The unit structure in F2

It is important that the user possesses a general knowledge of F2 in order to understand the administrative tasks. For this, refer to the F2 Basics documentation.

Below follows a short explanation of how F2 organises authorities and units in a tree structure. In F2 all users are organised into units. A user is always attached to a unit.

To create a user, at least one unit must be defined in the organisation. The reason is that a user’s read and write access to records and documents depend on the unit structure. F2’s unit structure roughly corresponds to the structure of the organisation, although typically not in all facets.

The unit structure in F2:

Top unit/Organisation: This unit is the parent unit in F2. It is created when installing F2. There can only be one top unit for each F2 installation. This can e.g. be a ministry or a company.
Authority: This unit represents a legal unit in F2. Full separation exists between the different authorities in an F2 installation. There is no limit to the number of authorities that can be created in F2. An authority can e.g. consist of a department and a number of government agencies or a company with several subsidiaries.
Units: An unlimited number of units and subunits can be created within an authority. These can mirror the overall organisation within the authority. Each record can be access restricted to a unit. This influences who can view and work on the records and documents.

Figure 1. An example of F2’s tree structure

The top unit/organisation is only visible on the “Other Authorities” tab and not on the “My authority” tab”.

Create an authority

An authority’s internal structure is comprised by the units created in the “Units and users” dialogue.

Figure 2. The “Unit and users” menu item

Click on Units and users in the “Administrator” ribbon of F2’s main window to create a new unit. The dialogue below opens.

Figure 3. Create a new authority

The dialogue shows an organisation called “Doc Organisation”. This organisation has the authorities: “Departement”, “Digital Authority”, and "Quality".

The “Doc Organisation” wish to create a new authority with the name “Environmental Department”. Click on Create in the “Units and users” dialogue to open the “Create unit” dialogue.

Figure 4. The “Create unit” dialogue

Enter the relevant information about the new authority in the dialogue.

The unit type is set to “Authority”.
The system provides the location after the unit is created.
Additional fields can be filled in if needed.

The authority’s email settings can be modified on the “Email settings” tab.

Figure 5. The “Email settings” tab in the “Create unit” dialogue

Read more about setting up email accounts.

When the necessary fields have been filled in, click on OK. A warning dialogue appears to inform the administrator that once an authority is created, it cannot be deleted.

Click on No to return to the “Create unit” dialogue.

Click on Yes to proceed. The “Environmental Department” authority is then created, and units and users can now be created within it. View the newly created authority in the figure below.

Figure 6. The newly created authority

Create units within an authority

In F2, the organisational structure is mirrored by a number of units. Units are created and maintained by administrators or user administrators.

A chief purpose of units is to specify to F2 where to place users when matching roles and units are synchronised using synchronisation keys during full AD integration. During standard AD integration the administrator creates the users in the units themselves.

The users’ affiliation with a unit is important as it influences their read and write access to records for which the access is restricted to the specific unit.

An administrator can access units from the ribbon of the “Administrator” tab by clicking on the Units and users menu item.

Figure 7. The “Units and users” menu item

In “Units and users” dialogue, a user with the “Unit administrator” privilege can create, edit, move, and deactivate units.

Figure 8. F2 is installed with only one top unit

The “Units” tab shows all units created in F2. They are organised in a tree structure. As mentioned, F2 is installed with one top unit (organisation). The name of the top unit is adjusted to fit the organisation’s name when F2 is installed. In the figure above, “Doc Authority” is the top unit. Edit the name by selecting the unit and then clicking on Properties.

Expand the top unit node to view all units that have been created in the tree structure. These units can also be expanded to show their subunits.

Create a new unit by selecting a “parent unit” in the directory and clicking on Create.

Figure 9. Create units within an authority

The “Create unit” dialogue opens.

Figure 10. The “Create unit” dialogue

Fill in the relevant information in the dialogue.

In the “Unit type” field, select a representative type for the unit. See below for more information on the management of unit types.
Units are created in the same dialogue that is used for creating authorities.

The organisational structure within an authority can contain many units.

Read more about setting up email accounts.

Create unit types for specific units

F2 divides units into types. F2 contains definitions of certain fixed unit types that are created during installation.

Some unit types cannot be deleted as they are used by F2. The names of these units may vary as they depend on the organisation. New unit types can be added later, and unit types that are not in use can be deleted again.

Click on the Unit types menu item in the ribbon on the administrator tab in F2’s main window.

Figure 11. The “Unit types” menu item

The dialogue below opens. From here it is possible to manage unit types.

Figure 12. Management of unit types

These are examples of the unit types available:

Authority
Organisation
Department
Office
Area
Secretariat.

Unit types such as teams and security groups are used to divide users into teams and security groups across the authority.

When a unit type has been created, it can be used when creating units (the organisational division).

Decentral units

The “Decentral unit” type mostly functions as any other F2 unit, but unlike other units it is not synchronised with Active Directory (AD).

A decentral unit can be used for project cooperation across units, and extra email addresses can be attached.

Decentral units are created by a user with the “Decentral unit and user administrator” privilege.

In order to affiliate a user with a decentral unit, the user must have one of the three roles:

Decentral role: This is a job role that lets the user log in and work in a decentral unit.
Decentral read access: This is a job role that lets the user search for records whose access is normally restricted to users in a decentral unit. The role is equivalent to the “Read access to another unit” role.
Decentral read/write access: This is a job role that lets the user search for records whose responsibility lie with a decentral unit and whose access restriction is either “Unit” or “All”. The role is equivalent to the “Write and read access to another unit” role.

The following is an example of when decentral units are useful:

An organisation has a number of units that work independently of the central administration. These units would like to maintain a unit structure across of standard F2 units. The F2 administrator gives one or more users in the organisation the “Decentral unit and user administrator” privilege, which lets them maintain the decentral units.