Best behavior with people changing accounts

[adriana4u]

Hello everyone, 

A bit of background: we have a closed community that only customers that have an entitlement with one of our products can access. Some of theese users are sub contractors, and sometimes, only after a year they have to change accounts because they will work for a different company after a project is finished. 

So because of this, a lot of times, they have to restart their accounts from zero, which can be frustrating. 

Before, here in the community, I asked if anyone knew how to merge accounts to avoid this happening and for now only PS in Khoros can do this (if anyone knows how to do this via api, or any other way, it would be cool to know). 

But we were thinking of just assigning the badges and ranks manually to these users when they change, so even if they lose their old posts, at least they keep their activity.

I wanted to ask if you think this is a good behavior? What do you do if you have similar case to this? 

Thank you so much for your time and attention. 

BR,

Adriana

[JasonHill]

Do you have SSO @adriana4u? There is a way to merge accounts without needing Khoros assistance...

See this recent discussion - https://community.khoros.com/t5/Khoros-Community-Product/Merge-users/m-p/707877

Jason

[karolinalinda]

We use exactly this ⬆️ The trick is that you need to modify the SSO ID as soon as the new account is created. If the user starts posting/replying with a new account, you won't be able to merge that new activity with the old one.

[adriana4u]

Hello @JasonHill,

The thing with this approach, if I remember correctly is that we merge the SSOs yes but the user does not keep the old posts, replies, badges, etc... 

[JasonHill]

No, that's not correct @adriana4u. As @karolinalinda has suggested, the trick is doing it immediately as what you lose is everything that was done on the new account. So it's not really a "merge" of two lots of posts, replies, badges etc, just a new username and ID with all the old stats. 

Jason

[adriana4u]

Hello @JasonHill,

Really? I've done this in the past for testing, created a new account on stage and it only merged the ids, the posts were lost - and it was made immediately. 

Would it be possible to book a call with you to see this in practice?

BR,

[JasonHill]

Unfortunately I can't show you in practice because my current community doesn't have SSO as yet. My previous one did and we use to have to do this all the time. 

Best step-by-step has previously been shared by @jules here:

Step 1) Have user register with their new company email address. They cannot choose their existing community username so ask them to select something else. Also ask them not to post anything until you can merge the accounts. Have them contact you once this is done.

Step 2) Go to Admin/Mod Tools/Edit Users and find the user with their new username/email. Add dupe to the end of their SSO ID and email address.

Step 3) Go to Admin/Mod Tools/Edit Users and find the user with their old username/email. Update these 2 sections with their new SSO ID and new email address.

@elbranscomb has also suggested steps here.

Hope that helps,

Jason

[adriana4u]

Hello,

I have made the dupe of the SSO_id

But it did not put the posts from the latest account:

Is it necessary to have the same email? 

[adriana4u]

The new account ID stays with dupe and the old username has the new ID, right? That is the new account's ID without the dupe, correct?

I've done this and both accounts still exist. 

And the posts have not moved to the new account. 

[JasonHill]

@adriana4u Accounts typically need a unique email address, hence @jules saying you should add dupe to the end of their email address on the new account.

Sorry, it's been a long time but I seem to remember everything didn't magically appear on the merged account until the user signed into it. 

Jason