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June 06, 2005

Expiring Users

We're trying to develop a plan/policy for expiring network/email accounts, and how to deal with both email as well as data files for facutly/staff who leave, and students, both graduating and those who just don't return to school.

During the migration we are creating new accounts in the new email system, as well as on the new domain. Of course we are only creating accounts for currently employed faculty/staff and the accounts created for students will be for those registered for classes this fall.

Part of the migration process is to move data from the old SAN to the new one. All data for non-registered students will be archived and can be accessed at any time. The current plan is to expire accounts, and all associated data after a student as not attended WOU for a time period of ???? 1 year, 2 years, 3 years??

For WOU graduates we'd like to offer lifetime email forwarding. This would mean if a student would like to have a WOU email address we would forward all messages to wherever the student would like. For example if John Doe graduated and his userid was jdoe then we'd setup and alias for him to have all of his email sent. Which we could then modify where all it fowards to. His alias would be jdoe-alumni@wou.edu or something to that effect. This would allow us to reclaim the jdoe userid for new students.

As for staff and non-emeritus faculty we would remove data/email and user accounts once a supervisor has okayed this to happen. The timeline on this could and would be much faster.

All of this is up in the air, and no decisions have been made. Any input would be greatly appreciated. I have created a thread on the forum server for open discussion.

Posted by knabet at June 6, 2005 10:21 AM

Comments

If the data is archived and can be accessed I think a 1 year period is appropriate. Also students should be encouraged to archive their data before leaving school.

Posted by: Shaun at June 6, 2005 12:44 PM

travis - thanks for the direct and explicit communication on these topics. It is much appreciated and will be most helpful for keeping all users in the loop, thus minimizing complaints and surprises (or suprising complaints?)

s.t.

Posted by: steve Taylor at June 6, 2005 01:21 PM