1328736 - Mana (Confluence) doesn't allow for searching by contributor if they've left Mozilla

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Infrastructure & Operations :: IT-Managed Tools, task)

Description

[Gene Wood [:gene]]

Our approach to managing a Mozilla employee leaving the company and it's impact on mana causes problems.

Currently when someone leaves, whatever change we make (disabling their account in LDAP?) results in mana page ownership showing things like this :

> Created by Unknown User ([e-mail]), last modified by Unknown User ([e-mail]) on Aug 05, 2016 

When trying to search for pages by a specific "Contributor" (the term Confluence uses for the authors of a page), one can not search for any author who no longer works at Mozilla.

We should change our process when Mozillians leave the company to 
* leave their contributions intact and attributed to them
* enable others to continue to search for pages based on their user
* show their name instead of "Unknown User"

We'll also need to solve this soon in advance of community members gaining access to mana because then the problem will balloon if not solved

Comment 1

[Eric Ziegenhorn :ericz]

Created Contegix ticket 1421872 to inquire about this.

Comment 2

[Eric Ziegenhorn :ericz]

This is not easy to implement, we will consider this as we plan changes to how Confluence gets its authoritative list of users.

Comment 3

[Gene Wood [:gene]]

Alternatively we can change what we do to users when they leave Mozilla so that their user profile/record is not destroyed and their historical contributions are still associated with their identity.

Comment 4

[Shyam Mani [:fox2mike]]

I think that's based off of LDAP for now, so Confluence basically disables a user once someone is disabled in LDAP. 

I don't see this changing in the near future, we'll try to see if there's a workaround we can implement.

Comment 5

[Gene Wood [:gene]]

Related discourse thread : https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/lets-think-differently-about-people-who-leave-mozilla/28824

Should we leave this open related to the workaround you're suggesting?

Comment 6

[Shyam Mani [:fox2mike]]

Gene,

I'd rather re-open this when we have something to do. I don't have a solution to the problem right now and letting a bug sit for years with no action is something I'm trying to get away from.

Comment 7

[Gene Wood [:gene]]

Ok. What workaround did you have in mind?