Question
What happens to tickets after a user is deleted?
Answer
The sections below outline how a user's deletion affects the tickets they interacted with based on their role.
Tickets assigned to the deleted user (for agents)
The agent is removed as assignee and the tickets are reassigned to the agent's group.
If you turned on solved ticket reassignment, you can choose what happens to the solved tickets that are assigned to the deleted agent.
For more information on deleting agents, see the article: Best practices for removing agents.
Tickets requested by the deleted user
You can't delete a user if they're still listed as the requester of any un-closed tickets. If you try to delete the user, you'll get the User is requester on [x number of] tickets that are not closed error message.
Solve the tickets first and wait for them to close before you delete the user. After the user is deleted, their user profile is no longer viewable.
Tickets the deleted user is CC'd on
If the user is CC'd on any un-closed tickets, they're removed as a CC of the ticket. This isn't recorded as an event on the ticket in the same way that the removal of an assignee is recorded in the events log.
For more information on deleting users, see the article: Deleting users.
10 comments
Carlos Medina
Hello,
I am cleaning up the users that no longer work with us but have sent tickets as main requester. Some context: only our internal staff members can send us tickets, so we are talking about a local/internal ticketing system usage.
I want to delete users that are gone, what will happen to those tickets? We want to keep them obviously, but what will happen to them?
None of the users are agents.
Thanks!
0
Russell Chee
Hey Carlos,
Thanks for reaching out on this community post, I hope you are doing well!
Just to clarify, these "internal staff members" are they viewed as "end-users" on your account? If so, and you are looking to maintain their ticket information after you delete them from the account, you may want to consider exporting their tickets out from their Zendesk account and storing it externally.
Unfortunately once you delete an end-user it will remove their ticketing history and that is not retrievable. Hope this helps and take care!
Russell
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Misak Poghosyan
Hello,
What will happen with tickets of a permanently deleted user? Will they be automatically removed after some time as described here?
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408883628954#:~:text=Data%20Deletion%20Timeline%20for%20Structured%20Service%20Data
I am permanently deleting a user and expecting all associated data to be removed(after some time is acceptable).
Thanks!
0
Zsa Trias
Hello Misak,
Deleting a user will not delete any tickets requested by that user.
If you wish to delete tickets as they are associated with the user that you'd like to remove permanently from your account, you can delete them separately: Deleting tickets
0
Laura Hild
When we deleted a support agent, the tickets were assigned to an individual, not a group. How did that happen?
0
Ivan Miquiabas
Thanks for reaching out!
The Normal behavior is that the ticket assigned to the agent <solved will be assigned to the agents group. It will only happen if the group only has one member. If you can confirm that it was really assigned to and individual via checking the Ticket events. Then there might be an issue and would recommend send us a ticket via our channels here so that we can investigate it properly.
Thanks!
0
Evan Hughes
Trying to delete some users but getting that error message that they are a requester on open tickets so can't delete them. How can I check with tickets they are requesters on so I can close them if needed?
0
Audrey Ann Cipriano
Hi Evan Hughes welcome to our Community! :)
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Are you trying to delete agents or end users? To check their open tickets, you can go to the user's profile and click on the dropdown button to see the Requested tickets. See sample screenshot below :)
0
Kimberley Rawl
What about when an organization is deleted? Where do tickets tied to that organization then live?
Thank you!
0
Jimmy Rufo
Will deleting a user also remove their previously submitted tickets from Explore ticket count reporting? I have a case where I'm running a report on monthly ticket volume, and tickets with requester of “Permanently Deleted User” are not showing up in results. The tickets in question are still active in our system, but the requester has been purged.
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