About organizations

Organizations (or Orgs) allow businesses to manage and keep track of all their users, projects and datasets present on the Encord platform. The feature includes:

View users: see the list of users belonging to an organisation
User roles: users can be one of a number of types, each with their own permissions
View projects/datasets: users can see their projects
and datasets which are a part of the organisation
Admin capabilities:
- Change users' roles in an organization
- Access to all projects and datasets
- Configure organization-wide settings such as project tags for categorizing projects

Entity relationships

The diagram below illustrates the relationship different entities within an organization in Encord have to each other.

All users and entities are created within an organization.
Projects bring together ontologies and datasets.
A project can have multiple datasets attached to it, but only one ontology.
One ontology can be attached to multiple projects.

Creating an organization

When you join Encord, we create an entry for your company as an organization into our database, with one or more individuals from your business as administrators of the organization. As part of this process, we take the unique email domains of your company, and 'attach' these to your organization. These unique domains will be used to identify any users from your company who subsequently sign up to our platform.

Joining an organization

When a user signs up with their email on our platform, we check if the email domain belongs to a known organization. If it does, we add the user to that organization. For example, if '[email protected]' were to sign up on our platform, we know that 'encord.com' belongs to Encord, so we add that user to the Encord organization.

The different user types of an organization

Users of an organization can be categorized into the following types of users:

Internal: users who are directly employed by the organization. They have the ability to view the dashboard of that organization and projects/datasets created by them are automatically made a part of the organization. A user can only be an internal user of one organization. Internal users can be further subdivided into:
Admin: an admin has executive privileges over an organization, and can carry out actions restricted to other users such as: viewing and accessing all projects in an organization, removing users from an organization and configuring the project tags.
Member: a member is an internal user of an organization without administrative capabilities
Workforce: users who are employed on a contractual basis. A user can be a workforce user of more than one organization. In order to become one, they must be an internal member of a workforce organization.
External: all other types of user not directly or contractually employed by the organization. This category is normally designated for Encord users who sometimes interact with your organization through different projects and datasets.

Click here to learn how to add users to your organization.

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Note
Only internal users can be admins of an organization.

The two types of organizations

An organization is marked in our database as either being a workforce organization, or not a workforce organization. This is determined by us when creating an organization. The significance of this is that any internal user of a workforce organization will additionally become a workforce member of another organization if they are added to a project or dataset belonging to that organization.

Organization dashboard

To navigate to your organization dashboard page, click the 'User area' icon in the top right and select your organization's name. You will start at your organization's user directory.

In the example below, the user is a member of 'Encord', therefore 'Encord' appears as the organization name in the drop-down menu.

If you do not see your organization name after clicking the user icon, please contact us.

The organization dashboard

The organization dashboard allows you to view your organization's users, projects and datasets. This dashboard is limited to internal members only so your user role in your organization dashboard will always be either 'Admin' or 'Member'. Workforce and external users cannot view your organization.

Users tab

The 'Users' tab is the first tab in the organization dashboard. Admins can use this tab to view, edit, and delete users in their organization. Members are limited to adding and viewing the list of users.

Admins can take the following actions on users:

Convert internal users to admins.
Add users to the organization.
Remove users from the organization.

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Note
Members can add other members to the organization, but don't have the ability to promote any member to be an admin.

Convert a member to an admin

To convert a member to an admin, select 'Admin' from the drop-down menu next to their email. Remember that only admins can convert other members to admins.

Please confirm or cancel your selection when making this change.

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Note
Workforce and external users can't be converted to admins. Click here to read more about different types of users.

Add users to the organization

Add users to your organization by clicking the Add user button highlighted in the image below.

Type the email address of the user you'd like to add to your organization, and select the type of user you'd like them to be. See our section on user types to learn more.

Click Add to add the user to your organization.

Removing users from the organization

🚧
Caution
Only admins can remove users from the organization.

To remove any non-admin user from an organization, navigate to the user you want to remove and click the icon on the right.

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Note
Admins can't be removed from the organization. Contact Encord if you need help with admin users in your organization.

If the user to be removed is the sole admin for any projects or datasets within the organization, you will be prompted to select a replacement user from your organization. Once a replacement has been select, click the Save button.

