whether or not you are using a secure SSL connection:

      http://filr_hostname:8443
https://filr_hostname:8443

      Replace filr_hostname with the hostname or fully qualified domain name of the Filr server that you have set up in DNS.

      Depending on how you have configured your Filr system, you may not be required to enter the port number in the URL, and if you are using NetIQ Access Manager, the Filr login screen is not used.

  2. Click the admin link in the upper right corner of the page, then click the Administration Console icon .

  3. In the Management section, click User Accounts.

  4. Select the users whose accounts you want to delete, click More, then click one of the following options:

    Delete User Workspaces: Does not delete the user’s account, but moves the user’s workspace to the trash. The user workspace can be restored from the trash by the Filr administrator.

    Purge User Workspaces: Does not delete the user’s account, but deletes and purges the user’s workspace. The user’s workspace cannot be restored. If the user logs back in, a new workspace is created as if the user is new to the Filr system.

    Purge Users and their Workspaces: Deletes and purges the user’s account and the user’s workspace from the Filr system. The user no longer exists in the Filr system and cannot log in. Neither the user’s account nor the user’s workspace can be restored.

  5. Click Yes to confirm the deletion.

14.6.2 Deleting an LDAP User

User accounts can be synchronized to the Filr site with an LDAP directory. Although you can delete Filr user accounts, Novell recommends that you disable them, as described in Section 14.7, Disabling Filr User Accounts.

If you decide to delete Filr user accounts, it is safer to manually delete them rather than deleting them through the LDAP synchronization process. Because user accounts that are deleted cannot be recovered, you should make sure you know exactly which users you are deleting, and the only way to be sure is by manually deleting them.

Manually Deleting User Accounts That Are Being Synchronized through LDAP

The following method is the preferred for deleting user accounts from the Filr site if the accounts are being synchronized from an LDAP directory:

  1. In your LDAP directory, modify the User objects that you want to delete from the Filr site so that the User objects no longer match the LDAP synchronization criteria that you previously set.

    For information about setting LDAP synchronization criteria, see Section 14.1, Synchronizing Users and Groups from an LDAP Directory.

  2. In Filr, manually delete the user accounts, as described in Section 14.6.1, Deleting a Local User.

Configuring LDAP to Automatically Delete User Accounts

IMPORTANT:Although it is possible to configure LDAP synchronization to automatically delete Filr users and workspaces, this should be avoided because it might result in unwanted deletion of users. For example, if the LDAP context is entered incorrectly and none of the users match the incorrect LDAP context, all of the users are permanently deleted.

For more information about how to configure the LDAP synchronization to automatically delete Filr users and workspaces, see Section 14.1.2, LDAP Synchronization Options.