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Recover (soft) deleted user

Not Planned


Posted May 28, 2019

When you delete a ticket, you can still recover it (within 30 days) in case you've made a mistake.

A deleted user can't be recovered, only permanently deleted. I'd love to see the functionality (both in the UI as API) to recover a soft deleted user.

With kind regards,

Sebastiaan


19

15

15 comments

Official

image avatar

James Hanley

Zendesk Product Manager

Hey folks, James here from the Zendesk Product Team

I apologize for the delay on our end in providing you with a response to this feature request, it does date back many years.

There are some really valid points raised in this thread. I believe that when permanently delete users (GDPR delete) was implemented, we required a renaming of what was then just "Delete user" and I do think "Soft delete" was selected but in retrospect, was probably the wrong name and misleading. 

I'm going to look into what re-terming soft delete would look like in the short-term. In the long-term I've also added the Ability to undelete users to our backlog tool to ensure it continue to be evaluated with respect to other feature requests, but at this time we are not able to commit to building this feature.

I'm going to mark this post as “not planned”, but leave it open for further comments and upvotes, 

If you are interested in learning more about this and other features being built please make sure to check out and follow our Community eventsWhat’s New Community Topic, and Zendesk Updates. Again, I apologize for our delay and appreciate you being a valuable Zendesk Community member.

0


I have the same problem.

I use Proactive campaigns and this API delete some users.

I cannot recover soft deleted users.

3


Recover a deleted user seems like basics, and ZD not supporting this even though a support ticket is crazy

The delete button is placed in the triangle menu (top right in the user's view) - where you think this type of option will exist whereas your best practice page suggests that you should do 2 actions when an agent leaves the company - downgrade the user and then suspend the account. It's unlikely that anyone with no prior knowledge will even see those options as relevant without reading about it somewhere and there's no real motive to search for it.

The warning says "Are you sure you wish to delete the agent **? This will unassign all tickets assigned to this agent that have status less than Closed." alert before you delete it.

The other outcomes from this action are NOT written:

  • Typically, Zendesk warns you before doing permanent actions. This does not
  • This destroys statistics

 

8


We really need to be able to recover a deleted user. What is the point of having a soft delete if you can't recover the user? An agent left our organization, and his manager deleted his user account because he was not aware of the best practice, so now we have lost the information on tickets that he handled.

If there is not going to be the ability to recover a soft-deleted user, then as Sebastiaan wrote, there should be a different warning that is displayed when deleting an agent, and it should include the link to the best practices.

7


 
I'm amazed that this isn't a bigger issue. Not having the option to recover a user after a soft delete is ludicrous. I know I'm not the only one that has had or is having this issue. Please mark this as product feedback and at the very least change documentation to reflect the proper information regarding a user "Soft Delete" it's very misleading and can be a real waste of time.

5


A Soft Delete that you cannot recover is not a soft delete.

This is absolutely ridiculous, and very user hostile.

 

The Delete button is way too easy to hit for there not to be an undelete.

Especially considering zendesk's buggy interface.

6


(sorry for the wall of text)

I struggle to understand why "soft delete" is a thing if there's no way to sift thru the trashcan to find something you wind up needing, especially since the prompt to confirm a deletion just warns about assigned tickets and personal macros (and mentions nothing about reporting or KB articles). We have user accounts deleted as far back as two years ago still sitting there that we can't do anything with. 

As for suspending users, the "Suspend access" language implies it just prevents that person from logging in, but for many organizations (like ours) who utilize SSO, once their AD account is turned down, it inherently breaks authentication.

Since the warning is so light, nothing about it being irreversible (despite the word "delete"), and suspended users still show up alongside every other user just about everywhere, suspending users just adds to user bloat and just adds value to deleting them instead. You shouldn't downgrade a user from Staff to End User either, as that has it's own chaos. 

