Cisco Unity System Administration Guide (With Microsoft Exchange), Release 4.0(5)
Deleting Subscriber Accounts

Table Of Contents

Deleting Subscriber Accounts

How to Delete a Subscriber Account

What Happens When a Regular Subscriber Account Is Deleted


Deleting Subscriber Accounts


Before deleting a subscriber account, review the information in this chapter. For information on deleting external subscriber accounts, refer to the following resources, as applicable:

To delete AMIS subscriber accounts, refer to the "Deleting AMIS Subscribers" in the "AMIS Networking" chapter in the Networking in Cisco Unity Guide.

To delete Internet subscriber accounts, refer to the "Deleting Internet Subscribers" in the "SMTP Networking" chapter in the Networking in Cisco Unity Guide.

To delete Bridge subscriber accounts, refer to the "Deleting Bridge Subscribers" in the "About Bridge Networking" chapter in the Cisco Unity Bridge Networking Guide.

To delete VPIM subscriber accounts, refer to the "Deleting VPIM Subscribers" in the "VPIM Networking" chapter in the Networking in Cisco Unity Guide.

The Networking in Cisco Unity Guide and Cisco Unity Bridge Networking Guide are available at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/voicesw/ps2237/products_feature_guides_list.html.

How to Delete a Subscriber Account

When a subscriber leaves the organization or otherwise no longer needs a Cisco Unity account, delete the account in the Cisco Unity Administrator. It is important that you delete the subscriber account in the Cisco Unity Administrator before you delete associated accounts in Windows and Exchange, so that Cisco Unity can do the following tasks:

Delete the subscriber from other Cisco Unity accounts, handlers, or call routing rules that send calls to the subscriber.

Reassign to another subscriber (or distribution list) any call handlers that the subscriber owned or was the message recipient of.

Reassign to another subscriber (or distribution list) any public distribution lists that the subscriber owned, and remove the subscriber from all public distribution lists.

Reassign to a call handler any After Message Action, After Interview Action, or After Exit Action settings that were previously configured to send callers to the subscriber.

Cisco Unity reassigns these entities to the subscriber, distribution list, or call handler that is configured in the Substitute Objects fields on the System > Configuration > Settings page. By default, the Example Administrator is configured as the Substitute Recipient and Substitute Owner, and the Goodbye call handler is configured as the Substitute After Message Call Handler and Substitute Exit Call Handler. We recommend that you review the settings for these fields periodically, and update them if you wish to use different substitute objects, so that these entities can be properly reassigned any time a subscriber account is deleted.


Caution If you attempt to delete a subscriber account that is currently configured as a Substitute Owner or Substitute Recipient, you will be warned that the subscriber is currently being used as a substitute value, and that you should select another substitute before continuing with the deletion. Likewise, if you attempt to delete a subscriber account when any of the substitute object values are empty (because you have previously deleted the subscriber or call handler that was configured as a substitute), you will be warned that one or more substitute objects has not been configured, and you will be asked whether you want to continue with the deletion. In both cases, you are allowed to ignore the warnings and continue with the deletion of the subscriber account, even when the subscriber account is the owner or recipient of entities in Cisco Unity. If you continue with the deletion, the result can be corruption of the Cisco Unity database.

When you delete a subscriber who was assigned to review the messages sent to any of the following Cisco Unity entities, make sure that you assign another subscriber or a public distribution list to replace the deleted subscriber; otherwise, messages may be "lost."

Unaddressed Messages distribution list (because the Example Administrator is by default the only member of this distribution list)

System Event Messages distribution list (because the Example Administrator is by default the only member of this distribution list)

Operator call handler

Opening Greeting call handler

Goodbye call handler

Example Interview call handler

To identify call handlers that are associated with improperly deleted accounts, run the Unresolved References report. See the "Unresolved References Report" section on page 24-11 for more information.

Use the following procedure to delete a subscriber account in the Cisco Unity Administrator.

To Delete a Subscriber Account


Step 1 In the Cisco Unity Administrator, go to the System > Configuration > Settings page.

Step 2 Confirm that Substitute Objects are assigned appropriately. If the subscriber account you are going to delete is listed in any of the fields as a Substitute Object, reassign the value to another subscriber or distribution list.

Step 3 Go to any Subscribers > Subscribers page, and search for the subscriber account that you are going to delete. (For detailed instructions on searching for a subscriber account, see the "To Find a Subscriber Record" procedure on page 3-4.)

Step 4 From the subscriber page, click the Delete icon.

Step 5 Click Delete.


What Happens When a Regular Subscriber Account Is Deleted

When you delete a Cisco Unity subscriber account, Cisco Unity removes all data associated with the subscriber account from a SQL database on the Cisco Unity server.

In addition, Cisco Unity removes the small subset of subscriber account information that is stored in the directory:

When your network consists only of Exchange 5.5 servers, Cisco Unity stores subscriber data in the Exchange 5.5 directory. Each subscriber account uses custom attribute fields 12 and 14 as well as the voice mail attributes of the associated Exchange mailbox.

When your network consists only of Exchange 2000 servers, only Exchange 2003 servers, or a mixture of Exchange servers, Cisco Unity stores subscriber data in Active Directory. The Active Directory schema is extended to store subscriber account information.

Note that deleting the Cisco Unity account does not delete the Windows domain account (if there is one) or the Exchange mailbox for that subscriber. As needed, the Windows domain account can be deleted separately after the subscriber account is deleted in the Cisco Unity Administrator.

The Bulk Subscriber Delete tool in the Cisco Unity Tools Depot can be used to delete multiple subscriber accounts. In Cisco Unity 4.0(3) and later, the tool also includes the option to delete the associated Windows accounts and mark the Exchange mailboxes for deletion. Read the Help file carefully before using this tool.