COmanage Registry is designed from the model that Collaborative Organizations (or COs) are "virtual" collections of people, and that these people authoritatively come from "real" (or "external") institutions. COmanage Registry tracks these different identities using two different types of records: An Organizational Identity describes a person's relationship with their "real" institution (such as their University), while a CO Person describes the person's relationship with their CO (i.e., their virtual organization). Furthermore, a person can have more than one relationship with their CO. Each of these relationships is referred to as a CO Person Role.
Here's an example:
Organizational Identity | Pat Lee |
|---|---|
CO Person | Pat Lee |
CO Person Role #1 | ERC Senior Researcher |
CO Person Role #2 | ERC Council Member |
Typically, an Organizational Identity is associated with a credential, usually described via an Identifier such as an ePPN from a University or something returned from a social identity provider such as Google. When logging into a COmanage platform the authenticated identifier is used to find Organizational Identity records, which in turn are used to find CO Person records.
An Organizational Identity can be linked to more than one CO Person, and a CO Person can be linked to more than one Organizational Identity.
A CO Person must always have at least one Organizational Identity linked to it.
For a more technical overview of these relationships, see the Registry Data Model overview.
See also: Representing Organizational Hierarchy Through COUs and Departments