Campaign Staff Handoff: Accounts, Access and Shared Files

1. Agree what changes, when and who approves it

Name a handoff coordinator, the person taking over the work, and the administrator authorized to change access. In a small team, one person may fill more than one role, but the decisions should still be explicit.

Write down the effective time and time zone. A change of role may require narrower permissions rather than closing an account. A planned departure needs a clear end to access, while a contractor finishing one assignment may still have another approved responsibility.

List the work that must continue during the change: responding to the shared inbox, updating the next event, finding the current budget document and receiving vendor alerts. Keep personnel details out of the technical checklist. Administrators need the approved access decision and timing, not private reasons for it.

2. Inventory resources, not just logins

Start with the systems the person uses, then ask what depends on them. A folder can have a new editor while its form, calendar or automated notification still relies on the old owner.

NIST's Small Business Quick-Start Guide recommends maintaining an inventory of systems and services, identifying their owners and limiting sensitive information to people who need it. Use that as the foundation for a resource-by-resource handoff.

Walk through a normal working day with the outgoing person when appropriate. Where do requests arrive? Which document is authoritative? What repeats weekly? Which supplier emails only one person? Record links and ownership, never passwords, recovery codes, access tokens or personal account contents.

• Email, calendars, file storage, chat and the campaign CRM.
• Website hosting, domain registration, forms and analytics.
• Event registrations, internal task boards and shared inboxes.
• Vendor billing contacts, renewal notices and support cases.
• Connected apps, scheduled exports and other recurring jobs.

Sources: NIST SP 1300: Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 Small Business Quick-Start Guide

3. Use one handoff register

Keep the register in approved, access-controlled storage. The table below is a fictional example, not a description of Pulsar's permissions or administrative screens.

Add columns for the current owner, replacement owner, required role, effective time, administrator, verification evidence and unresolved issues. Mark an item complete only when its evidence exists. A useful evidence entry says who checked what and when; it should not contain a secret or an unnecessary copy of personal data.

4. Preserve files and ownership before account deletion

Decide which business records must remain and who is authorized to receive them. Use the provider's supported transfer or organizational-storage mechanism. Sharing a link may give someone access without transferring ownership.

Google Workspace's current offboarding guidance distinguishes domain-verified and email-verified organizations. It instructs administrators to transfer important data before deletion; in email-verified organizations, a removed user can retain some directly shared access. Check the section that matches your setup instead of assuming every removal works the same way.

Microsoft's offboarding overview likewise treats preserving mailbox and OneDrive content as explicit steps alongside blocking access and removing an account. Storage and retention behavior varies by service and configuration.

Ask the successor to open the required files under their own account. Check calendars, forms and other owned resources separately from documents. Keep deletion and retention decisions with the authorized owner. Do not transfer a person's private material into a team folder just because it is technically accessible.

Sources: Google Workspace: delete or remove a user from your organization; Microsoft 365: remove a former employee and secure data

5. Give the successor enough access to do the job

Use an individual account and the smallest appropriate role. Make a short task list, then test the work from that person's actual permissions: open the shared folder, update an internal task and find the current operating document. A successful administrator demonstration does not prove the successor can do the same thing.

Enable multifactor authentication wherever the service supports it, using your organization’s approved method. CISA recommends MFA on accounts that offer it. Confirm recovery belongs to the organization where appropriate; do not make another person's phone or personal inbox the only recovery route.

If a tool has only a broad administrator role, record that limitation and have the responsible owner decide whether it is acceptable. Do not solve an unclear permissions problem by granting everyone administrator access.

Keep a documented recovery route for critical services. The handoff should not leave the organization dependent on a single departing account, but adding backup access still needs the organization's normal authorization.

Sources: CISA: turn on multifactor authentication

6. Remove access across each relevant service

At the approved time, the authorized administrator should follow each provider's offboarding procedure. Review direct memberships, group-based access, guest invitations, delegated inboxes and personal accounts that were separately invited to business resources.

Treat sign-in restrictions and active sessions as separate verification questions. Microsoft's guidance explicitly includes signing out sessions as well as blocking sign-in, and documents that changes may not take effect immediately. Follow the current service instructions and record the expected delay.

Check connected applications and recurring jobs before retiring their owner. If a connection must be transferred or reauthorized, identify the approved replacement and test it safely. Do not paste credentials into the register or assume changing a password removes every independent connection.

Review known local exports and organization-owned devices under your approved policy. Removing online access cannot recall a file already downloaded. Preserve evidence if there is a security concern, and do not erase personal devices or business records as an improvised cleanup step.

Sources: Microsoft 365: prevent sign-in and block access

7. Rehearse the handoff with fictional data

Consider a fictional team with three people: Jordan is leaving, Casey is taking over event administration, and Morgan is the authorized system administrator. They have an operations folder, a calendar and a registration form connected to an internal notification.

Before the change, they create a clearly labeled test event and a synthetic form entry in a safe test area. Casey can edit the folder but cannot change the calendar. The form notification still goes only to Jordan. The register has exposed two incomplete transfers that a shared-folder link would have missed.

After approved corrections, Casey edits the test event, Morgan confirms the notification reaches the right team inbox, and the provider's administrative view shows Jordan no longer has the relevant access. They check both direct and group-based sharing. They do not sign in as Jordan, use real supporter records or trigger public messages.

If any check fails, record the remaining dependency, its owner and the next action. Keep the operational handoff open without quietly restoring broad access. If access must be removed immediately, the authorized administrator should do that while the team resolves continuity separately.

8. Close the handoff with an exception list

Give the coordinator a brief completion record: resources transferred, access changes verified, open exceptions and the person responsible for each. This lets a colleague distinguish completed work from assumptions.

Set a specific follow-up for the next relevant scheduled job or provider propagation window. If a weekly report has not run since its connection changed, record it as awaiting that result. Do not call it tested because the settings screen saved successfully.

Use the next staff change to improve the template. If nobody knew who owned a form, add forms to the inventory. If a notification failed, add a safe delivery check. The useful outcome is a repeatable process that your team can actually complete.

• The successor can perform the essential tasks with their own account.
• Business files, calendars and other resources have an accountable owner.
• The outgoing person's unnecessary access is removed and checked.
• Connections and scheduled jobs have an owner and a documented test result or pending check.
• Retention, recovery and unresolved exceptions have explicit decisions and owners.

The final handoff question

Can the next person do the work, can the organization recover access if needed, and can an administrator show that unnecessary access is gone? If the answer to any part is uncertain, record the gap and assign it before calling the handoff complete.