In January 2019, Microsoft Infrastructure will begin to disable inactive user accounts, and then delete accounts that have been disabled for one year. This will become part of our regular practice for managing this service.
Note: Only user accounts in the NETID AD and Azure AD are affected. UW NetIDs and other user accounts are not affected.
What and When
Two new actions will be taken:
User accounts that are not considered "in use" will be disabled User accounts that have been disabled for a year will be deleted
Disabling inactive accounts will be phased in over a time period as follows:
8 years of inactivity: Jan. 16, 2019 4 years inactivity: Feb. 6, 2019, 1 year of inactivity: Feb. 27, 2019
Deleting accounts will begin after a year:
1 year of disabled status: Jan. 16, 2020 (approximate)
Actions you might take
In a majority of cases, no action will be required.
If an account you use is disabled: Temporarily unused accounts can easily return to service without significant impact. To return an account to service, set the UW NetID password. See Re-enable my NETID AD account for more assistance. If you want to verify that an account, a set of accounts, or all members of a group are considered currently active: Please review the material at Ensure a user account is considered active. If you know of an account that does not logon, but which should be considered currently active: Add the account to your delegated OU exception group. For example, if you are an OU admin for the pottery OU, add it to u_msinf_delou_pottery_accountsthatdonotlogin.
More Info
Conditions that qualify a user account to be considered "actively in use". Any deleted AD object can be recovered for up to 180 days after deletion.
To view a full analysis of this design change, including rationale and more detail about implementation, see the MI inactive user proposal.