Adding an Organization

There are two ways to add an Organization:

• Using the web form, which is fast and easy but it allows you to add only one Organization at a time to your hierarchy. See Web Form.
• Downloading, filling out, and then uploading a comma-separated (CSV) file, which allows you to add multiple Organizations at once, including information, relating to hierarchy. See CSV Upload.

Web Form

To add an organization, using the web form select Org Admin>Manage Organizations, and then click the Add Organization icon (plus sign).

Note: This example uses a school, which is the lowest level of the Organization hierarchy; however, you can create several different types of Organizations.

1. The Add Organization screen appears.
2. Enter the appropriate information in the Organization Name, Display Name, Address, City, Region, Country, Billing State and Billing Postal Code fields. The Organization Name field is the full name of the Organization (such as Charles R. Darwin College Preparatory School), and the Display Name is the name that appears in the Admin Console interface (such as Darwin Prep).

3. Use the Parent Organization pull-down menu to select the parent for the Organization you are adding. See Architecture (opens a new article) for an explanation of the Organization hierarchy within SchoolMessenger Passport.
4. Select the type of Organization (such as School or District) using the Organization Type pull-down menu. There is a disclaimer message which explains some peculiarities of creating organizations by Org admins. Remember that schools are at the lowest level of the hierarchy and cannot become parent organizations.
5. External ID is used to establish link between organizations in Passport and external sources of user's’ data: when the data that are uploaded via SFTP or CSV Upload need to be linked with the existing organization. In this case, value of "External ID" should be populated by using value of "School_ID" column from CSV file. In this case, system will attempt to enroll users from CSV files into existing organization. By default - it can be blank (value would be auto-generated).
6. Organizations Mapping options allow to combine a  list of real organizations with faked ones which are displayed on Passport login page.This feature was implemented, based on privacy policy. If the field is left blank, system finds a faked organization with the same or similar name and creates a new one if it wasn’t found. Note that a fake organization can be linked to only one real, but a real organization can have many links to faked ones.
7. If you are using an external partner to provide login credentials, then check the IdP Authentication radio button and then skip to Step 9. Otherwise, proceed to Step 8. If you select this option, then SchoolMessenger Passport will not generate user’s credentials. Instead, authorized users will receive email notifications, informing that they can access SchoolMessenger Passport, using their existing credentials (e.g., Google, PowerSchool, or Active Directory).
8. If you are using SchoolMessenger Passport to handle user authentication, then select appropriate username and password requirements, using the Login Algorithm Generator and Password requirements pull-down menus. Login Generator sets your Organization’s naming conventions for users and the chosen algorithm provides password strength to meet the security and confidentiality requirements of the particular organization. If you select this option, then SchoolMessenger will email notification with username and link to set password.

Note: This option only applies to users who have been added directly to School\Messenger Passport and who have not yet logged in to the application.

9. It is possible to disable all activation notifications for organization by checking “Do Not send Account Activation Emails to (end) Users” checkbox.
10. Review your settings and then click the gray Add Organization button at the bottom of the screen. The Admin Console will return to the My Organizations screen, and the newly-added Organization will appear in the table.

This process does not specify an Administrator for this Organization. Please see Managing Administrators (opens a new article) for information on adding/editing/removing one or more Administrator(s) for an Organization.

CSV Upload

The CSV File Upload feature allows you to add multiple Organizations and sub-Organizations at once by uploading a single comma-separated (CSV) file. This method may be much more efficient than the web form for adding multiple Organizations, especially if you already have a database file to work from.

To add Organizations using a CSV file:

1. Select Org Admin>Manage Organizations, and then click the Upload CSV icon (sheet).

The Import Details screen appears.

2. If you have a properly-formatted CSV file ready to upload, then skip to Step 6. If not, click the Download Template link and select the Organizations template from the pull-down menu that appears.
3. A file download dialog appears. Save the file to an appropriate storage location on your computer or network, and then open the template in an appropriate application, such as Microsoft® Excel®.
4. The template has 10 columns for information, many of which correspond to fields on the web form. Fields marked with “*” are mandatory. You may add as many organizations as you wish by filling in all 10 of the following columns for each organization:
5. Save the completed CSV file.
6. In the Import History screen, click the Add Files button to open a standard File Upload dialog that allows you to select a file to upload. Click Upload to upload the file to the Admin Console.

• Organization ID*: ID of the Organization appears as the External ID used as a unique identifier of an organization for subsequent uploads. The value also appears in the Admin Console (the same as Display Name  in the web form)
• Organization Name*: Full name of the Organization (such as Charles R. Darwin College Preparatory School).
• Parent Organization*: Parent Organization for this Organization. Enter the External ID of the selected parent Organization, if there are any. See Architecture(opens a new article).
• Low Grade: This Organization serves the Junior students.
• High Grade: This Organization serves the Senior students.
• Country*: Country of the Organization’s location.
• State*: State of the Organization’s location.
• City: City of the Organization’s location.
• Street: Street on which the Organization is located. For example, if the Organization is located at 1234 Main Street, enter Main Street in this column.
• Zip Code: Postal code of the Organization.

A progress bar appears while the file is being uploaded. If needed, you may click the Cancel button to stop the upload, or Remove to delete the file.

SchoolMessenger Passport will validate the file, once the upload is complete. If validation fails, the Status column of the Data Import History table will have a red Validation failed link. Clicking this link opens the Import Details window for that file, which lists the specific error(s) that caused validation to fail. See Uploading and Validating CSV Files (opens a new article). You can also undo a provisioning action by clicking the Revert button for the action you want to undo.

See The CSV Upload Screen (opens a new article) for more information on validating and managing uploaded files.