When it comes to organization management, Engage has many different tools to help you organize, track, and manage the various orgs in your community. This article will help you identify the differences between organization statuses, organization types, and organization categories, with a description of how you should approach each tool to optimally manage your orgs.
Organization Statuses
Organization statuses allow administrators to determine to what extent an organization in Engage is active. Statuses do not have to do with what kind of organization it is, but rather to what extent its members are able to interact with the organization. Organization statuses are particularly helpful for managing organizations that might be on probation, suspended, or that need to accomplish additional tasks before they can be fully active in your community.
The four statuses available are hard-coded and cannot be edited or changed. The status options are Active, Frozen, Locked, and Inactive. Any organization that is active is fully functional within the community. Organizations that are inactive are no longer accessible and can only be viewed by administrators. Frozen and Locked organizations have restrictions on them that prevent members and officers from interacting with their organization pages and their content. Read more about organization statuses.
Organization Categories
Organization categories have one primary purpose: make it easy for students to find organizations of interest in the organization directory. When students search for orgs to join, they will be able to filter using these categories.
Organization categories are completely customizable by the campus, so you can create categories that represent the various organizations on your campus. Examples might include Political, Campus Spirit, International, or Greek. Administrators can also create admin-use-only categories to tag organizations with internal language, such as organization tiers you might use on campus. These hidden categories allow administrators to report on organizations and message organizations based on categories they do not necessarily want students to see. Organization categories do not in any way determine the way the organization behaves within the community; think of these as tags used to identify orgs from both the student and administrator perspective.
Organization Types
Organization types are the third and final way to group organizations for org management. Like statuses, your organization types help you classify organizations based on how you would like them to behave. However, unlike statuses (which are based on how active you want the organization to be) organization types require you to think about the different types of organizations you oversee and how you might like to manage their processes differently. Organization types allow for the ability to assign specific position templates and customize the re-registration process based on which "type" an organization belongs to. Example organization types might include New Organizations, Returning Organizations, Departments, and Residence Halls. In some cases, you may have types that also exist as categories (such as Student Affairs Departments). This is a perfectly regular configuration! Remember that your types exist to help you as admins set up appropriate processes to manage your orgs, while categories exist to tag organizations in ways that will make sense for a general user. While an organization can be associated with many categories, it can only be tied to one type that will dictate its behavior. Read more about organization types.
Common Organization Categories and Types
Still stumped determining the kinds of organization types and categories you need to create? Check out the attachment below for examples of different organization types and categories.