Mark users removed from external directories as inactive under a wider range of circumstances

Problem

When a user is removed from an external directory, Jira currently marks it as inactive under the following circumstances:

• The user is the assignee of at least one issue
• The user is the reporter of at least one issue
• The user has added at least one comment on an issue

If none of the above circumstances apply, Jira will delete the user instead, even if the user has performed other activities or is otherwise being referenced in Jira (see LDAP user deletion effect in Jira user base for further details).

Suggested Solution

Change Jira's behaviour to also mark the user as inactive under the following additional circumstances:

• The user has added at least one work log entry to an issue
• The user has voted on at least one issue
• The user is watching, or is a participant in, at least one issue
• The user has been mentioned in at least one comment on an issue
• The user is the project lead of at least one project
• The user has been selected in any user picker field in at least one issue

Why This Is Important

At present, Jira's behaviour when deciding to remove a user or mark it inactive is not necessarily intuitive to users. It makes logical sense that a user who has been referenced in Jira would be made inactive while a user with no references would be deleted; however, at present Jira takes some types of references into consideration but not others.

To an end user it may not be immediately apparent why the Assignee and Reporter fields are more important than any other user picker field, or why a comment is more important than a work log entry.

Workaround

No workaround is currently available.