Another user having pair at Company X is reserving the email address used by the current user at Company Y

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Connecting to model sharing service failed as the email is already in use in another organization
Environment
Not environment-specific

Question:
We have one user who wants to use model sharing but when he wants to join the model he had nothing in the list of shared models and he is getting the following error:

 

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He was invited to join the model and has model sharing license. We found the following error message in the log files:
Another user having (AtcUserId - CompanyId) pair (xxx) at "Company X" is reserving the email address james.smith@test.xyz used by the current user (xxx) at "Company Y"
What is the problem and how to solve it?

Answer:
This means that james.smith@test.xyz has been moved from organization "Company X" to organization "Company Y" in account.tekla.com without changing his email address. In this situation the user account is locked in model sharing service to protect organization data from missuse. If this user is working as a consultant in a company Y, there are different options how to handle the situation, those are explained below. Otherwise, if user is really moved to a new company and is still using same email address, you need to contact Tekla Support to unlock the user account.

In model sharing the user account is the combination of the user profile (AtcUserId) and the organization (CompanyId) that the user belongs. A user can only belong to one organization at a time. This means that when a user is moved (invited) from one organization to another he will lose the access to any models that he had when belonging to another organization. Adding a user to an organization as an action does not give any rights to any model. Removing a user from an organization does in practice disable the access to the models that were granted when the user was a member for the organization. Note also that the external users do not belong to your organization, but their access rights need to be controlled in model level.

There are following options how to move a consultant user to another organization. Basic rule is that do not invite the consultants as a member for your organization with their own email. In case they are using their own email address and user account just invite them as users to the models. See the alternatives with more details below.

Alternative 1: When the user has his own model sharing license just grant access to needed models

In case the user has his own Model Sharing license it is enough just to invite him as a user for the models they need to work with.
Note that denying the access to the models must be taken care individually by the model owners or admin user in this case.

Alternative 2: Add the user to new organization with an external email account created and controlled by you

A controlled way for the organizations using Tekla Structures consultants would be to create an new external email account for them (for example ext-john.smith@mycompany.com) and ask the consultants to create a new user account with that. That user account they can invite and manage as a member of their organization.

The benefit of this extra effort is that when the consultant account is dropped from the organization the consultant cannot anymore access any of the models in Model Sharing service that he was given access rights earlier nor the model sharing license of the hiring company.

Alternative 3: “External ATC user” to offer model sharing license for the consultant

In case the user will need to use a Model Sharing license owned by the company hiring him then invite that user as an external user for the organization in account.tekla.com.
Note that an external user will not belong organization as an employee so using that account he cannot start sharing any model (as that needs the organization identity to set the model ownership).
Note that dropping the user from being an external in account.tekla.com does not deny the access to the models so dropping model access rights must be taken care individually by the model owners or admin user in this case.
 
See also
How to handle model sharing accounts when company name changes

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