Your OpenText administrator has resigned. The person who knows how Content Server, Archive Center and the database underneath actually run is working their notice, much of what they do is not written down, and nobody is sure where to start. This guide sets out the problem, then the steps to take to make sure the estate is covered.
The problem
Recruitment takes time, and production will not wait for it. Until a replacement is in place, the estate depends on knowledge that is about to leave. Duties that were never written down go uncovered, access is either left as it is or changed without checking what depends on it, and open work falls between teams.
The notice period is the time to fix this, because the person who holds the knowledge is still there.
The steps to take
- Put a plan together and name an interim owner for production decisions. A shared mailbox is not an owner.
- Identify the duties nobody else is covering. Platform, database and business administration duties are often spread across one person's week in ways nobody has written down.
- Protect access through your normal approved process, and avoid broad changes that could stop essential work.
- Use the notice period to build one responsibility and status record for every open item.
- Choose the cover that fits the gap: assign duties within your team, bring in interim cover or move to a managed service.
- Reduce single-person dependency so the next departure is less disruptive.
Step 1: Put a plan together
Once you have the news, put a plan together. Start the handover straight away and run recruitment alongside it, not instead of it.
Who is accountable for the next operational decision?
Start with one question: if something goes wrong on production tomorrow, who decides what happens next? Record that person's name, what they own and how production escalations reach them. They do not need to take on every administrator task. They need the authority to make decisions and route problems to the people who can fix them.
Keep this step separate from choosing the permanent support model. You are not deciding the future of the estate yet. You are making sure the present has an owner.
Key steps for the departing admin
Ask the departing administrator to spend their first handover sessions on what only they know: the scheduled jobs they run by hand, the workarounds they apply, the alerts they quietly ignore because they know they are harmless, and the ones they never ignore. Written runbooks are useful, but the gaps between runbooks are where outages start.
Agree a handover schedule early and protect the time in their diary. A notice period that is consumed by project work leaves nothing for the people who follow.
How do you keep the knowledge rather than just the documents?
Documents describe how things should work. The departing administrator knows how they actually work. Pair them with whoever will cover the estate, even informally, and have them talk through a normal week: what they check on Monday morning, what runs overnight, which users call them directly and why. Record the answers in the same place as the rest of the estate documentation so the next person can find them.
Step 2: Identify the duties nobody else is covering
An OpenText administrator's job title rarely describes what they do. Duties build up over time, such as certificate renewals, permission requests from business users and monthly archive checks that nobody else knows exist.
Which areas of work need mapping?
Work through the estate in layers rather than by system name.
- Monitoring and incident handling: who can investigate issues, coordinate hand-offs and manage production escalations.
- Scheduled maintenance and planned changes: upcoming work, its accountable owner and any approvals or coordination it needs.
- Database coordination: who can investigate each side when an application issue needs a database check, and who coordinates the hand-off.
- Business administration: who can carry out users, permissions, categories and other business-facing settings, and who makes the related decisions.
Which components should you include?
Include each component where it is part of your estate: Content Server, Archive Center and Extended ECM, plus the database underneath and any integrations that exchange information with the platform. Map tasks across the application, database and infrastructure layers, not only the work visible in an administration interface. Some of the most important duties, such as checking that a backup actually restores, may never appear in Content Server at all.
How do you know if a duty is truly covered?
A duty is covered when a named person has the access, the knowledge and the time to do it, and has accepted that they will. If any of the three is missing, record it as a gap. A name against a task they have never performed is not cover.
Step 3: Protect access without interrupting work
When an administrator leaves, access becomes both a security question and a continuity question. Remove access too late and you carry an unnecessary risk. Change it too broadly and you can stop the work the estate depends on.
What access should you review?
Review individual and shared access through your organisation's approved process. Confirm which roles still need access, who holds the required accounts or credentials, and where service accounts or shared administrative logins are used. Pay particular attention to anything that only the departing administrator can currently reach.
How do you change credentials safely?
Agree who authorises changes and how they will be managed during the handover. Before a shared credential is changed, find out what uses it. A credential changed without that check can break an overnight job or an integration. Plan each change, test it, and record it.
Step 4: Keep one responsibility and status record
The single most useful document you can produce during the notice period is a short record of every open item, its status, its next action and its accountable owner. It is not a full estate documentation project. It is the page the next person reads on their first day.
What should the record include?
For every open item, record the status, the next action and the accountable owner. Include active incidents, scheduled work, pending approvals, upcoming changes, unresolved faults and decisions awaiting action. Then add the operational context: the component and version, the current procedure or record, the next due date or trigger, evidence of completion and the escalation route.
| Field | What to capture | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Open item | Incident, change, approval, fault or decision | Makes hidden work visible |
| Status and next action | Where it stands and the very next step | Lets someone pick it up without a meeting |
| Accountable owner | A named person who has accepted it | Prevents items falling between teams |
| Component and version | Content Server, Archive Center, Extended ECM or database | Points to the right documentation |
| Due date or trigger | Date, expiry or event that forces action | Catches certificates, renewals and scheduled jobs |
| Evidence and escalation | Where the logs, records or runbooks sit, and who to call | Shortens the first investigation |
Where should the record live?
Keep it with the rest of your estate documentation, in a location your team already uses and that survives the departing administrator's accounts being closed. Point to relevant logs, incident records, change history and runbooks in the usual tools rather than copying them in.
Step 5: Choose the cover that fits the gap
With ownership named, duties identified and access under control, decide on cover. There are three common routes, and the right one depends on the size of the gap and how long recruitment is likely to take.
Assign each duty to an owner
Decide who owns each duty on your list and record the owner in the responsibility and status record. Where a duty has no owner, an external provider can cover it, either as interim cover or as a managed service.
When does interim cover make sense?
Interim cover suits the period between one administrator leaving and the next being productive, or the time while you decide on a longer term model. Nuca's interim cover is a bridge, and its terms reflect that: a three-month minimum, then rolling monthly, with no twelve-month commitment. For an urgent gap, cover can start within days, and it is fully running within thirty.
The page on interim OpenText administrator cover sets out what is included and how it ends. In short, it converts to a managed service or hands over to your new hire, and the documentation produced along the way is yours to keep.
When is a managed service the better answer?
Sometimes a resignation shows that the estate was relying on one person for too much. If recruitment has failed before, if the role is hard to fill, or if you want one SLA covering the platform, the database underneath and business administration, a managed OpenText service may be the better long term route. That is a decision to make on evidence, not in the first week of a notice period.
Step 6: Reduce single-person dependency for next time
A resignation shows how much of the estate depended on one person. Whatever route you choose, use the moment to make the next departure less disruptive.
What should change after the handover?
Keep the responsibility and status record alive rather than filing it. Make sure at least two people can perform every critical duty, or that a supplier with a named engineer can. Put runbooks where they will survive staff changes. Review shared credentials so that none depend on a single person's knowledge.
How do you check whether the estate is still at risk?
Single-person dependency is one of the areas Nuca's Estate Continuity Review examines, alongside the platform, the database underneath, ownership, and patching and version currency. You do not need a review to start. The steps in this guide show most of what you need to know.
Close
When an OpenText administrator resigns, the risk is not the resignation itself. It is the period afterwards, when knowledge leaves faster than ownership is reassigned. Put a plan together, name an owner, identify the duties, protect access carefully and keep one honest record of open work. Then choose the cover that fits the gap rather than the one that is quickest to arrange.
If you find yourself in this situation, we are here to discuss your options. Nuca offers different levels of support to suit your needs, from interim cover to a full managed service, so you take on only what your estate needs. Book a 45-minute continuity check call.
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