Remove former employee O365

Best Practices in O365 User management when someone leaves your organization 

This article talks about the management of O365 Licenses when a user leaves the organization. To ensure that there is no ongoing license needed to be attached to a user and still meet the retention period policy for storing emails from the user who has left the organization below process is recommended.

1. Remove user license
2. Move Mailbox from the user who is leaving the organization to a common mailbox where all such emails can be dumped
3. Either delete the user or deactivate as needed

Steps with screenshot mentioned below

Best Practices

Microsoft recommends follow a 7 step process as below when someone leaves the organization

Steps to Migrate mail inbox from one user to another

From admin center select the user and click on Delete

It would give below options select the option to give email access to another user

Select the mailbox where you need all emails to go

Add a display name for shared mailbox which should be the same as that of the user so it is easier to identify

Automatic replies can be added and can be applied for both email from inside or outside of organization or only inside. We recommend choosing the option for both inside and outside.

If any aliases for the user those would also be deleted

Review and finish the email mailbox after reviewing all settings

Avoid these mistakes while Removing former employee O365

1. If you do not stop them from signing in, then they can continue accessing their emails which could be lead to business information being leaked or misused.
2. If you only remove a user’s license but don’t delete the account, the content in the user’s OneDrive will remain accessible to you even after 30 days but If you do not continue to use that data after 30 days of deletion it would be lost forever
3. Licenses are not named so when you remove a license, you can assign it to someone else. Or, you can delete the license so you don’t pay for it until you hire another person. So remove the license after the mails and Onedrive are migrated

References

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/add-users/remove-former-employee?view=o365-worldwide