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 part of the profile for 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

(Note that there are two types of role—global and organizational. The example above is an organizational role. See the section on roles for descriptions of both types.)

After you have set up organizations and roles, you assign users to them. Users then inherit the profile properties of the assigned organization or role. In the same way, you can assign roles to organizations; in this case, any user who is a member of an organization 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.” Each child organization inherits the profile properties of the parent organization.

As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, 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 segments – you can set up scenarios and targeters that deliver appropriate content to members of a given organization, for example, or to users who have a specific role. (For more information on scenarios, see ATG Personalization Guide for Business Users. For more information on segments, see the ATG Business Control Center User's Guide.)

For information on how to use organizations and roles for site security and access control, refer to the ATG Platform Programming Guide.