It happens to us all...whether in good situations or bad, your company will lose employees. If those employees are client-facing, not only do you have to worry about filling their spot, you also need to make sure client requests don't fall through the e-mail crack.
If you're using Gmail through Google Workspace (once called Google Apps), take these steps to make sure nothing gets lost in the mail:
- Sign in to the Google Admin console (admin.google.com) with an administrator account.
- Go to Users and find the person who's leaving.
- Suspend the account right away. According to Google, this blocks their access but doesn't delete their email, documents or calendars.
- Route their incoming email to someone who's watching it. Gmail routing settings in the Admin console let you send the old address's mail to a manned address. We recommend also keeping a copy in the original mailbox for at least 1-3 months, so you have a separate record.
- Transfer their files. Before you ever delete the account, transfer Drive files and other data they own to a manager or another user.
- When you're ready to delete the account, migrate or redirect their email first. After deletion, you can reassign the old address to another user as an alias so mail keeps arriving.
- Depending on the situation, you may want an auto-reply on the old address telling senders who to contact going forward.
One note: a suspended account may still count as a paid license, so treat suspension as a short-term step.