Organization Hierarchy

Creating an org hierarchy is based on the concept of sub-groups within any group. A group can contain multiple child groups which in turn can contain more sub-groups. To use this capability, you need to enable the Org Hierarchy feature from the Site Admin->Site Details->Features tab

When this feature is on, you can create an org structure such as the one example we are including here:

• Corporate
  • Customer Support
  • Engineering
    • Build & Release
    • Development
    • Quality Assurance
  • Human Resources
  • Sales

Create a group Corporate at the top level. On the groups listing from the Groups tab you would only see the top level groups. There is a link Sub groups to drill down into any particular group and view its subgroups.

On the group details page also, you would get an option to add sub-groups

Create more groups at next level by using the add sub groups option. The picture below shows groups directly under Corporate.

Now drill down into Engineering and create further sub-groups for teams within Engineering.

Permissions and Memberships

Once you have setup the groups like above, system ensures following.

• When a user is added in Active status in any group at any level, the system would add the user implicitly to the parent group (if not already found). If the parent group was not top level the process will be repeated until the top level group is reached. Therefore you can see that user would need to be added only in the most specific sub-group once, and they are made member of any other parent group going upward in the tree.
• When the user is removed from any group at any level, the system would remove the user from all sub groups under that group. If those sub groups were not the leaf nodes in the tree then the process will repeat for the next level of sub groups. Therefore user would be removed from the entire sub tree

Users can be members of multiple groups as usual. And can also have different roles within different groups. The roles are not inherited as per the hierarchy.

You can use this mechanism to create training programs and learning resources for specific teams at the appropriate levels in the org structure. Combine the auto enrollment option at group level, and you can make the whole training assignment process efficient by assigning the employees to the specific groups as per their department or team.

Sub-group creation Permission

At site level there are two settings

• Allow group creation by all
• Allow sub-group creation by group admins/instructors

How it works

• If both the above flags are off then only site admins can create any group or sub groups
• If first checkbox is On, then all users in the site can create groups (top level). Any user who has admin/instructor role in any group can create sub-group inside it. This policy works, except when you want to restrict the number of top level groups in the site
• By keeping first checkbox Off and turning on the Second checkbox, you can control the top level groups creation permission (only site admins can create top level groups). After that anyone who is admin or instructor in any group, can create sub-groups within it

Allowing sub-group creation by learners in groups

• In each group's options, a permission checkbox can be enabled to allow learners, to create their own sub-groups. For this to work, one of the checkbox discussed above must be turned on.