What I feel should be applied to deleting a user:

  1. Add everything to the warning of what will happen and what will break
  2. In that warning, offer to suspend instead
  3. Move suspended users into their own separate list
  4. Hide them from any Role, Organization, or other active list that shows users to cut down on that bloat

Or turn "soft delete" into suspending a user, and "permanent delete" become a multi-step process with varying levels of confirming that will actually delete someone. 

5


I completely agree with the previous comments. This is really a critical feature to properly administrate this database and UI. Having suspended users being displayed in the UI everywhere that you see the user list is so un-user friendly and my agents are complaining frequently. We have 2.5 times the suspended users over active users in the database. We are not deleting them because of exactly the issues defined here. 

I understand the difference between "soft" and "permanent" for compliance regulations but "soft" is EXTREMELY misleading. What would a rational person assume based off that name. Why does the suspend validation window have such a major warning and delete is just are you sure? These comments have been here for 2 years now. Can we get this changed or at least get an answer? There is not one response here from either a moderator or employee.

I would like to restate Tim's suggested changes, as I disagree a little bit.

Suspend a User

  1. Warning stays the same.
  2. User moved to different table in the database that is not queried by any standard lookups. For all intensive purposes, this user appears removed.
  3. Name will appear in all tickets, etc. But you cannot view the user page anymore.
  4. New feature added in Admin Revoke Suspension - this provides a separate table and allows the Agent/Admin to view the user page and choose to unsuspend the account. This feature will have bulk edit capability from the start and access can be set with choice of Agents and Admins or Admins only.

Delete a User

  1. No longer refer to this a "soft" delete. It is delete.
  2. Immediately add full details of this action to the confirmation dialog box so that agent has full understanding of this action. Not every agent has read everything in the Zendesk user guides... I really like the option to suspend instead.
  3. A second confirmation dialog will come up, Are you absolutely sure? Force them to type YES to be sure that it is not some quick clicking that destroys our data.

Compliance Record Removal

  1. Rename permanent delete to Compliance Record Removal to clearly distinguish the purpose of this action. 
  2. Update the tool to do this with a proper description of what the effect and reason for taking this action at the top.
  3. Update the tool to allow sort, search, and bulk action.

3


I would also like to see this be a feature added - the ability to recover a deleted user.  Agree that it's really not a soft delete if it can't be restored.

Thanks.

1


In the Zendesk policy it even mentions that someone on the team can access those soft-deleted users:

"Deleting users from your account soft deletes them, and that means that the users are still in the Zendesk database and accessible on a limited basis only to Zendesk employees with certain database privileges."

If someone on the Zendesk team can still access the information in the database, why can't they recover the deleted users when requested by the account owners?  This is a shady practice to allow Zendesk access to these users but not the account owners who request this data. Why does Zendesk need it?  What are they doing with it?

This is not a "soft delete" if the data can't be restored and it is CLEAR that people are asking for this in times of a mistake being made. Holding client data hostage is not a great policy. 

1


Really would prefer that undelete be a real action...its takes me back to my childhood where I was behind the counter at a store with a jar full of chocolate candy and I reach for it and my hand hits the glass...I can see it and even smell it but I just can't have it.  :-)  Please, Please, Please...

1


Why can't it be possible to undo deleted users!!!!!

You can see the deleted users but you can only delete users permanently.

It can't be that hard to implement a change to deleted users so there is an undo button. So if you by accident delete wrong user - that user can be restored back to before the delete. So historie, tickets, reports and other actions that user has made in Zendesk products.

2


Not providing a minimum time threshold to recover some data is unacceptable, a data recovery policy must make sense, most importantly, it must follow the best practices (as stated above).

What’s the advantage of seeing the deleted users list and not being able to recover those that were deleted less than hour earlier? That's not “data recovery policy”, it’s nonsense.

1


James Hanley 

any updates on the undelete option?

0


Zendesk Team,


This issue needs to be prioritized and added to your roadmap. It is critical to address the lack of functionality to undelete a deleted user. While a user can be recreated, the linked tickets are neither visible nor re-linkable.

0


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