The Associations feature links a single user to multiple organizations. The relationship between the user and the associated organization is governed by their respective roles. When viewing a user record, all organizations the user is associated with, along with their role at each, are displayed.
Who: Associations can be enabled by internal roles such as System Administrators and Global Administrators.
When to Use Associations
Use Associations when a user holds roles across multiple organizations, such as:
- An individual serving as the executive director of one organization while holding board member positions at several other organizations.
- A user who is a professor at a university, a consultant at a hospital, and the CEO of a start-up company.
- An individual artist who collaborates with multiple arts collectives.
How the Associations Tab Works
An Associations tab can be made visible in the left-side menu on an organization record to display associated users, and on a user record to display the organizations they are linked with.
Organization Profile
The tab appears once the Associations standard field is enabled. The following settings govern how the tab functions on an Organization profile.
- Lookup Roles - Restrict which users are searchable and selectable when adding associations.
- Assignment Roles - Restrict which roles are available in the Role drop-down menu when associating a user with the organization.
User Profile
The tab appears once the Associations standard field is enabled. The following setting governs how the tab functions on a User profile.
- Lookup Categories - Restrict which organizations appear in the lookup, with the ability to limit results to internal organizations, external organizations, or both.
Other Features
- Association List Views - The user and organization association list view settings determine how the list of associated users or companies appears when viewed from within an organization or user profile.
- Date Ranges - A start and end date can be added to each Association. A daily automated process reviews company-user associations and expires any associations with end dates that have lapsed, provided their status is not marked as Expired.
- Switch Organization - Users may have multiple associations with various organizations, each requiring a different role and consequently different access levels. This setting provides the option to prevent switching between the associated organizations.
Resources
The following article provides step-by-step instructions for enabling and configuring Associations.