Admin set-up guide

This guide is for the administrators of organizations, and for the administrators of a Kantree installation (private cloud or self-hosted). It explains how to organize the spaces of Kantree and how to manage the users.

Organize the spaces

Kantree has five kinds of spaces. Each one has its own members and permissions.

The five spaces

1. Organization
2. Team
3. Workspace
4. Personal workspaces
5. Portfolio

How they fit together

• An organization contains teams, workspaces and portfolios.
• A team groups some workspaces of the organization, like a folder.
• A portfolio shows the cards of several workspaces of the organization.
• Personal workspaces are outside the organizations.

Definitions

• An organization is a separate space. It can be a company, a department or a team.
• A team groups workspaces of the organization. It can be a department, a team or a topic.
• A workspace is where work happens: the cards, the views, the automations. It belongs to an organization, or to the personal workspaces of a user.
• Personal workspaces belong to one user, outside the organizations.
• A portfolio shows views with data from several workspaces. See Portfolios.

Before you start, answer these questions: one organization or several? One workspace for each project, or one for several? Do you need teams?

Questions to ask before you organize the spaces

One organization or several?

To share information and work across departments, keep one organization for the whole company. All the members then see the workspaces whose visibility is Team visible. They can join them only if the workspace allows it. See Who can see a workspace.

Create several organizations only to separate departments, business units or projects completely. The links between organizations are limited:

• a portfolio cannot show workspaces of two organizations,
• a relationship field cannot link cards of two organizations,
• the members must be added to each organization.

When to use personal workspaces?

Personal workspaces are for personal projects. They do not appear on the page of an organization: its members do not know they exist. You can still invite people to them, with the built-in roles (no custom roles).

Personal workspaces cannot use the card types, fields and templates of an organization. They can use the template library of Kantree.

One workspace or several?

A workspace can hold any kind of data. Use one workspace when:

• the same people edit the data,
• the data follows the same workflow.

If a workspace holds a lot of varied data that concerns only some members, split it into several workspaces. Link and synchronize them with relationship fields, lookup fields and automations. See Synchronize workspaces and Project management.

Why use teams?

Teams group the workspaces of the organization, like folders. Use them:

• when you have many workspaces, to make the page of the organization easier to read,
• to manage the members and permissions of a group of workspaces.

Like a workspace, a team can be visible to the organization or not, and its members can join it by themselves or only with an invitation. Change this in the settings of the team.

Good to know:

• To add a person to a team, add them to the organization first.
• Administrators of the organization are administrators of all the teams. Other members must be added to each team.
• Teams have no card types, fields, roles or templates of their own: they use those of the organization.

Organization settings

Owners and administrators open the settings of the organization from its page: click Settings, then Organization settings.

Licenses

On kantree.io, each member of the organization uses a license. Guests invited to a workspace with the Observer role do not use a license. The Billing tab shows the number of licenses.

General

The name, the description and the logo of the organization, and the Default workspace language (used by the search). You can also export the organization, or delete it.

Security

• Require two-factor authentication for all members: members must set up two-factor authentication before they can use Kantree.
• Default role for new organization members: the role of new members and invitations.

Appearance

The colors and the cover of the organization.

Workspace roles

The roles of the workspaces of the organization. Create custom roles here. See Roles and permissions.

Templates

The workspace templates of the organization. Members find them in the template library, in Templates from your organization.

Card types

The card types and the fields shared by all the workspaces of the organization. See Organization fields.

Integrations

Turn on the integrations that use accounts of other services. See Integrations.

Other tabs

• Automation workers: programs installed on your servers that run automation actions.
• AI: turn on the assistant and the AI features, and choose the AI providers.
• Bots: accounts for other applications, with their own API keys and permissions.
• External requests: the addresses that webhooks and automations can call (one per line). Leave empty to allow all addresses.

Billing

On kantree.io, owners can:

• choose or change the plan,
• change the payment method,
• download the invoices,
• adjust the number of licenses automatically,
• cancel the subscription.

Personal data

In Privacy Compliance, download a report of all the personal data in the organization. See GDPR.

SSO

In SSO, connect Kantree to the identity provider of your company (SAML 2.0 or OpenID Connect). The users of your company then log in with their company account, and join the organization automatically. With Your domain, every email address of your domain uses SSO.

