Manage organization, actors and users within Bonita

There are several possible approaches to managing the organization information required by Bonita. The most appropriate approach for your organization depends on many factors, including the size and stability of your organization, the actors that are defined in the processes you are using, and whether you have a central repository for user data that is LDAP-compatible.

If your organization structure is maintained in LDAP, to avoid duplication of the organization data and its maintenance, you are recommended to use the LDAP synchronizer, which is available with the Bonita Enterprise, Performance, Efficiency, and Teamwork editions.

The next three sections describe typical approaches, two using LDAP and one maintaining the organization data manually:

If the groups within your organization are suitable for mapping to the actors in your processes, you can use these groups when mapping actors.

If you are using one of the subscription editions, you can define the actor mapping in Bonita Portal after a process is deployed.
For the Community edition, you specify the actor mapping in Bonita Studio, so you need to define the groups in Bonita Studio. However, you only need to create the groups that are used in actor mappings, not your whole organization hierarchy.

If the groups within your organization are not suitable for mapping to actors in your processes, you can use roles or memberships when mapping actors.
A membership is a combination of a group and a role.

If you are using one of the subscription editions, you can define the actor mapping in Bonita Portal after a process is deployed.
For the Community edition, you specify the actor mapping in Bonita Studio, so you need to define the roles and memberships in Bonita Studio. However, you only need to create the roles and memberships that are used in actor mappings.

In Bonita Portal, define the roles and memberships used in the actor mappings, and specify the roles of the users. User roles are specified using a membership.

For smaller organizations that do not use LDAP, or if you are using the Community edition, you can maintain your organization manually. Typically, you manage an organization manually using Bonita Studio, and then import it into Bonita Portal.
This means that the organization management and actor mapping are carried out in the same tool, from a single set of data.

Alternatively, you can initialize the organization in Bonita Studio with just the elements needed for actor mapping. Then export this to Bonita Portal and manage the users in the Bonita Portal.