Organizations correspond to the different ways you can group users. For example, you could set up organizations that correspond to the different business units in a company, or to different geographic areas. Like users, each organization has its own profile in the profile repository. The following example shows the profile of an organization called US Motor Works:
Organization profile
Roles correspond to specific functions that a person can perform within an organization, such as “vice president” or “administrator.” Like users and organizations, each role has its own profile in the repository. The following example shows the profile of a role called “Senior Approver”:
Role profile
After you have set up organizations and roles, you assign users to them. Depending on the way your profile repository is configured, users can inherit the profile properties of the organization or role to which they are assigned. In the same way, you can assign roles to organizations; in this case, any user who is a member of an organization automatically inherits any roles you have assigned to it. You can also create a hierarchy by assigning organizations to other organizations; for example, you could assign two organizations called “North West” and “South West” to an organization called “Western Region.” Again, each child organization can inherit the profile properties of the parent organization.
You can use a combination of users, organizations, and roles (also called a “user directory”) to control access to various areas of the site. You can also use them as you would use profile groups – you can set up scenarios and targeters that deliver appropriate content to members of a given organization, for example, or to users assigned a specific role. (For more information on scenarios, see Creating Scenarios. For more information on profile groups, see Creating Profile Groups.)
Note that the ATG Control Center itself contains a working implementation of a user directory. Each ATG Control Center user has a profile in the Admin SQL Repository, and the ATG system administrator can view and edit the profiles through the People and Organizations > Control Center Users window. In addition, the administrator uses the People and Organizations > Control Center Groups window to set up ATG Control Center roles (for example, developer, designer, or manager) that include access rights to each area of the ATG Control Center. The administrator then assigns each user to a role, and the user inherits the access rights of that role.
For information on how to use organizations and roles for site security and access control, refer to the ATG Programming Guide.
