This article offers a concrete illustration of the relationship between Organizations, Sub-organizations, and universities. For more detailed descriptions of Organizations and Sub-organizations, see the rest of the Orientation guide.
Imagine that Academia University, a brand new client of Yellowdig, has three constituent schools: the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), the College of Business (CB), and the School of Law (SL). Let's imagine that only CAS and CB are running Yellowdig courses; SL has not yet adopted Yellowdig. Finally, for simplicity's sake, let us assume that CAS and CB have two departments each and that Academia University has disabled the Learner Communities Organization (For more on the Learner Communities Organization, see Introduction to Organizations and Sub-organizations.) CAS has Philosophy and Physics departments, while CB has Finance and Marketing departments. When Yellowdig, in collaboration with Academia University, initially sets up Organizations for Academia, the Organization structure will look like this: Tier 1 (the first row) contains one (and only one) Organization, and this Organization covers the entire university. Tier 2 (the second row) contains an Organization for each school. Tier 2 Administrators are generally expected to take the lead in creating department-level Organizations. For very large universities, creating an Organization for every department in the institution would be time-consuming, and—for universities where only one or two departments are contracted to use Yellowdig—such work would be needless. During the onboarding process, we prepare Tier 1 and 2 Administrators to create Organizations for departments as the need arises. Organization creation is easy and intuitive, and building out your institution's Organization structure through Tier 2 ensures that every departmental Organization will eventually have a home in Tier 3.
Let us assume that Tier 2 Administrators from the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Business have created Organizations for the Philosophy and Physics departments and the Finance and Marketing departments, respectively. The Organization structure for Academia University should now look like this: In the next article, we'll see how this Organization structure impacts Organization roles, permissions, and visibility.
Audience: This help article is for Instructors, Designers, and Administrators. Students or Learners do not have access to these settings.