User Records v. Staff Records
We recently had a question from a Concierge customer that I thought might be helpful to all users.
Question:
If you have a staff member who will no longer be using Aeon for processing materials, can you delete the staff account without affecting any existing requests for materials that the staff member has requested previously?
Answer:
The Staff account record is a completely separate entity from the User record which is used to log into the Aeon web. All requests are retained on the User record which is distinct from the Staff user record--even if the username is the same for both accounts. A staff member who's Staff account is deleted will still be able to log on to his/her Aeon User account to make requests for materials but will unable to log into the Aeon client to process materials.
Comments
Related question: if the staff account is deleted, is the staff username still reserved as a unique identifier? Or could a new staff member come along, pick the same username, and appear to be a time-traveler?
Background: We learned the hard way not to delete staff accounts in our ILS. Instead we just remove all permissions "operator_id" (unlike patron_id) is keyed to the username, not a numeric identifier: we got complaints that someone in Acquisitions was messing around with Catalog records they shouldn't have had access to. Checking the time stamps revealed that "ttaylor" in Acquisitions couldn't possibly have made those edits because she didn't even work here then. The edits were made by Cataloger "ttaylor", whose staff account had been deleted when she left, but whose staff client activities had all been logged as "ttaylor".
Hi Erin
I just tested this in my training environment and was able to create a new user with the same username of a previously deleted staff user. It might be wise to just disable all permissions on staff records if you think that you might run into issues with duplicates.
Thanks for asking this question--I didn't know Aeon could enable time-travel! :)
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