Your digital afterlife

What happens when you leave your company? A great opportunity and tons of money, hopefully (and lets hope they don't make you go back to Outlook wherever you go). But what about your data? Turns out that's an interesting question that reveals a lot about how Google Workspace works, and the beauty of its architecture.

What happens when you leave

Your Google Workspace access will be suspended immediately. You can no longer access your data or your email. Mobile users will lose access to the mobile apps (Android users will have them uninstalled at once).

This is a good reminder to keep your private and your work lives separate.
Your account might be renamed or vanish altogether, depending on company policy. This helps other people not expect replies from your account.
Parts of your data may be transferred to colleagues (see below). The show must go on without you, after all!
Gmail will stop sending and receiving email. Forget out-of-office reminders and scheduled emails, all activity will cease. People emailing you get an error message (which cannot be customized or avoided).

Hope John transferred his stuff himself - or the likes will decrease.

What can get transferred

My Drive: Ownership over all your data is usually transferred to somebody else, normally your boss. That means your boss gets a new folder which contains everything you owned. Since your Drive contained stuff you didn't own (only had edit rights, say), your boss will not get the nicely organized list of folders that gives you so much joy. It'll be more overwhelming. BTW, if you should re-join the company, you will be editor of your transferred files, but no longer own them. Unless they get re-transferred... Which will still be messy.
Calendar: Calendar data can theoretically be transferred, but that's normally not done.

Somebody has been studying for the Google Professional Collaboration Engineer exam!

Currents: Ownership over your communities can be transferred, usually also not done.

How to go well-liked

We're professionals and we transition orderly, right?

Drive: Receiving a truckload of files in your driveway isn't nice. Neither is receiving sharing requests for files you barely knew you had. If you want to do your boss a favor, make other people owners of core documents. Better yet, move them to a Shared Drive. This takes some work but will prevent a lot of cursing your name.
Shared Drives: No need to transfer Shared Drives! That's the beauty of them. Perhaps you should make sure that there are other people with manager roles besides you.
Currents: Make sure to put someone else in charge of your communities. It's good practice to have at least 2, better 3 people own each community.
Groups: Make another person manager of your groups.
Contacts: You can export your contacts - that's probably good advice to keep in touch.

How to go with a bang

You can't, really. Google Workspace is a managed service in every way. Both in the traditional sense (no longer buying the admins coffee to get more Lotus Notes quota) but also in the sense of complete control over data. Remember everything you do belongs to your company - Google Workspace enables it to have true control over that data. Everything you do can be undone, undeleted, unrenamed and of course traced back to you. So instead of going out rebellious, use the last day to make things better.

Bonus: What you can take with you

Shortest bonus section ever!

Nothing really, and you're not supposed to. It's all your company's property. If your IT permits, nothing will stop you from cramming files onto your USB drive, but be aware this is monitored. Emails are monitored as well. Take a step back and think if your data is really that important - your skills are important and you would probably never look at the data again anyway. If not, talk to your boss to get an approval and save you the sort of trouble no tech blog can help you with.

Thinking about any form of afterlife is awkward but rewarding, especially to the people you leave behind. Make sure your exit is as spectacular as your tenure, people will appreciate it. Thank you for reading!

#drivePublished 2019-09-19 by Holger Matthies.Modified 2020-05-25 by Holger Matthies.Written listening to Moonbeam - Eclipse.

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