Deactivating and Re-activating Staff Accounts

When a staff member stops needing access — a student worker finishes the semester, someone goes on leave, an account needs to be parked while you sort out a problem — you usually don't want to delete them. Deleting throws away the account, its role, and its site assignments, and the only way back is to recreate everything from scratch.

Deactivating is the gentler option. It blocks the person from logging in but leaves the account fully intact: name, role, site assignments, desktop-client settings, and all the tracking history tied to their work stay exactly as they were. When they come back, you flip one checkbox and they're in again.

In Aeon 7 there's no separate "disable account" button. Deactivating is done with the Account is Locked checkbox on a staff member's detail pane, on the Staff tab inside the Customization Manager.

When you'll use this

• A staff member leaves temporarily (sabbatical, summer break, parental leave) — deactivate now, reactivate later, no rework.
• You need to suspend someone's access immediately while you investigate something, without losing their setup.
• An account locked itself after too many failed login attempts and you need to clear it.
• Someone is leaving for good — that's a delete, not a deactivate. See Managing Staff Accounts.

Where this lives and who can use it

The Staff tab is part of the Customization Manager's roles-and-permissions area. Working with staff accounts — including deactivating them — requires the Staff configuration capability on your role. If your role doesn't grant it, the Staff tab isn't available to you.

Deactivating an account

1. Open the Customization Manager and go to the Staff tab.

2. In the staff list on the left, click the person you want to deactivate — for example, jdoe. Their account opens in the detail pane.

3. In the Account Status card near the top of the pane (just below User Details), tick the Account is Locked checkbox.

4. Click Save at the top right of the pane (or press Ctrl/Cmd + S).

   

That's it. The account is now deactivated.

You can tell at a glance from the staff list: a deactivated account shows a small padlock icon next to its username on its card. The person's role badge and everything else stay visible — only the lock icon is added.

Account is Locked is account-wide

The Account Status card describes itself as "Account-wide settings that apply to both the web interface and the desktop client" — so locking the account blocks the person from signing in to Aeon 7, not just the old desktop client.

What a deactivated person experiences

A deactivated staff member who tries to sign in is turned away at the login screen. Aeon refuses the login and shows:

Account is locked.

They can't get a new session, reset their password, or change their password while the account is locked — each of those paths is refused for the same reason. There's nothing they can do on their own; an administrator has to reactivate them.

Deactivating does not kick someone out mid-session

The lock takes effect the next time the person needs to authenticate — a fresh login, or when their current access token expires and the app tries to refresh it. It does not immediately tear down a session that's already open. If you need to cut someone off right now, deactivating alone may leave their current session working for a short while until it next refreshes. (Contrast this with a role change, which signs the person out of active sessions immediately.)

Reactivating an account

Bringing someone back is the reverse, and just as quick:

1. On the Staff tab, select the deactivated staff member (their card shows the padlock icon).
2. In the Account Status card, clear the Account is Locked checkbox.
3. Click Save.

The padlock icon disappears from their card, and the person can sign in again immediately. Their role, site assignments, and history are exactly as they left them — there's nothing to rebuild.

Reactivating also resets the failed-login counter

When you uncheck Account is Locked and save, Aeon clears the account's record of failed login attempts back to zero. So whether the account was locked by you deliberately or locked itself after repeated bad passwords, unchecking the box and saving handles both — the person gets a clean slate.

When an account locks itself

You won't always be the one who locked an account. Aeon automatically locks a staff account after too many consecutive failed login attempts, as a brute-force protection. The number of allowed attempts is controlled by the StaffLoginAttemptsBeforeLock customization key.

An account that locked itself looks identical to one you deactivated by hand — same padlock icon, same "Account is locked" message at login — and you clear it the same way:

• Uncheck Account is Locked and save, which unlocks the account and resets the failed-attempt counter, or
• Reset the person's password. A password reset also unlocks the account and clears the counter as a side effect, so if someone is both locked out and has forgotten their password, the reset solves both at once. See Resetting a Staff Member's Password.

Locked out, but the password is fine?

If a staff member simply fat-fingered their password a few times and tripped the lock, you don't need to reset anything — just clear the Account is Locked checkbox and save. Their existing password still works.

Deactivate or delete?

	Deactivate (Account is Locked)	Delete
Blocks login	Yes	Yes
Keeps the account, role, and site assignments	Yes	No
Keeps the person's tracking history and notes	Yes	Yes
Reversible	Yes — uncheck and save	No — must recreate the account
Use it when	Someone leaves temporarily or needs a pause	Someone leaves permanently

When in doubt, deactivate. It's reversible; deleting is not. For the delete workflow, see Managing Staff Accounts.

Unsaved changes are protected

Locking or unlocking an account is a normal edit, so the Save button applies to it. If you tick or untick Account is Locked and then try to switch to another staff member without saving, Aeon stops you with "Discard unsaved changes?" — choose Stay here to go back and save, or Discard changes to abandon the change.