Workgroups

Workgroups were created as tool for companies and teams with multiple users who work with IO Ninja.

Note

Workgroups allow centralized management of IO Ninja purchases and convenient sharing of capabilities and subscriptions among workgroup members on the first-come-first-served basis.

Imagine a toolbox filled with screwdrivers, pliers, hammers, etc. When users need anything, they come to the toolbox and – if what they are looking for is there – take it and bring it to their desks. When they don’t need it anymore, they return it back.

Example

A workgroup administrator purchased 2 subscription seats and 5 seats of the org.jancy.io.serial capability. Joey claims one subscription (leaving one more available for other users). Mike only needs to work with serial ports, so he claims org.jancy.io.serial instead (we still have one subscription and 4 seats of org.jancy.io.serial). Lisa claims the last subscription. Now, Joey goes for a vacation – he doesn’t need to work with IO Ninja for a while. He unclaims a subscription making it available for other members.

Workgroup Resources

As a workgroup administrator, you are in charge of allocating resources (capabilities and subscriptions) for your workgroup.

Unlike in personal accounts, a workgroup account owner can buy multiple seats of a particular capability, and multiple subscription seats. Those resource seats become available and can be borrowed by workgroup members. Workgroup members can also leave requests for particular capabilities or subscriptions; this will help you to properly prioritize purchases for the workgroup.

The number of capability seats can only increase (you cannot “refund” capability seats). However, you can both increase and decrease the number of subscription seats. When you decrease the number of subscription seats, or when you change subscription plan from Annual to Monthly, the unused subscription time is returned to you in form of credits.

Workgroup Members

To manage memberships in your workgroup, you have the following tools at your disposal:

  • Invitations

    You can send invitations to a group of persons. Once some of them accept it, they become members of your workgroup, and can start borrowing the workgroup resources.

    Note

    You can only send invitations to registered IO Ninja users (the owner of the email must have an IO Ninja account).

  • Manual Membership Approval

    You can enable membership requests, and the users can start sending requests to join your workgroup. In the workgroup dashboard, you will see a list of pending membership requests. After inspection, you either accept or reject those requests. Those who got accepted, become members of your workgroup.

  • Automatic Domain-based Membership Approval

    A common scenario is to allow every employee of the company into your workgroup. In such case, you can employ the Auto-approve new requests based on email feature. All you have to do is specify your company domain, and every user who has an email in this domain will have his membership request satisfied.

  • Kick Members

    If a workgroup member who keeps borrowed resources is not responsive, he or she may be forcefully removed from the workgroup. After a “kick”, the user is no longer a member of the workgroup, and all the borrowed resources are returned to the workgroup resource pool.