On kantree.io, SSO is available with the Business plan.

Members

To add members, click Invite at the top of the organization page. Enter their email addresses and choose their role. They receive an email invitation. In the Members tab, you can change the role of each member, or remove them. See Organization roles.

You can also share an invitation link (Share a link): anyone with the link can join the organization.

Organization settings on private installations

On private cloud and self-hosted installations, the settings of the organization are the same, without Billing.

Installation administration (private installations)

Activation

When we activate your installation, we set the number of licenses, your administrator account, and a Kantree administrator account. Kantree uses this account to help you when you ask, for example when your administrator is away. It does not use a license.

Licenses

Each user uses a license, except the Unlicensed and Disabled users. When there are no licenses left, new users are unlicensed: they can only view workspaces.

Invitations count as licenses, even before the person accepts them. Kantree can disable users who have not logged in for a number of days: contact the support to set it up.

The administrators open the administration from the menu of their picture: click Admin.

User levels

• Disabled: the user cannot log in. They do not use a license.
• Unlicensed: the user can only view the workspaces that they are invited to. They do not use a license.
• User: a standard user, with a role in each organization and in each workspace.
• Admin: manages the installation, the users and the organizations, but cannot see the content of the workspaces unless they are invited.
• Super Admin: manages the installation and can access all the data.

Administration: Overview

The numbers of the installation: total users, licensed users, active users (in the last 30 days), disabled users, unlicensed users, organizations and workspaces.

Administration: Users

Search users by username, email, #id, org=organization name or workspace=workspace name. Use Filters to find, for example, the users not active in the last 30 days, or the users without two-factor authentication.

Click a user to see their profile, their organizations and workspaces, and their Login history. You can:

• change their level (Make admin, Make unlicensed, Disable…),
• Reset password, or Force password reset at next login,
• Disable 2FA, Unfreeze login after too many failed attempts, Logout from everywhere,
• Impersonate the user, with their approval, to see Kantree as they see it,
• Anonymize user: remove their identity and login data for good. Their content stays, under an anonymous identity.
• Delete user.

Synchronize users from a file

Synchronize users from CSV/XLSX file makes Kantree match the file:

• users in the file and in Kantree are updated,
• users in the file but not in Kantree are created,
• users in Kantree but not in the file are disabled, deleted or made unlicensed (you choose).

Create or update users from a file

Bulk create/update users from CSV/XLSX file creates the users of the file that do not exist, and updates the others. It does not change the users that are not in the file.

The columns, in this order:

1. username,
2. email,
3. password (ignored when a user is updated),

and these optional columns:

1. level: disabled, unlicensed, user or superadmin,
2. display name (empty to use the username),
3. can join organizations: “yes” or “no”,
4. can create organizations: “yes” or “no”,
5. can create workspaces: “yes” or “no”,
6. can create private workspaces: “yes” or “no”,
7. can invite guests: “yes” or “no”,
8. must change their password at the next login: “yes” or “no”.

You cannot skip a column: leave the optional columns that you do not need empty. When the username or the email matches a user, Kantree updates this user. Click How to structure your CSV/XLSX files? for an example.

Delete users from a file

Bulk delete users from CSV/XLSX file deletes the users of the file. The file has two columns, username and email: Kantree matches either one.

Export

Click Export to XLSX at the bottom of the list to export the users.

Administration: Organizations

The list of the organizations of the installation. Click an organization to open it and its settings.

Export

Click Export to XLSX at the bottom of the list to export the organizations.

Organization settings: Admin tab

The administrators of the installation see an Admin tab in the settings of each organization:

• Can create workspaces and Can create private workspaces: what the members can create.
• Maximum number of allowed users.
• Locked: freezes the organization and its workspaces.
• Prevent deletion by org admins (only kantree admins can delete).
• Feature flags: turn some features on or off for this organization. Enter the name of the flag, press Enter, then click Save.

Administration: other pages

• OAuth apps: the applications that can connect to Kantree with OAuth.
• Bots: the bot accounts of the installation.
• Starter packs: sets of workspaces that users can add from the template library.
• Logs: the log file of the server. Click Download full log file to get all of it.