Restoring Correct Ownership After a User Is Disabled and Re-enabled in Your ATS

This article explains what happens to record ownership in Bullhorn Automation when a user is temporarily disabled in your ATS, and how to restore correct ownership after that user is re-enabled.

What Happens When a User Is Disabled in Your ATS

When a user is disabled or marked inactive in the ATS, Bullhorn Automation no longer recognizes them as an active user. Records they own stop matching the Contact with an Active ATS Owner rule. On the next sync, those records fall through to the Backup Rule, which reassigns ownership using Round Robin among the users assigned to that rule. If your Backup Rule points to a single user or a general account, all of the disabled user's records may land on one person.

How to Restore Correct Ownership

You do not need to create a temporary Owner Assignment Rule to restore ownership. Once the user is active again, the existing rules handle recovery automatically.

  1. Re-enable the user in the ATS.
  2. In Bullhorn Automation, go to Settings > Bullhorn.
  3. Click Sync Bullhorn Data Now.
  4. Allow up to two hours for ownership updates to process.

When the sync completes, the Contact with an Active ATS Owner rule automatically re-evaluates all records and restores ownership to the now-active user.

When a Temporary Owner Assignment Rule Is Appropriate

Temporary Owner Assignment RulesClosed Rules which can be created to assign the most suitable owner to each contact. This ensures that every contact is managed by the right person. are the right tool when you want to intentionally and permanently reassign records away from a specific user — for example, when a recruiter leaves the company and their records need to be redistributed. This is a different scenario from a user being temporarily disabled and re-enabled, and the two should not be handled the same way.

If Ownership Doesn't Restore After the Sync

The sync ran but ownership didn't restore

Confirm the user is active in both the ATS and Bullhorn Automation. The Contact with an Active ATS Owner rule requires the user to be active in both systems. If the user is active in the ATS but still marked Inactive in Bullhorn Automation, update their status in Settings > Bullhorn Automation Users, then run Sync Bullhorn Data Now again.

Some records are still under the backup user after the sync

Records that do not have an ATS owner set, or whose ATS owner is a different inactive user, remain under the Backup Rule after the sync. These records were not owned by the re-enabled user before the disruption and are unaffected by restoring that user's active status.