System Users and Integrations

Knack includes a set of System Users — a group of reserved user accounts that are built into every Knack application. These accounts are created automatically and exist at the platform level to support internal platform operations.

System Users appear in your application's All Users table. They are protected records that cannot be modified or deleted through the API or the Builder.

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Key Behaviors

• They cannot be deleted. Any API call attempting to delete a System User record will return an HTTP 200 response (the request is acknowledged), but the record will not be removed. The deletion is silently blocked.
• They cannot be edited. Attempts to update System User fields will not persist.
• They will appear in user record queries. If your integration or automation fetches all users from the All Users table, System Users will be included in those results.

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Why This Matters for Integrations and Automations

If you use an automation platform (such as Make, Zapier, n8n, or a custom script) to sync your Knack users with an external system — for example, keeping Knack users in sync with an HR system, CRM, or directory — your automation may encounter System Users during record scans.

A common sync pattern looks like this:

1. Fetch all users from Knack
2. Compare against an external list
3. Delete any Knack users not found in the external list

Because System Users have no corresponding record in your external system, they will appear to be "extra" users that need to be removed. Your automation will attempt to delete them, which may:

• Trigger repeated DELETE API calls that appear to succeed but have no effect
• Create unnecessary server load, particularly if your automation runs frequently or processes large user sets
• Cause confusion when records that "should have been deleted" keep reappearing

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What You Should Do

Identify System Users in your automation

System User record IDs are fixed and the same across all Knack applications. You can also confirm them yourself by enabling System Fields in your Builder, which surfaces the Record ID field for all records including System Users.

The 8 System User record IDs are:

Recommended approach:

• After fetching users from Knack, inspect the record IDs
• Exclude any records whose IDs match the values above before your delete or update operations run
• Apply your sync or delete logic only to the remaining records

Test your exclusion logic

Before re-enabling a sync automation, verify in your platform's logs that no DELETE requests are being made against System User record IDs. This confirms your exclusion filter is working correctly.