Administer an organization

Overview

Organizations are where administrators centrally manage datasets and who can access them. All organization administration happens from the Administrator panel which administrators can access from the Organization home page.

If you're interested in using Redivis for your research group, center, or institution, contact us to get an organization set up.

1. Add other administrators

You can add any Redivis account to be an administrator of your organization in the Administrator panel from the Settings tab.

Note that all administrators will have full access to the organization and its datasets, including the ability to modify access rules, approve access requests, and add or remove other administrators, including you.

2. Build your organization's presence

To help brand your organization and best communicate the organization’s purpose to others, you'll want to fully populate and brand the Organization home page.

In the Administrator panel on the Settings tab / Public profile section you can customize:

• The organization's full name

• An organization description which will appear at the top of your about section, and in any institution searches

• A custom brand color

• The organization's logo

• The data portal's cover photo

• A header image that will appear in the top left of users' windows when on your data portal

• Header links to other resources, such as organization-specific documentation, events, and other resources.

• Rich text and images that will display in the main content section of the data portal. A place to provide high level information about your organization and how researchers should user your data portal.

Want a custom URL for your data portal (e.g., data.university.edu)? Contact us and we'll work with your IT to get it configured.

3. Create datasets

You'll need to create datasets to upload and distribute data to your researchers. You can create datasets from the Datasets tab of your Administrator panel.

Here are some pieces to consider before getting started:

Dataset structure

It's worth thinking through your broader data management strategy. Assess the data that you currently have — what format are the files in? Where are they located? How are they organized?

Consider what datasets you'll want to create. Datasets on Redivis are made up of one or more semantically related tables, and each table can contain data from one or more uploaded files. Moreover, all permissions happen at the dataset level — if you grant a user access to a dataset, they will have access to all of its tables.

Citations and DOIs

If you’d like to issue DOIs for your organization’s datasets, you can configure your organization to issue DOIs in the Advanced section Settings tab. DOIs will make it easier for researchers to cite your data when they publish, and allow you to track publications using your data as well as their broader impact.

Learn more in the Create & manage datasets guide.

4. Build access systems

Before you can configure access to a dataset, you'll want to consider and build out the relevant access systems for your organization as a whole.

Direct access & Member access

If you have a smaller organization where you know everyone working with your data, you might want to consider directly granting access to datasets to specific members, or granting access to everyone who is a member.

This can be set up on any dataset individually or you can create a Permission group on the Permission group tab to save the entire configuration of access levels and assign it to multiple datasets.

Requirement-based access

In many cases, however, you’ll want to develop more process-driven access control systems and gather additional information from your members To do so, you can set up requirements that must be completed by members or their studies, and approved by an administrator, before gaining access.

You can build requirements on the Requirements tab of the administrator panel, and save groups of them together as Permission groups on the Permission groups tab which you can assign to multiple datasets.

Export restrictions

Finally, you may want to control how your data is exported from Redivis, if at all. While members with data access will always be able to work with data in Redivis projects, you can limit their ability to export data. For example, you may choose to allow exports only to certain environments, or only upon administrator approval, or not at all.

Learn more in the Configure access systems guide.

5. Manage members and studies

As members and studies apply to access data, you may need to take action to approve (or reject) their access requests. You can find all of your pending access requests wherever you see an alert on the administrator panel.

Members

As users join or organization and apply to work with data, they will appear in the Members tab of your administrator panel. You can also invite anyone to become a member by adding them to the members list.

Studies

Studies allow for researchers to organize their work around a conceptual study, or research project, and for you to grant access in the context of that study. Any studies that are working with your organization's data will appear in the Studies tab of the administrator panel automatically, and you can approve any requirements for studies here.

To be alerted to new access requests, you should configure a notification email (and frequency) from the Settings tab of the administrator panel.

Learn more in the Grant access to data guide.

6. Gain insight into usage

Redivis provides tools to help you keep an eye on your organization and how its data is being utilized.

You can filter, sort, and change the columns for any list in your administrator panel, and download the corresponding report for a snapshot of current information. You can also dig into the logs and generate analytical reports for more information.

Next steps

Expand your reach

If you are part of a larger institution, you can contact us about getting an institution-wide Redivis page to help users discover new organizations and datasets.