OIT often receives questions about what to expect regarding a UAH email account when a faculty or staff member separates from the university. We also receive requests from UAH faculty and staff regarding email accounts for employees who are leaving UAH or who have recently left UAH. These requests are typically to extend the life of the email account beyond the employee's last day of work.
Immediate Termination
If you ever need access immediately revoked for an employee who is being terminated, please make that very clear to the OIT Help Desk team so that we can take specific action.
Employees Who Leave Before Retirement
The UAH Network, Computer, and Email Account Administration policy dictates employee account access after separation. Refer to the below excerpt:
Faculty who leave before retirement - Faculty members who leave the university before retirement may keep their e-mail account for one year from the end of the last term in which they taught. All other account privileges will be revoked at the time of separation.
Staff who leave before retirement - Staff members who leave the University before retirement will have all account privileges terminated effective on their last workday as determined by Human Resources, unless specific arrangements are requested and approved by Human Resources.
Adjunct Faculty - Adjunct Faculty members may maintain e-mail privileges for one academic year from the last term in which they taught. All other account privileges will be revoked at the time of separation.
Retired Employees
Per the UAH Network, Computer, and Email Account Administration policy, faculty and staff who retire are allowed to retain access to their UAH email account indefinitely. Refer to the below excerpt:
Retired Faculty, Retired Staff and Emeritus Faculty - Faculty and staff members retiring from the university or obtaining Emeritus status may elect to retain their UAH e-mail privileges. Upon transitioning from full- time to retired status, retired faculty and staff may be asked to sign an acceptable use agreement. For security reasons, if there is no usage for a period of one year, e-mail privileges may be terminated. All other account Privileges will be revoked at the time of separation.
OIT has a "grace period" option that can be used temporarily to keep an inactive record in usable state. If OIT changes an active user’s account to GracePeriod manually, that change will be unmade when the Charger Account Provisioning script runs (twice daily). The information in Banner that shows that an active employee status will clear a GracePeriod setting in our LDAP database.
Retired Faculty
Retired faculty members are provided with a one year grace period by default. A departing faculty member’s LDAP affiliation automatically changes to GracePeriod when the related Banner record is updated by Human Resources. One year after their separation date, that changes to INACTIVE. No warning email message is generated before that change.
Those who are interested in keeping their account indefinitely must submit a Request for Retiree Email Account.
Retired Staff
Retired staff members interested in keeping their account indefinitely must submit a Request for Retiree Email Account.
Requests for Extended Access
Requests can be made to keep a departing employee's email account active after separation as long as the employee will not be maintaining access to the account.
According to UAH policy, e-mail shall not be provided to anyone other than the account holder without approval from the data owner. In cases where the account holder is not available, but still affiliated with UAH, approval may be obtained by an official request from a senior executive officer of the university or Office of Counsel. If the account holder is no longer affiliated with UAH, the Director or unit head over that position may approve access.
OIT will need a request in writing (email will suffice) from the employee's supervisor or the head of the department regarding the details of the request to keep the account active. We will need to know the following information in particular:
- How long the account should remain active
- Who will be authorized to access the account
If the request is approved, we will change the password on the account and provide it to the department head or the person they have designated as the liaison for the email. For employees that will soon be leaving but have not yet left, OIT will coordinate with Human Resources to be alerted when the Banner record is updated so that we can use the GracePeriod status at that time.
Supervisors and department heads should also consider the use of account delegation to manage the departing employee's email inbox. This is a built-in function of Google which allows users to grant people or groups (delegates) access to their Gmail account without needing to know the account password.
Please note that attempts should be made (such as setting an automatic reply on the account) to alert contacts that the prior employee’s address should no longer be used for UAH business communication.
Reasons OIT May Decline a Request
We may decline a request to keep a former employee's account open or grant another user access to it if the former employee will maintain access to the account. A prior employee may maintain access to their account if they are:
If the will maintain access to their account for at least the near future, the person requesting access will need to work directly with the user to get the needed files or messages. If the departing employee hasn’t left, yet, they could provide the department with login credentials, forward data as appropriate, or set up account delegation on their account.
In cases where the prior employee will maintain access to their account, department members might elect to revoke the former employee's access to internal Google Drive files. Read more about how to unshare Drive files in this related article.
Still have questions? Contact the OIT Help Desk.