guest user seat reclamation failed after 90 days

TL;DR

The guest cleanup job is failing on a subset of guests, usually ones with channel memberships or active shares. Clear the blockers per guest, remove them, then fix the job so it reports skips instead of silently moving on.

guest user seat reclamation failed after 90 days

Use this when

• Guests past the 90-day threshold are still present.
• The cleanup job reports success but the guest count does not drop.
• The failures are per-guest, not systemic.

Not for this skill when

• The job never runs. Fix the schedule first.
• The guests are still active collaborators. Refresh their threshold instead.
• The failure is on full members. That is a different workflow.

Steps

1. List the guests past the threshold who are still present. Verify: the list is accurate.
2. For each, clear the blocker: channel membership, shared items, pending invites. Verify: each blocker is resolved.
3. Remove the guests. Verify: they are gone.
4. Fix the cleanup job's error handling so skips are reported, not silent. Verify: the next run logs its skips.
5. Verify the next scheduled run clears new expirations. Verify: the job works end to end.

Variant phrasings

guest cleanup failed

The short phrasing.

stale guest accounts

The state-first search.

90-day guest policy

The policy-first phrasing.

Compatibility: Any workspace with guest accounts and a cleanup job or policy.

Why it happens

Guest removal has per-guest preconditions. Batch jobs that skip failures without reporting accumulate a silent backlog that only shows up in the seat count.

Edge cases / pitfalls

• Guests who became collaborators again; refresh the threshold rather than removing.
• External users in shared channels needing coordination with the other org.
• The 90-day clock resetting on any activity, including automated activity; define what counts.
• The job's service account losing the permission to remove guests.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_UNQpYHGu-HVvUte85SSyDQ