Organizations vs Locations

If you have a larger team it is likely that you'll want to break your team into smaller groups. This makes it easier to visualize the schedule, and gives you greater control when using ZoomShift. You can accomplish this by creating multiple locations or completely separate organizations.

What are organizations?

Organizations are at the top of ZoomShift’s structure. Team members, positions, locations, etc. all live within an organization. You can think of an organization as a group of people that share these elements. If you belong to multiple organizations you can jump between them when logged into ZoomShift. 

Most importantly, organizations are completely separate from each other. This means that the data within one organization (shifts, timesheets, preferences, etc.) is not visible from other organizations.

What are locations?

Locations are part of an organization. They represent a physical location, department, or other grouping of team members. Aside from positions, they are the best way to group team members within an organization.

What's the difference?

The difference between organizations and locations comes down to how you can view them. Organizations can only be viewed one at a time, and they do not overlap. 

If you have multiple organizations, you will have an option to switch between them at the top of the page. Locations, on the other hand, can be viewed together or one at a time. You can use the filters within an organization to customize how you view your locations.

Which way makes sense for me?

Great, so now you know the structure, but how do you know which one is best for your team? 

Here are some scenarios that will help you understand when it makes sense to create multiple organizations:

• If you would just like to keep everything separate (team members, positions, shift templates). This makes sense if your organizations represent completely different businesses or they don't have any crossover.
• If you want to silo notifications about request offs, swaps, etc. With multiple organizations, team members will only get notifications for organizations that they belong to.
• If you have work locations or sites that span across multiple timezones. You can set different timezones for each organization, but you can't do this for locations.

If you didn't find the answers you were looking for in this article, please reach out to Support for further assistance.