User Management FAQ
Instructions
Question:
When a user is no longer part of a study, we receive a request to remove the user from the study database. Is it better to suspend the user and remove from all study sites, or to delete the user completely? What are the pros and cons of both ways?
Answers:
The best thing to do is suspend the user at the host level - assuming the user is not part of other studies on that same host account. Deleting the user from the site is also an okay alternative, but that just makes it a bit tougher to see which users are part of which sites (regardless of their current status), without having to reference the audit trail to see if a user was removed from the site. By suspending the user, everything stays as is, but the user just loses access to that host account when they sign in.
As a third option, you can delete the user entirely from the host, which also removes the user from all sites/studies they are part of within that host, but that is never recommended because users, as a matter of policy, are able to request their information be removed from the system. If that happens and the Support team sees that the user is not part of any hosts or studies, the user will be removed without question. However, if the user is part of a host, CDS obtains approval from the host Administrator prior to a full delete of any user.