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Note
There is a distinction between organization admins, and admins for particular datasets and projects.

Groups tab

The 'Groups' tab allows you to create user groups within your organization. User groups are collections of members which can be added to projects as a group, rather than individuals.

Creating user groups

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Note
You have to have admin privileges within your organization to create user groups.

To create a new user group, click the +Create group button.

On the pop-up, give your group a name, and click 'Select group members' - highlighted in the image below - to select members of your organization you wish to add to your group. Click Add to add a group member.

Click Create group to finish.

Projects tab

To manage projects in your organization, select the 'Projects' tab.

As an organization admin, you can:

See all projects in your organization: if you want to see only your projects, click the 'Filter by project owner'
drop-down, and select 'My projects only'
Add yourself to any project: you have full access as a project admin

For both admins and members, clicking on a project you are a part of will take you to that project.
If you are a member, you will only see your projects which are part of the organization.

Join a project

An admin can add themselves to a project. Navigate to the project you want to join, and click the
Join project button on the right.

You will be added to the project as an admin.

Datasets tab

To manage datasets in your organization, select the 'Datasets' tab.

As an organization admin, you can:

See all datasets in your organization: if you want see your datasets only, click the 'Filter by' drop-down,
and select 'My datasets only'.
Add yourself to any dataset: you have full access as a dataset admin.

For both admins and members, clicking on a dataset you are a part of will take you to that dataset.
If you are a member, you will only see your datasets which are part of the organization.

Join a dataset

An admin can add themselves to a dataset. Navigate to the dataset you want to join, and click the
Join dataset button on the right.

You will be added to the dataset as an admin.

Ontologies tab

To manage ontologies in your organization, select the 'Ontologies' tab.

As an organization admin, you can:

See all ontologies in your organization: if you want see your ontologies only, click the 'Filter by' drop-down, and select 'My ontologies only'.
Add yourself to any ontology: you have full access as an ontology admin.

For both admins and members, clicking on an ontology you are a part of takes you to that ontology.
If you are a member, you will only see your ontologies which are part of the organization.

Join an ontology

An admin can add themselves to an ontology. Find the ontology you want to join in the list, and click the
Join ontology button on the right.

You will be added to the ontology as an admin.

Project tags tab

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Note
Creating and managing project tags requires admin rights for your organization. Tags can be added to projects by all members of an organization.

Project tags allow projects to be categorized using labels which helps:

Admins when looking at projects across an entire organization
For organization members wanting to group and filter their projects

To manage project tags, click the 'Project tags' tab, which is only visible to admins.

To see how to add project tags to individual projects click here.

Create a tag

Creating a new project tag will make this available for selection in a project. Create a tag by clicking
the +New button and typing in the name of your new tag. Make sure this name isn't already being used, otherwise you will be prompted to try again.

Edit a tag

You can edit an existing tag to give it a different name, as long as the name isn't already in use. To do this, double-click on the tag you want to modify, and enter its new name.

Remove a tag

Removing a tag will remove it from all projects which use the tag across your organization, and will no longer make it accessible for adding to any projects in the future. To remove a tag, simply press x labeled on the tag. If the tag is in use in any projects, you will be prompted with a confirmation that you really want to remove it.

Filter projects by tags

After you have created one or more project tags, and they are being used in projects, you can filter projects using these tags. To do so, navigate to the 'Projects' tab, click the 'Filter by tags' drop-down and select one or more project tags. This will result in only projects with all of those tags being displayed.

Interacting with users in your organization

Organization members are pre-populated in dropdowns in various parts of the application,
making it easy to add members as collaborators to your projects, datasets, and notifications.

Add an organization user to a project

To add somebody from your organization to a project, go to the Project -> Project settings -> Team -> +Invite collaborators. A pop-up will load where you can enter the emails of the collaborators you want to invite to your project.

If you click the 'Enter emails' field, you will get a drop-down menu pre-populated with your organization members. Start typing to filter the list. The filter is applied from the beginning of the word.

Please note that you can still add people from outside your organization as well. This is a feature meant to ease collaboration within organizations, not hinder any workflow requirements you might have.

Add an organization user to a dataset or notification

The flow to add users from your organization to datasets and notifications is analogous to that of projects.