Before you create or modify org unit types, ensure you understand how your organization is structured and determine how you want to maintain that structure within Brightspace and other D2L tools.
Note: Changing your organizational structure can have unexpected consequences and should only be attempted with a very clear understanding of the existing structure and your organizational needs.
Some restrictions apply when creating new org unit types:
- Two instances of the same org unit type cannot reside in the same org hierarchy.
- You must create a unique org unit code for all departments and semesters.
- Departments must be above course templates, which must be above course offerings, which must be above groups and sections.
For example, an organization hierarchy may resemble the following:
Organization > Colleges > Faculties > Departments > Course Templates > Course Offerings > Sections > Groups
It might not be necessary to create an org unit type for each level of the hierarchy, unless specific, individual homepages for each level are required. In the provided example, you might not need to create a college or faculty org unit type; it might be sufficient to have departments.
When deciding which levels of your hierarchy to create, consider the following:
- Reports can be generated that aggregate data on all org units of the same org unit type. For example, a report could be generated for each department that shows how many courses are using a specific tool.
- Users can be enrolled in a cascading role in any org unit; a cascading role automatically enrolls users in all of the org unit’s descendants.
- Homepages can be set up for any org unit type.
To create a new org unit type
- From the Admin Tools menu, click Org Unit Editor.
- Click Manage Types.
Figure: The Manage Types button.
- Click Create Org Unit Type.
Figure: The Create Org Unit Type button.
- Enter your org unit type details:
- Name
- Display Name
- Description
Figure: Creating a new Org Unit Type.
- Click Create.
Delete an org unit type
Deleting an org unit type changes your organization's hierarchy. You should have a clear understanding of what your organizational needs are and how the default and standard org unit types are used before you modify your organizational hierarchy.
You cannot delete an org unit type while org units of that type exist.
You cannot delete the course template, course offering, group, section, and department org unit types.
- From the Admin Tools menu, click Org Unit Editor.
- From the context menu of the org unit type you want to delete, click Delete.
Figure: Deleting an Org Unit Type.