What happens when a user leaves a DocRead audience or group?

Users may leave a SharePoint audience, (or SharePoint group) for a variety of reasons, such as they have left the organization, they have moved jobs, they have gone on long term sick leave, and so on. When these events happen it’s very likely that they will also be moved (or removed) within an AD group and / or SharePoint group.

If any of these groups / audiences have been configured against a document with DocRead then it is important you understand how DocRead behaves in these situations. The first major point to make is – if a user is no longer in the audience then they shouldn’t be required to read documents assigned to that audience as this makes no business sense. So, what happens to the tasks and receipts once they leave the audience?

  1. Negative receipts are created for all incomplete (assigned or overdue) tasks assigned to the user. This serves as audit-able record for both end-user and DocRead administrators to register that the user once had reading tasks assigned but never completed them, (because they left the Audience). The receipt will clearly state the reason for issuing the receipt (in this case, it will be “User left Audience“).
  2. Positive receipts still remain intact for all completed tasks assigned to the user as a result of being a member of the Audience they just left. This serves as an audit-able record that the user has confirmed reading a document before leaving the audience. As an example, if ‘Joe Bloggs’, confirmed the ‘Health and Safety Policy’ (because he was in the ‘Fire Marshall’s group’) a receipt will be generated and stored for ever inside of DocRead. If Joe then leaves the  company (or changes role), his reading tasks will be removed (see next point), but his receipt will be stored on-going.
  3. All incomplete tasks assigned to the user (as a result of being a member of the audience they just left), are deleted and negative receipts automatically generated for each one (receipts are never removed from DocRead so it’s possible to run reports across ‘Document Title’, ‘Document Id’ and ‘User Name’ to  ascertain who read a document regardless if they left the organization or not)
  4. All completed tasks assigned to the user remain unchanged in the system.