Enterprise 2.0 Overview

Business Units

Business units manage the visibility of data within an account, are hierarchical, and do not have to mirror an organization. They can mirror a workflow, such as approvals. Therefore, you can inherently manage access and sharing of information through the hierarchical, parent/child structure as well as controlling it through roles and permissions.

Business units have roles assigned to them such that all users working in that business unit share a common set of permissions.

Depending on the needs of your organization, you can manage the creation, updating, and deleting of business units, as well as setting or changing permissions, with either the ExactTarget application interface or via API interactions. You can use API calls to help build your own user interface tailored to your needs, or you can integrate existing software with the ExactTarget system to manage your Enterprise 2.0 business units. Review the web services API guide for more information on managing business units with API calls and contact your ExactTarget representative for more information about enabling API access for your Enterprise 2.0 account.

The following table lists Business Unit features in Enterprise 2.0 that are similar in nature to Lock and Publish account functionality found in Enterprise 1.0.

Access and Sharing

The shared items folder in Enterprise 2.0 is similar to global folders in Enterprise 1.0. In Enterprise 2.0, sharing is an explicit action taken by the owner of the item to allow other business units to access an item. Given that a user has the appropriate permissions, any user may share their data to other business units.

In Enterprise 1.0, the user had to be in an admin account to share items and items were copied into a global folder.

A shared item can be an email, template, portfolio, data extension, or content area. All shared items have an option for you to set permissions. These permissions control who has access to the shared item and in what capacity. For example, you may be able to view a shared item but not make changes to it, or you may be able to make changes to a shared item but not delete it.

The difference between a shared item and a non-shared item, such as an email, is that the shared item allows you to set permissions for particular roles you want to access that item. For example, you want a template to be used by all of your business units. Therefore you create the template as a shared item and set permissions for the item to allow access by all users in all business units. When you share an item in Enterprise 2.0, you grant access to an instance of the item. Anyone with access to the item can view and access changes made to the item.

Shared items are located in a shared items folder, which is a tool in an enterprise-edition account used to share information between business units and users. Items that you save into one of these folders are available to all users working in that business unit. Permissions govern the use of shared folders, just as they do for other types of shared content.

Roles and Permissions

A role is a collection of permissions that allow or deny actions on an item or item property. If a permission is not set, the permission has the same effect as a deny.

For example, a user has a collection of permissions for an email item that allow him/her to create, view, and update an email and denies permission to delete an email. This same user may have permissions for an image item that allow him/her to upload and view an image and denies permission to update or delete an image.

Roles are assigned to users and business units. Roles assigned to a business unit apply to all users in that business unit. Therefore, a single user can have multiple roles. The application aggregates permissions from all roles for each user. 

Users inherit roles from their business units. Child business units inherit roles and permissions from their parent when you select the Force Inheritance checkbox when managing business unit roles.

Characteristics of different types of roles are:

• User Roles - Permissions stay with the user regardless of business unit
• Business Unit Roles - Any user working in a business unit acquires the role and permissions of the business unit 
• Individual Role - Overrides all other roles assigned to the user or inherited by the user

The system uses the permissions aggregated from all of a user's roles according to the following logic to determine whether the user can access an item:

• If no permission of the assigned role has explicitly granted access to an action, the action is denied
• If one of the permissions of the assigned role has explicitly denied access to an action, the action is denied
• Otherwise, the action is granted  

Subscribers

Subscribers are managed at each level of the hierarchy, which ensures the correct list of subscribers receive the marketing campaign. For example, at the parent level, the marketing campaign subscriber list, which is composed at a child level of the hierarchy, can be compared to a master unsubscribe list to ensure unsubscribes are removed from the specific marketing campaign subscriber list.

Examples of the Enterprise 2.0 Hierarchical Structure

The following examples illustrate typical business unit hierarchical structures.

• Use business units for distributed messaging. For example, the top parent business unit controls creative digital assets, subscribers, and the calendar for communication (sending schedule). A typical corporate structure that would use distributed messaging is a corporate enterprise with franchise and corporate owned stores. The top level owns the advertising copy and subscriber lists and sets the schedule for sending marketing campaigns to its customers. It creates the template for the marketing campaign. The second level, which are regional owners of franchises as well as corporated owned stores, add a localized message to the marketing campaign. The individual stores add contact information, such as store address and phone number. 

• Use business units for multi-branded organizations. For example, the top parent business unit is the corporate brand. The second level business unit represents individual brands owned by the corporation. The top parent business unit creates a template with the corporate brand. The secondary business units add their branding. The third level business unit may be a division or a region for the brand. This level would add the content for the communication and would manage the subscriber lists. 

• Use business units for marketing campaigns. For example, the top parent business unit is the marketing department. The second level business unit represents individual marketing campaigns. The third level business unit represents events, such as conferences. This is a hybrid structure and subscribers need to be managed at each level and opt-in for each event. Subscribers also need to be managed at the top parent business unit level to ensure that subscribers choices are honored, which can be accomplished through suppression lists. 

Mass Administration

The Mass Administration features of Enterprise 2.0 accounts allow you to:

• import users in bulk by uploading your table from the  button. Under the Admin tab, select My Users, and the UI screen will guide you through the 5-step process.
• import a list of multiple business units to mass upload.  Under the Admin tab, select Business Units and look for the  button. Follow the 5-step process to mass upload.