Set up your organisation

The situation. Your organisation is adopting Databeamer and you are setting it up. The temptation is to add users and create groups straight away. A good setup, however, does not start with the settings but with the processes.

What you will use. Organisations, groups, journals and the document types and labels in the organisation settings.

1. Decide how you will use Databeamer #

Answer these, preferably together with the people responsible for the processes and their content:

• What information will we exchange through Databeamer, and which of it is confidential or privacy-sensitive?
• Which internal and external parties do we work with?
• Which staff need access, and who may create groups themselves?
• Which groups do we need, and who becomes owner or admin?
• Which retention periods apply?
• Which features will we use: Drive, transfers, requests, Secure Mail, chat?
• Which rules apply to its use inside our organisation?
• Will we use single sign-on?

Do not try to lock everything down technically in advance. Start with the most important processes and user groups and expand from there. Pick one or a few clear use cases to begin with; a controlled introduction makes it easier to guide users and to adjust the setup later.

2. Configure the organisation #

Create the organisation through New › New Organization and fill in the basics under Settings:

• General: name, slug and logo.
• Guest pages: the branding guests see when they open your transfers, requests and secure mails.
• Members: invite the administrators and give them their role. Appoint a second owner right away.
• Document types and Group types: see step 5.
• Single sign-on, if you use it.

Use the organisation settings mainly for what has to be the same across groups. Start simple: a common mistake is to create many groups, document types, statuses and labels at once. Make only what is needed and expand when practice asks for it.

3. Set up groups and roles #

Groups are where people actually work together. A group always belongs to one organisation, which is responsible for its use and capacity. For each group, decide:

• what it is for;
• who owns it and who administers it;
• which users need access, and with which role;
• which external parties get access;
• what information is processed in it and which retention period applies.

Besides owner, admin and member, a group has the Reader role: a reader can look everywhere and download, but cannot add, send or upload anything. Give people only the access their work needs. An organisation administrator does not have to be a member of every group; if you need a group's content yourself, you get added to that group. That keeps administration and access to content apart.

4. Agree on a folder structure per group type #

Groups tend to be created for the same kind of work over and over: a project, a family or client, a supplier, an application. If every group owner invents their own folder structure, you end up with many variants of what is really the same file. So agree on one structure per group type.

That helps in more ways than you might expect: everyone knows where information belongs, a colleague can take over immediately during illness or after someone leaves, outside collaborators who work in several groups recognise the layout, files of the same type are comparable in an audit or spot check, and retention periods are easier to apply when you know what sits where.

How to go about it:

1. List the group types that follow from step 1.
2. Define the standard structure per type, together with the person responsible for the content. This is not an IT decision alone.
3. Write down what the folders mean: name, order and a short note on what belongs in each.
4. Communicate the agreement to group owners and include it in the introduction of new users.
5. Review periodically whether the structure still fits.

For illustration:

Project file                    Client file
01 Assignment and planning      01 Registration and intake
02 Decisions and minutes        02 Plan of approach
03 Contracts and quotes         03 Reports and appointments
04 Exchange with third parties  04 Correspondence
05 Delivery and closure         05 Evaluation and closure

Tips: keep it small (a few top-level folders, two or three levels at most), put numbers first so the order is the same everywhere, organise by kind of information or phase rather than by person, avoid personal data in folder names, and distinguish mandatory standard folders from free space.

Databeamer is working on templates that create a group type's folder structure automatically. The structure you agree on now becomes the basis of that template. Until then, write it down in a short overview and have group owners set up new groups according to it.

5. Use document types and labels for management information #

Journals record events, agreements, actions or requests. Set up your document types, labels and statuses thoughtfully and journals also yield management information: for steering, accountability and control. This is about counts based on properties such as type, label, status, group, staff member and date. The content of journals is not read for it, which fits the principle that administration is not access to content.

• Document type: the kind of journal, for example an incident log, a data-subject-request log or a progress log.
• Label: a finer division within a type, for example access, rectification or erasure for data-subject requests.
• Status: the phase a journal is in, for example open, closed or archived.

Question	Based on
How many journals of a given type are there?	document type
How many per label within a type?	document type and label
How many per group within the organisation?	group
How many are open, closed or archived?	status
How many of a type were closed in a period?	document type, status, period

You can read such overviews as a snapshot (how many are open today) or as a trend (how many were opened and closed this quarter). They serve steering (where is the workload), accountability (how many data-subject requests were handled this year; a management review under ISO 27001) and control (which journals have been open for a long time, were closed journals archived on time).

The numbers are only reliable if everyone uses types, labels and statuses the same way. So write down when a journal stays open, who may close it and when a closed journal is archived. Limit the number of types, fix labels organisation-wide as a set list, and change types and labels deliberately, because changing them afterwards makes comparison with earlier periods less reliable. Be careful with figures per staff member: decide the purpose in advance, inform staff, and involve the data protection officer or works council where needed.

Security detailsWhat is this?

Unlike content, types, statuses and labels are readable by the server and by organisation members outside the group. That is what makes them countable, and also why they must only hold categories: no names, case numbers or other sensitive details. See Groups and Journals.

Start with two or three questions management really wants answered and set up types, labels and statuses for those. Expand only when the need arises.

Next #

The structure is in place. Now the people: Roll Databeamer out to your users.