HN Explorer

Tell HN: Deleting a user account from Google Workspace is a nightmare

23 points by hnthrowaway3 ↗ HN
So I have a Google Workspace account for my business and I wanted to migrate all email/data of an employee who left the business. Previously, as a GSuite user, all it took was a couple of clicks to achieve this. Now, I have to do the following.

1. Login to admin console

2. Select the user and reset their password. You cannot use the "Automatically generate a password". This becomes important later. You instead have to specify a password which meets some security criteria

3. In the Security section for the user, Disable "Login challenge". You now have 10 minutes to get all the next few steps done

4. If you have 2FA enforced in your org, download backup codes for the user

5. Go to home page of Admin Console, click on "Data migration"

6. Select Gmail as source

7. Manually type in the email address of the user you want to migrate email for.

8. Click on "Authorize"

9. You will be taken to a login screen where you enter the user name (again) and password which you specified in step (2)

10. You will be prompted with a 2FA challenge. Click on "Try another way" and enter a backup code you downloaded in step (4)

11. If you made the mistake of choosing the "Automatically generate a password" option in step (2), it will prompt you to choose a new password for this user. Type a new password, type it again

12. It takes you back to the same screen as in step (7) with the status showing "Authorized".

13. You now enter a destination mailbox for the user.

14. Click on "Start" and wait.

It took me a good hour with a number of missteps, head scratching, reading docs, contacting support, chatting with them to arrive at the above sequence of steps.

After the above finishes, you then have to separate migrate the users docs/drive etc. separately.

WHO IN GOOGLE THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD USER EXPERIENCE??!!

7 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 26.1 ms ] thread
tomcam
Wow. Thank you for helping those of us coming after you.
T3OU-736
The experience does seem to leave a lot to be desired.

Devil's advocate: it is not the action of "deleting the user" that's onerous, but rather taking over the account and backing up the data. It is possible that the process is fiddly deliverately - to guard against nefarious admins? I also wonder of any of these can be scripted via an API.

hnthrowaway3
I see your point, but there is nothing in the above which protects against "nefarious admins". My business account was previously on GSuite where the act of transferring data from a deleted user was to simply check a box and specify a destination email address.
paxys
Deleting a user account is still trivial. You are describing the process of (1) taking over someone's account via a password reset, and (2) migrating all of their existing data over to a new account.

If all that you what you want to achieve is preserving their data, the correct way to do it is to simply archive their account.

hnthrowaway3
Yes, but the same action of "transfering data" of an employee who has left the business was achievable with a couple of clicks previously. It was built into the deletion of a user. It was an option to say "Transfer this data to another account".

I'm not sure what this archiving feature is. The Support agent didn't suggest such an option. Will try, thanks.

toast0
> WHO IN GOOGLE THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD USER EXPERIENCE??!!

I suspect those in Google who use this are using scripting and not the UI. Otherwise the UI wouldn't require more clicks every time it gets a refresh.

joshxyz
I once tried deleting my jira account.

It deleted my trello account goddamnit.