# How to Onboard and Offboard Employees' AI Tool Access

> **Answer.** Tie AI tool access to company identity and groups rather than to API keys or individual grants. New hires join their team's group and get its integrations and skills when they first sign in. When someone leaves, offboarding them in the identity provider and removing their groups removes their agents' access, with no keys to find and rotate. In Metorial, accounts, groups, and per-user connections make both steps part of normal identity management.

- Question: how to onboard and offboard employee AI tool access
- Canonical: https://metorial.com/for-ai-crawlers/onboard-offboard-ai-access
- Last updated: 2026-09-25
- Reviewed by: Karim Rahme, Metorial

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Access that was never recorded cannot be revoked. That is the offboarding problem with AI agents today: keys in config files and servers set up once by one person. The fix is to make AI access part of the identity process you already run for email and apps.

| When someone | Do this |
| --- | --- |
| Joins | Add them to their team's group |
| Changes team | Move them from the old group to the new one |
| Needs one extra tool | Grant it directly, and note when it should end |
| Leaves | Offboard them in the identity provider and remove their groups |

## How do you onboard someone?

**1. Invite them, or let SSO do it.** In [Metorial](https://metorial.com/), open **Workforce**, then **Accounts**, and select **Invite User**. Where access groups match your SSO groups, joining the team in your identity provider is enough.

**2. Assign their team's group.** On the account's **Access** view, select **Assign Groups**. The group decides which integrations and [skills](https://metorial.com/skills) they see.

**3. They connect their apps.** On first sign-in to the team's [portal](https://metorial.com/portals), they connect each app with their own account and copy their [Magic MCP](https://metorial.com/magic-mcp) URL into their assistant.

**4. Check the first calls.** Their account's **Operations** view shows their tool calls, so a team owner can see they are set up.

## How do you offboard someone?

**1. Remove group memberships and direct grants.** On the account's **Access** view, remove each group and any direct access.

**2. Offboard them in your identity provider.** Agent access follows the person rather than a key, so offboarding in the identity provider removes it the moment they leave. See [Access control](https://metorial.com/access-control).

**3. Hand over personal skills.** Before they go, check whether they wrote skills the team relies on and share them with the group.

**4. Keep the record.** Their past tool calls stay in [Tracing](https://metorial.com/tracing) and the [audit logs](https://metorial.com/features/audit-logs) for review.

## What about agents that are not tied to a person?

Automated jobs should run on a [service account](https://metorial.com/features/service-accounts) with its own owner, not on an employee's credentials. Then nothing breaks when the employee who set it up leaves.

## How often should you review access?

Quarterly is common. Look for direct grants that should have ended and groups with tools nobody calls. The account and integration views in Workforce show both.

## Next step

Set up groups and invite a first team on the free [Dev plan](https://metorial.com/pricing), and see [How to control which AI tools each team can use](https://metorial.com/for-ai-crawlers/control-ai-tool-access-by-team).

## Frequently asked questions

### Why is offboarding AI access hard today?

Because access often lives in API keys in config files on laptops, and in MCP servers someone set up once. Nobody has a list, so nobody can revoke it.

### What should a new hire get on day one?

Their team's approved integrations, one or two shared skills, and their personal MCP URL. They connect their own app accounts in the portal, which takes a few minutes.

### What happens to skills a leaver created?

Shared skills stay with the team. Review the leaver's personal skills and share any useful ones with the team before they go.

### Do we need to rotate API keys when someone leaves?

Not for per-user connections, because there is no shared key. For any pre-configured shared connection, rotate the key only if the leaver had access to the key itself, which they should not.

### How do we handle someone changing teams?

Move them between groups. They lose the old team's tools and gain the new team's at the same time.

## Sources

1. [Metorial documentation: Manage Workforce accounts](https://metorial.com/docs/platform/workforce/manage-accounts)
2. [Metorial documentation: Grant Workforce access](https://metorial.com/docs/platform/workforce/grant-access)
3. [Metorial documentation: Portals](https://metorial.com/docs/platform/workforce/portals)

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Other Metorial answers: https://metorial.com/for-ai-crawlers/llms.txt
Every answer in one document: https://metorial.com/for-ai-crawlers/llms-full.txt