Managing Organizations

If you’re not entirely sure what Organizations are or whether you need them in your portal, start here. This article gets right to the practical stuff: how to manage Organizations.

Adding Organizations

Add an Organization (perhaps start by adding the Physical Plant Department organization to the Lunar Resort):

1. Click Users and Organizations from Control Panel → Users.

2. Go to the Organizations tab and click the Add button. Fill out the Name field at a minimum.

3. To attach a Site when you create an Organization, click on Organization Site and check the Create Site box. If you don’t know right now if your organization needs a site, that’s fine. You can always add one later.

   

   Figure 1: Fill out the add Organization form and click *Save*.

4. If you’re creating a child Organization, use the Parent Organization Select button to select an Organization in the system to be the direct parent. Click the Remove button to remove the currently configured parent.

5. Click Save when finished filling out the Add Organization form.

As when creating a new user, once you submit the form a success message appears and you have access to a new form which lets you enter additional information about the Organization. Organizations can have associated multiple email addresses, postal addresses, web sites, and phone numbers. The Services link can be used to indicate the operating hours of the Organization, if any.

Tip: After creating an Organization, assign the desired user to the Organization Owner Role. The Organization Owner can do everything that an organization Administrator can. In addition to their full administrative rights within the Organization, they can do these things:

• Appoint other Users to be Organization Administrators
• Appoint other Users to be Organization Owners
• Remove the memberships of other Organization Administrators or Owners

Organization Administrators can’t make these Role assignments and can’t manage the memberships of other Organization Administrators or Owners.

Editing Organizations

To edit an Organization, go to the Users and Organizations section of the Control Panel and click the Organizations tab. All active Organizations are listed. Click the Actions button next to an Organization. This shows a list of actions you can perform on this Organization.

• Edit lets you specify details about the Organization, including addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and websites.

• Manage Site lets you create and manage the public and private pages of the Organization’s site. This only appears for Organizations that have attached Sites.

• Assign Organization Roles lets you assign Organization-scoped Roles to Users. By default, Organizations are created with three Roles: Organization Administrator, Organization User and Organization Owner. You can assign one or more of these Roles to Users in the Organization. All members of the Organization automatically get the Organization User Role so this Role is hidden when you click Assign Organization Roles.

• Assign Users lets you search and select Users to be assigned to this Organization as members.

• Add User adds a new User and assigns the User as a member of this Organization.

• Add Organization lets you add a child Organization to this Organization. This is how you create hierarchies of Organizations with parent-child relationships.

• Delete removes this Organization. Make sure the Organization has no Users in it first. You’ll be prompted for confirmation that you want to delete the Organization. If there are Users in the Organization or if there are sub-Organizations, you must remove the Users and delete the sub-Organizations before deleting the parent Organization.

If you click the Organization name you can view both a list of Users who are members of this Organization and a list of all the sub-Organizations of this Organization.

Organization Types

By default, Liferay DXP only includes the Organization type. Configure the existing type or add additional types using the aptly named Organization Type entry in System Settings. There are two main reasons to configure Organization types:

1. Organizations usually correlate to real-life hierarchical structures. Calling them by their real names is helpful for administrators and Users. In the Major League Baseball (MLB) example, League, Division, and Team Organization types are useful.

2. Enforce control over which Organizations can be top level Organizations and the type of sub-Organization allowed for each parent Organization type. For example, MLB would not allow Division Organization types to be sub-Organizations of Team Organizations.

Figure 2: Create new organization types through the System Settings entry called Organization Types.

Check out the configuration options that configure the default Organization type and then configure an additional type.

To add another Organization type called League, enter these options into the configuration form:

Name: League

Adds League to the list of Organization types that appear in the Add Organization menu.

Country Enabled: True

Enables the Country selection list field on the form for adding and editing League types.

Country Required: False

Specifies that the Country field is not required when adding a League.

Rootable: True

Enables Leagues as a top level Organization. Limit League to sub-Organization status by excluding this property.

Children Types: Division

Specifies Division as the only allowable sub-Organization type for the League parent type.

Once you configure additional Organization types and click Save, you’ll find your new type(s) available for selection in the Add Organization form.

Figure 3: Custom configuration types are available in the Add Organization form.

Users can join or be assigned to Sites when they share a common interest. Users can be assigned to Organizations when they fit into a hierarchical structure. User groups provide a more ad hoc way to group users than sites and Organizations. You’ll look at them next.