Imported People

Imported people

System → Maintenance → Imported people · 5.3.0 · Contributed by @vsc55 (PR #264)

People imported from a directory - Active Directory or LDAP, an address book or Microsoft Entra ID - sometimes need a decision nobody else will make: their source was deleted, it no longer brings them in, or they should never have been imported at all. This page lists them and lets you decide, for every kind of source in the same way. Administrators only.

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The rule

A person is kept up to date by a source only while that source exists.

While it does, the details it owns - job title, department, office, phones, employee number, manager - are locked on Tickets → Users, Assets → Users and the self-service portal, and the person cannot be deleted by hand, even with the source switched off, because switching it back on would bring them back.

Once the source is deleted, nothing can update them again, so nothing about them is locked any more. Before 5.3.0, deleting a source left its people locked for good; they are freed now, with nothing to run.

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Finding it

• System → Maintenance has an Imported people card, which says how many people lost their source.
• Each LDAP, address book and Entra page in System → Authentication has a link under its Run button, already on that source - and says, in amber, how many of its people it has not found for 90 days.
• System → Authentication says how many people lost their source, with a link.
• People → Organisation chart shows them, read only, as a gap of their own.

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The three lists

People whose source was deleted

People still marked as imported by a source that no longer exists - from before 5.3.0, or a source deleted some other way. Deleting a source now asks what to do with its people, so this list should stay short.

Choice	What happens
Keep as ordinary people	Every field can be edited, and no import changes them again. Their history stays where it is
Mark as leavers	As an import would when somebody leaves. They become ordinary people too, so they leave this list. Leavers are hidden in People unless Show leavers is ticked
Delete	For somebody who should not be here at all - only people an import created (see below)

People a source no longer brings in

Pick a source, and how long: 30 days, 90 days, 180 days or a year. Each import records the date it last found each person; this lists the people still assigned to the source that no import has found for that long - removed from the directory, moved out of what is imported, or because the import stopped running.

If almost everybody is listed, look at the source's History first: the import has probably stopped running.

The same three choices. Keeping somebody means the source no longer manages them. Delete waits until the source, or its import, is switched off - otherwise the next import would create them again - and keeps anybody no import has recorded finding yet.

Remove imported people

Undo an import that should not have happened: a wrong scope, the wrong tenant, a first run without Preview. Pick the source, then every import or one of them; the list is the people the source created, and Remove deletes the ones you pick, with their sign-in link and group memberships.

• Only the people it created. People it matched to somebody already here are never on the list: removing them would delete somebody who existed before the import.
• Only once the source does not import. Switch the source, or its import, off and save first.
• A deleted source is listed too, as Entra ID (deleted) say, when its imports created anybody. Deleting a source keeps its people, but records whom its imports created, so an import can still be undone afterwards. Nothing needs switching off first; anybody another source keeps up to date now is left alone. A source deleted before 5.3.0 is listed only where its import history survived.

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What Delete and Remove will never do

• Delete anybody with tickets or equipment, or anybody another record still names - a starters and leavers case, a contract, a form they submitted. They are listed as skipped, with the reason.
• Delete anybody who was here before an import found them. If nothing records whether an import created somebody, they are kept rather than guessed at.
• Reach outside your companies. Everything on the page covers only the companies you can access.
• Act on somebody who has left the list since the page loaded. Each list is worked out again when you press the button.

Everything done here is recorded in the system log, with who did it, what was done to whom, and what was skipped and why.

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What if: the full effect first

Before anything is deleted, a preview lists in full what would happen - and changes nothing.

Deleting a source

Deleting a source in System → Authentication opens its preview, which is also the question:

• Every person it imported, and what happens to each: kept as a current person, or marked as a leaver if you choose that - switching between the two redraws the list. The details that unlock for them are named.
• Everything else that names it: people's and analysts' sign-in links, analysts and teams that sign in with it, groups that put people in a team, groups seen at sign-in, imported groups and their members, the address book write log - all deleted with it - and the import history, kept or not depending on how this install was built (the preview says which).
• Analysts who sign in through it can sign in again only once a password is set for them. If that includes you, you are marked (you).
• The scheduled import: whether it imports this source now, and how many others it carries on with.

Nothing changes until you press Delete.

Several companies? Deleting a source changes its people in every company. If you cannot access every company, the preview lists the people in yours and says how many more there are - and the delete is refused while any of them are in a company you cannot access.

Remove imported people

Preview, beside Remove, lists what it would do to the people you picked - or to everybody in the list when you have picked nobody: who would be deleted and who skipped, and why; how many sign-in links and group memberships go with each; and how many people report to them, who would be left with no manager. It works while the source still imports, so you can look before you switch it off.

PDF and Email

Both previews have PDF and Email:

• PDF saves a copy, to read in your own time or pass to whoever owns the directory first.
• Email sends the same report to your own email address - nobody else's. Whether it arrives in the body, attached, as a download link or a mix is set on System → Emailed reports.

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See also

• Emailed reports - what an emailed report carries, and download links
• Importing people from Active Directory or LDAP
• Importing people from Microsoft Entra ID
• CardDAV contact sync
• System → Maintenance
• Imported people - Developer Guide · PR review