How does your organization handle regular management of Qualtrics seats / deleting users / transferring surveys? | XM Community
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We are creating a user deprovisioning/deletion policy and looking to see what everyone else does. We have hit our user seat limit multiple times. How do you manage regularly deleting inactive user accounts at your company?

Here is some relevant information I’ve learned and the associated problems:

Deleting a user can be done via the API:

  • This deletes any contact lists the user has
  • Survey workflows and library messages stay, so existing surveys don’t break.
  • Surveys don’t get deleted but float in space.
    • Concern: Surveys need to be transferred manually in the admin console (by design; I checked with Qualtrics support), and some of my users have over 400 surveys.
    • Exception: you can call the update survey API to update an owner - but have to make this call for one survey at a time and using the current owner’s API key…. so first you have to assign everyone at the organization an API key…. and figure out where the survey needs to go….

Here is what we are thinking and the associated problems:

We don’t want to put expiration dates on accounts as it might delete accounts with active shared surveys, etc. So once created in Qualtrics, user accounts remain permanently unless we delete them. We have many users no longer here.

Our thought: Create an “archive” user to transfer surveys to if we can'’t transfer to a collaborator. But - it’s SO time intensive to get a list of collaborators on a survey, and then you have to figure out who to transfer it to.

Our potential start of a plan:

  • Regular deletion of users that haven’t logged in in over a year with 0 surveys (via the API).
  • For users that haven’t logged in in over a year with surveys - these surveys fall into different categories based on if they are in use or have collaborators.
    • Big problem: Determining collaborators and most recent response dates for each survey falls into can be done via the API but is incredibly time intensive.
  • Category 1: Surveys owned by an inactive user that are not being collaborated on with active users (private to the inactive user or shared with only other inactive users)
    • Our thought: The surveys will be deactivated. After 1 month, if no IT tickets have been opened regarding these surveys, the surveys will be deleted.
  • Category 2: Surveys that are shared with active users still at our company, or the owner of the survey is still at our company but just hasn’t logged in in over a year:
    • Our thought: Each active user will be emailed a list of the surveys they are collaborating on or own asking if the survey is still necessary or if the survey and its data can be deleted, and, if the survey is still necessary, who the owner of the survey should be.
      • If we receive a reply from every collaborator and owner of the survey that the survey and data is unnecessary, we will delete the survey.
      • If we receive a reply from any collaborator or owner on the survey that the survey and data is necessary, we will ask them who the owner should be and potentially transfer the survey accordingly.
      • For any surveys we received no reply from any active user after one month, we will send a reminder. If we don’t hear anything, after 2 months from the first email, any surveys with no responses in the last year will be deleted. Any surveys with responses in the last year will be deactivated and transferred to the Archive user. After 1 month, if no IT tickets have been opened regarding these surveys, the surveys will be deleted.
    • At this point, any user that has not logged in for one year with 0 surveys will be deleted.

Problem: Most of this needs to be done manually, and we have to then track these surveys. This is going to be a huge time sink on a regular basis because so much of it cannot be done via the API.

What is your company doing? All thoughts are appreciated!

I never delete users. I have run into problems where even if surveys are transfered, deletion of user accounts deleted other artifacts like library items, etc.  (which can’t be transfered really)

I would argue with Qualtrics that they shouldn’t count inactive users in your allowed users number until they provide an effective way of transfering ALL items associated with an account into another one. 

@InessaG We have also never deleted users. We use SSO logins for Qualtrics accounts and we disable users’ ability to log in after they leave our institution, so they can’t log into any SSO-connected accounts/services after they’re gone, but their data and surveys are retained and can be transferred to an active user upon request. Unfortunately, we finally hit our brand maximum user limit today (I didn’t even know we had one, tbh. There’s no information or indication about this in the admin dashboards.) and now we’re scrambling to figure out what to do with old accounts. We have a lot of the same considerations as @riceball and will be starting with dormant accounts that own no surveys. User admin, including both reporting and bulk/automated user management tools, is an area of the platform that could use some serious enhancement. The current toolset is woefully inadequate.

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