A question that has been solved a million times already in HR systems is re-appearing but in a slightly different form with Enterprise collaboration systems. What happens when an employee leaves? What happens to all the (open) collaborative content they have created? Bookmarks they have shared? Blog posts they have created? Communities they manage?
There’s human, technical and possibly legal processes involved here – flags in databases indicating an employees “status”, and the hand-over of tasks between employees, compliance with information laws in various countries.
Flagging as inactive
On the Lotus Connections 3.0 What’s new at a glance page press-release, it says:
“When individuals leave an organization, the administrator can set their status to inactive; when you view the profile of an inactive user, the profile owner is flagged as an inactive user and their photo is not shown.”
I don’t know at the moment if that is different to the “profile type” field that already exists in Connections 2.5, but this blog post, Using Multiple Profile Types in Lotus Connections, by Mitch Cohen, gives you an example of how to use profile types for retirees. But this is only a part-solution; a skin for profiles rather than a real “inactive” flag.
Two years ago this blog post, Show-stopper for Connections, was written. It highlights the fact that you can’t delete profiles in Connections, and the comments contain some interesting questions, issues and opinions regarding the implications of that.
how have you solved the issue of when an employee leaves in regard to your collaboration platform?
Will the new “profile status” in Lotus Connections 3.0 solve some or all of the problems?
Posted on Beantin Beta Blog