Deleting user via API vs preserving interaction history

NICE CXone API & Integrations
1

Looking for advice on deleting a user via the API without breaking their historical interaction data. We’re running a GraphQL gateway that batches GC calls, and hard deletes are causing FK constraint errors in our local cache.

  • Tried DELETE /api/v2/users/{userId} but subsequent GET /api/v2/analytics/interactions/summary calls fail with 404 for historical records.
  • Checked the docs for a soft-delete flag, but the payload only accepts enabled or deleted booleans.
2

You need to stop hard deleting users if you care about historical data integrity. Genesys Cloud doesn’t support soft deletes via the API, so that DELETE call is nuking the reference your analytics queries rely on. Instead, disable the user. It preserves the ID and history while removing access.

{"status": 404, "message": "User not found for interaction history lookup"}

Here’s how I handle this in my Lambda handlers. I catch the deletion request, swap it for a PUT to disable the account, and log it to CloudWatch for audit trails.

// lambda/index.js
const { UsersAPI } = require('@genesyscloud/purecloud-platform-client-v2');

exports.handler = async (event) => {
 const userId = event.detail.userId;
 const api = new UsersAPI();
 
 // Disable instead of delete
 await api.putUser({
 userId,
 body: { enabled: false }
 });
 
 return { statusCode: 200, body: 'User disabled, history preserved' };
};

Your GraphQL gateway should handle the enabled: false state gracefully. If it doesn’t, fix the cache logic, not the user record.

3

{
“enabled”: false
}


> Tried DELETE /api/v2/users/{userId} but subsequent GET /api/v2/analytics/interactions/summary calls fail with 404 for historical records.

Yeah, hard deleting users is a trap. The analytics engine caches user metadata for performance. When you nuke the user record, those cache entries become orphaned and return 404s. It’s not a bug; it’s how the platform handles data lifecycle.

Disabling the user is the standard fix, but if you’re syncing from Okta via SCIM, you have to be careful. If your SCIM config is set to `deprovision` on disable, it might still delete the user in GC if the source of truth is stale or if there’s a sync lag.

Check your SCIM provisioning settings. Ensure `Disable` maps to `Enabled = false` and NOT to `Delete`. If you’re using JIT, just revoke the SSO session and disable the user in GC directly.

For your GraphQL gateway, you might need to handle the 404 gracefully. If a user is deleted, the interaction history still exists but the user lookup fails. You could cache a tombstone record in your local DB with the userId and status "deleted" to prevent repeated 404s to the API.

```graphql
# Example: Cache tombstone on 404
mutation {
 cacheUserTombstone(userId: "12345", status: "DELETED")
}

This way, your gateway returns a consistent “User Deleted” state instead of crashing the analytics query. Don’t fight the platform’s data model; adapt your cache layer to handle missing references.