Dealing with Person column when someone leaves the organization?

Question

We have a list which has a person (people picker) column. This column pulls from (is validated against) several possible sources including Active Directory. If a name cannot be found when adding/updating a record then the following error message appears in red just below that field:

No exact match was found. Click the item(s) that did not resolve for more options.

We have a particular record we are trying to update. Per security policy former employees must be deleted from AD. Now, however, that the person in the person column of this record has left it is impossible to update his record due to the mentioned error message. His name won't validate even though he still exists in the User Information List.

How can this be overcome? Is it a configuration issue? It must be possible to update the record of a person who has been deleted from AD; otherwise, this would present major issues to organizations. We are considering using text for person names instead of system-validated person columns and clearly that would not be Microsoft's intent.

Answer 1

There isn't really a way around this with your company policy. When dealing with records from a user who is no longer there, it is better practice to deactivate their AD account rather than delete it. This would allow the user's profile to remain and you wouldn't have this issue.

However, since you are deleting users from AD, you could take a different approach with this list. Here are a few ideas:

1) Don't use the people picker, just use a text box

2) Use the people picker, but have a workflow append its data to a text field that is not editable

3) Use InfoPath to edit the list forms with and do something similar to #2 without the workflow

Answer 2

Here's our workaround:

We create a People list into which we enter all of the relevant person details including name and email address. This list replaces the UIL and AD as the primary source of person information. No people picker control is used. Names are text.

This list is used as a lookup source for creating other lists. When joining in a Lookup column in this manner it is possible to also include other columns from the source list like email address. These columns are presented virtually in the new list.

I chose to keep our master list lean including only the essential people columns allowing the derived lists to augment it with additional columns if needed.

Such master people lists can be created at any level of granularity. One could be created for an entire site including its subsites. Alternately, a separate master list could be created for each subsite. It depends on what administration strategy works best for the organizational hierarchy.