What happens to a user’s work when they leave?

Short answer: Atender preserves everything but reassigns nothing. When you deactivate a user, their history stays intact and their work-in-progress sits where they left it. You handle the reassignment yourself — the system isn’t going to do it for you.

What deactivation does immediately

The moment you flip a user to inactive:

• They can’t log in. All sessions are signed out.
• They drop out of routing. Voice calls and task routing stop ringing them.
• They move to the Inactive Users tab. They no longer show up in default user pickers.

What stays in place — this is the surprising part:

• Conversations they were assigned to stay assigned to them. The conversation record shows their name as the agent even though they can’t act on it.
• Drafts they were writing stay attached to those conversations. Untouched.
• Internal notes and comments they wrote remain attributed to them.
• Team memberships stay intact. The Inactive user is still listed as a team member.
• Mentions and @-tags pointing at them stay there. They won’t see them (they can’t log in), but they’re not stripped from the conversation.

This is intentional. Audit trails matter — you can always look back and see who handled what. But it means you have to plan the handover yourself.

What you should do before deactivating

For a planned departure, run through this checklist:

1. Reassign their open conversations. Filter the inbox to Assigned to {their name}, bulk-reassign to another agent or to Unassigned. Don’t leave conversations stranded with a deactivated owner.
2. Pick up their snoozed conversations. Snoozed conversations come back into the inbox eventually. If they’re tagged for a deactivated user, the inbox will reopen them as orphaned. Filter snoozed conversations by agent before they wake up.
3. Resolve scheduled callbacks and follow-ups. If they had Auto-callback at 10am tomorrow-style scheduled actions, those still fire. Reassign to someone who can take the call.
4. Transfer Owner role if they’re the sole Owner. You can’t deactivate the last Owner — the system blocks it. Promote a second user first.
5. Hand off their drafts. Drafts they were composing won’t go anywhere on their own. If they were in the middle of a complex reply, copy the draft content out before deactivating, then continue from a new agent’s session.

For unplanned departures (sudden leave, fired, etc.) you’ll do these steps after deactivation instead of before — it works the same way, just under more pressure.

What about their team memberships?

Deactivated users remain in their teams’ member lists. This doesn’t break anything — routing skips them because they’re inactive — but the team’s headcount is misleading until you remove them.

To clean up, open Settings → Teams, edit each team they belonged to, and remove them from the member list. See Add or remove team members.

Is there a “transfer all my work to X” button?

Not as a single workflow, no. Atender doesn’t have a bulk reassignment that says “everything currently owned by Alice → now owned by Bob, including future events.” You assemble it from:

• Inbox bulk-actions for active conversations
• Manual cleanup of team memberships
• Optional: an automation rule you build temporarily — e.g., If Assignee was Alice → Reassign to Unassigned. Useful when the departing user had a large book of work.

For most departures the manual flow is fine. For mass offboardings (acquired team being onboarded under a new structure), the automation route is faster.

What about deletion?

Deletion is a separate, irreversible step that’s additional to deactivation. It removes the user’s membership and replaces their name in audit trails with “Deleted user.” Conversations they were involved in stay; the attribution becomes anonymous.

Most departing users don’t need to be deleted — deactivation is enough. Reach for deletion only when there’s a specific reason (compliance request, account created in error). When in doubt, deactivate and revisit later.

Compliance angle

Some tenants are required to retain user records for a fixed period (typically 1–7 years depending on jurisdiction and industry). Deactivation preserves the record without granting access; that’s usually what compliance teams want. Confirm with your legal counsel before deleting, especially for users who handled regulated transactions (financial, healthcare, etc.).

A common pattern: deactivate immediately on departure, keep the record for the retention window, delete after the window closes if required.

See also

• What are Users?
• Deactivate or reactivate a user
• Change a user’s role — sometimes “they’re leaving” means “they’re moving to a different role”
• Add or remove team members