Common Organization Structures and Best Practices

This article describes best practices for creating an organizational structure within Documoto, as well as provides insight into common organization structures.

Often your organization hierarchy will reflect the way your company is organized and works with different groups across your organization - both internal and external. 

Article Topics

• What is the Purpose of an Organization?
• What to consider when creating an Organizational Structure?
• What are common Organizational Structures?
• Organization Structure Support

What is the Purpose of an Organization?

Overall, Organizations are a way to group users. In Documoto, organizations can also help to address the following needs:  

1. Content Distribution: To ensure content created within Documoto is distributed to the right users, Access Controls must be set for books and media.  The content users can see in the Documoto library relies on the organizational structure you build in conjunction with Media Categories.
2. Differing Pricing Structures: If you maintain pricing in the Documoto system, organizational structures can be used to set-up pricing structures or pricing groups in Documoto. 
3. Differing Currency Codes: If your users purchase your parts in varying currencies, organizational structures can be used to set-up currency structures for grouping your users under the appropriate currency code. 
4. Organization-Specific Branding & Settings: Organizations can be used to brand or configure different settings for unique user experiences when setting up Styles, Browse Flows, Print Settings, PO/RFQ Forms, and Integrations.

Considerations for Creating an Organization Structure

Organizational Structures contain inheritance logic behind them in Documoto. As a first step, you should consider how you want to structure your organizations based on the following inheritance rules: 

• Access Controls have reverse inheritance: This means that Access Controls are set at the lowest-level organization within the hierarchy. These Access Controls are then inherited by all organizations above them in the organization tree. This means users created in organizations higher up the organization will always have access to content that users in lower-level organizations have access to. 
• Pricing / Currency have standard inheritance: This means that lower-level organizations inherit the Pricing and Currency Codes that are applied to organizations higher up the organization tree.
• Branding, Browse Flows, Storefront Settings, and Integrations have standard inheritance: This means that lower-level organizations inherit the settings that are applied to organizations higher up the organization tree.

Secondly, you will want to work internally to chart out or diagram your current structure to visualize the flow of your hierarchy.  When 'whiteboarding' your structure, you will want to consider the following criteria for your various levels:

1. What content should be visible to users at the organizational level they're associated with?
2. Will you be maintaining pricing in Documoto, and if so will different users need to see different prices?
3. Will your users need to see different currencies for pricing depending on where they are located globally?
4. Will all users see the same Browse Flows and branding?
5. Will all users use the same order forms, and will all user orders need to be submitted to the same order recipients?
6. Will all users need to be connected to your real-time integration?

Once you have created the hierarchy for your organization structure, you can begin to configure it within Documoto.

What are Common Organization Structures?

Customer or Dealer-Based Organization Structure

Business Need(s):

• Restrict access to your parts catalogs and parts information based on your customer or dealer offerings
• Manage various pricing models across your customer or dealer base

Location Based Organization Structure

Business Need(s): 

• Restrict access to your parts catalogs and parts information based on geographic location
• Functional groups that specialize in certain aspects of equipment and the corresponding parts and assemblies

Role-Based Organization Structure

Business Need(s):

• Restrict access to your parts catalogs and part information based on specific roles established with your customer or dealership base.
• Manage groups of technician groups servicing equipment.

Organization Structure Support

If you need any help formulating an Organization Structure strategy or support re-tooling your existing structure, contact your Documoto Customer Success Manager or Documoto Support at support@documoto.com.