In addition to setting up profiles for individual users (customers who are site visitors, or other types of site users such as administrators), you can set up additional profiles for abstract entities called “organizations” and “roles” and use them to create a multi-level organization of site users grouped by function.

Some sites require only a one-level or flat organizational structure for their visitors. For example, a large retail site may have many different types of visitor (new customers, frequent buyers, customers with a high income, residents of a specific area), and those visitors may have dramatically different needs in terms of the content of the site. Regardless of their different requirements, however, they perform essentially the same role – retail customer – at the site. For a site such as this, the organizational structure of visitors requires one level only.

A profile repository configuration that includes organizations and roles is useful for sites that serve a variety of visitors with widely differing functions. (Often, for these sites, the term “user” is more appropriate than “visitor” or “customer.”) For example, a business-to-business commerce site might have some users who are buyers and others who have the supervisory role of approving certain purchasing decisions. In addition, other users may act as administrators for the site. In this case, the site’s organizational structure could have two or possibly three levels. Other examples of sites that might involve multi-level user relationships are sites that manage interactions between a business and its partners, or sites that function as an Internet community or discussion forum.