Organizations

An organization owns teams. On a server with billing, it also owns the subscription and the seats. Every team belongs to exactly one organization.

Team roles don’t change: inside a team, people are still admins or members. The organization adds one more role, the owner.

What owners can do

Owners of an organization:

• manage its billing: subscribe, change seats, update the card, cancel;
• add and remove owners;
• create teams in it.

Everyone in one of its teams can see the organization, its owners, its teams and its plan and seats.

An organization has no name on the server, for the same reason team names stay in the encrypted vault. bssh shows an organization by its owners’ emails, such as ana@example.com, bo@example.com, and by a short id.

The desktop app shows the organization on the Teams page.

Note

Teams that existed before organizations each became their own organization, and their admins became its owners. Nothing to do for existing teams.

Seats

Seats are counted per organization, not per team. The count is:

• distinct people across all its teams: someone in three teams takes one seat;
• plus pending invites to people who are not in the organization yet.

Inviting someone who is already in the organization, in another team, takes no seat.

The free plan applies to the organization too: on the hosted service, an organization has 3 free seats in total, however many teams it has. See Plans and billing.

See your organizations

bssh org list

It lists each organization you own or have a team in, with your role, its number of teams and which of them are on this machine.

bssh org show

It shows the owners, the teams, and the plan and seats. <org> is optional when you have a single organization.

Commands that take an <org> accept an id prefix, or the name of one of its teams on this machine:

bssh org show platform
bssh org show 3f9a

If you see several organizations and name none, bssh lists them with their short ids and asks you to pick one.

Create an organization

bssh org create

This creates an empty organization and you are its owner. Then create a team in it:

bssh teams create infra --org 3f9a

You rarely need bssh org create. bssh teams create makes an organization for you when you don’t own one yet.

Note

Each account has one free organization. To create another one, the first needs a subscription.

Choose where a team goes

bssh teams create <name> puts the new team in:

1. the organization you name with --org, if you give one (you must be an owner of it);
2. otherwise, the oldest organization you own;
3. otherwise, a new organization, which you own.

bssh teams create infra --org platform

Manage owners

bssh org owners add platform ana@example.com
bssh org owners remove platform ana@example.com

Only a member of one of the organization’s teams can become an owner. An organization always keeps at least one owner, so the last one can’t be removed.

Owners don’t need to be team admins, and team admins aren’t owners by default.

Billing

bssh org billing
bssh org billing --checkout --seats 8
bssh org billing --manage

These show the plan and seats, open the checkout page, and open the billing portal. Checkout and portal need an owner. Everything about subscribing is in Plans and billing.

bssh teams billing <team> still works: it acts on the team’s organization, and checkout and portal need an owner of that organization.

Self-hosted servers

A server without billing gives each organization a fixed seat limit: DEFAULT_SEATS when the organization is created. The count is the same as above. See Self-hosting.

Common errors

• one organization is free per account: subscribe to your existing one (`bssh org billing <org> --checkout`) to create another, or create teams in it: You already own an organization with no subscription. Subscribe to it, or create your team in it.
• only an owner of the organization can manage billing: Ask an owner to run bssh org billing <org> --checkout or --manage. bssh org show lists the owners.
• only an owner of the organization can create teams in it: Ask an owner to create the team, or to make you an owner.
• only a member of one of the organization's teams can become an owner: Invite the person to one of its teams first, then run bssh org owners add.
• the organization must keep at least one owner: Add another owner before removing this one.
• you see 2 organizations; name one by an id prefix or a team name: Pass the <org> argument. The error lists each organization with its short id.
• the organization has no free seat; an owner can add seats (`bssh org billing` shows how) or a member or pending invite can be removed: The organization is full. An owner adds seats with bssh org billing --manage, or subscribes with --checkout. You can also remove a member or revoke a pending invite.
• read-only: the organization has more members than the free plan and no active subscription; an owner can subscribe (bssh org billing --checkout) or remove members: See read-only mode.