Considerations for Large Organizations

When setting up a large organization in DroneSense, there are two important considerations you'll want to address:

• How will members be organized?
• Do you need to manage sensitive data so that unauthorized members do not have access?

Member Setup and Permissions Configuration

For large agencies with an established organization, it's often best to set up the members in DroneSense to mirror your org chart to at least some degree. For example, a statewide organization might be divided into different functions, and further separated by region. By setting up teams within DroneSense that mirror that organization, you will be better able to identify job function, location, and reporting structure within the larger organization.

It is often the case that different divisions within an organization will use their UAS assets very differently. A Highway Patrol team will spend more time on accident reconstruction than a Criminal Investigations division, for example. Mirroring that organization within a larger organization will help clarify how assets are used and help guide how the corresponding UAS team members will approach their record keeping, maintenance procedures, training requirements, and so on within the system.

User Roles

Each organization must have at least one Organization Administrator who is responsible for managing the overall organization. Org Admins have full access within the system, which basically means they can add and remove users, create teams, and view and manage data within the system. For a larger organization, more than one Org Admin is highly advisable to allow for adequate coverage of the responsibilities associated with that role. 

Each team will have a Team Administrator, who can invite members to the team and manage the team's data, as well as view and manage their own data within the system as defined by the Org Admin.

Members can view and manage data for their own activity and view data associated with teams they are members of.

The ability to read, edit, and create data for an individual's activity (personal profile, creating a flight, uploading a document, etc.) is determined by the default Data Owner role.

Ops Viewers have access to the Operations Hub interface. This role should be added to most of your users unless you do not want them to be able to access Operations Hub. User will still be restricted by team membership, however, so if a user is not a member of a team, they will not have access to any missions flown on that team.

DroneSense allows you to create more customized roles as well. An example would be for a group of users that can view flight information but not have access to member information to protect privacy. Before building out these types of custom roles, be sure to write down your requirements and map them to an existing organizational need before proceeding. DroneSense Support will gladly assist in identifying the best way forward with this kind of customization.

Examples of Specialized Roles

• Division Program Coordinator
• Flight Instructor (conduct training, edit training events, data, manage training certs, etc.)
• Team Lead (one step below team admin)
• Visual Observer
• Pilot
• Maintenance Coordinator

Users will often have multiple roles. Just remember that when users have multiple roles attached to their profile, the most permissive role will be used.

Team Setup

By setting up teams based on a division and/or region structure, it allows users to filter by team to get a regional/geographic view of the program and its activities.

Teams are quite powerful, but if over-implemented they can lead to confusion and overlap that may become hard to manage over time as personnel mature in their roles within the organization.