The process of removing someone from the system is different depending on the state of their person record and which modules they need to be removed from. Below are instructions for the most extreme example wherein an attempt was already unsuccessfully made to remove a duplicate from 424, SP, and IRB...
How to disable a duplicate user account in 424, SP, and IRB when the account has been disabled and the profile has been deleted in 424 but the duplicate continues to appear in SP (IRB steps are noted in blue, resurrection steps are noted in green)...
- In 424 > People: Find the current, keeper Professional Profile for this person and temporarily add something to their name (like "1") to distinguish them in case the duplicate profile is an exact match.
- In 424 > Admin > Deleted Entities > People: Find the deleted Professional Profile and click the + icon to the right of it to bring it back.
- In 424 > People: Find the resurrected Professional Profile, enter it, edit the person's name to a generic like "Disabled User" or "zzzDeleted zzzAcount". While you're here, make sure that this profile has the correct Institutional Association for your institution.
- in 424 > People: Find the keeper Professional Profile and change it back to normal, removing whatever you added to distinguish it .
- In 424 > Admin > Manage Users: find the disabled account and re-enable it. While you're here, link the resurrected profile to this account.
- If you are dealing with multiple duplicates then you will want to repeat these steps to get all of your duplicates lined up with a generic names, institutional associations, and enabled accounts so that they can make it to Backbone.
- In Backbone > People: Click the "Update People" option on the left and go through the prompts to run the update.
- For IRB you will need to wait until the nightly update runs to see this change carry through to the IRB user database.
- In IRB > Admin > Roles > IRB User: Use CTRL + F on your keyboard to search the page for the generic name you created and go down the list deleting anyone with that name using the X to the right of their Phone #.
- For IRB you will see the generic name is updated on any studies/submissions the duplicate profile was added to. These can be removed on Unsubmitted/Reopened Initial Submissions simply by deleting them and then adding the correct person, or through a Modification Submission in all other cases.
- In 424 > Admin > Manage Users: Change the username of the duplicate accounts to a generic, like "disableduser" or "zzzdeleted", unlink the Professional Profile, and uncheck the "enabled" box. Leaving the email address accurate is recommended in case you ever need to know who this account once belonged to or bring it back again.
- If you are dealing with multiple duplicates then perform this action for all duplicate user acounts.
- In 424 > People: Find the duplicate profile, enter it, and delete it using the button to the right of their name
- If you are dealing with multiple duplicates then perform this action for all duplicate Professional Profiles.
One of the main reasons that there are so many steps is that none of the modules want to have people removed. This is both a cautionary and ideological in that all systems are dedicated to keeping records and preserving data integrity. For that reason, 424 Accounts cannot be deleted, only disabled and Professional Profiles while deletable can be resurrected. People in Backbone cannot be deleted but they can be renamed which is one of the reasons for renaming the duplicate profile with a generic name--it makes it so that the duplicate never appears when searching for that person in SP and also makes it clear if someone stumbles on that person record that they should not be used for anything.
The other reason is that the generic name makes it easy to find the duplicate record in IRB for removal in the Admin > Roles section as well as finding them on submissions and studies.