BillForward concepts: Users, Organizations, login, privilege

BillForward concepts: Users, Organizations, login, privilege.md

Regarding SaaS BillForward environments…

• Current environments:
  • [Production] https://app.billforward.net/
  • [Sandbox] https://app-sandbox.billforward.net/
    • Sandbox cannot perform real transactions; it can only use payment gateways in Sandbox mode.
• Each environment is a separate instance of the entire BillForward stack.
  • no data is shared between environments.

Regarding Organizations:

• Organizations essentially are a partition on the environment's dataset
  • Products, Accounts, rate plans, config, Users… and more, all belong to your org.
  • no information is shared between organizations
• Organization name is not unique.

When you "Register" for BillForward:

• A new Organization is created
• A new User is created
  • The created User is associated with your org.
  • User is the entity used for logging in to BillForward.
    • User's username is the email address you provided on registration.
    • username is unique.
  • Users have a set of permissions, which dictate what actions they have the privilege to perform
    • Typically a User has privilege only to interact with one org.
• A new Account is created
  • The only real reason for this relationship is: Accounts have a Profile (with name, email address, etc). As a result: the User can enjoy a Profile too (via the Account).
  • The created Account is associated with your org
  • The created Account is also associated with your User (account.userID)

Regarding Organizations (continued):

• An Organization can have many Users
  • A User with sufficient privilege can perform "Create User"
    • An email address (which will become the username of the new User) must be provided
    • This enables you to "invite" more people to login to your Organization.