Accounts and Organizations Restructuring

Accounts, Invitations, and Collaborators

As you know, several months ago, we updated our accounts to use unique email addresses as a credential for accessing Aligni. We have also merged several user accounts to allow those users to access multiple sites with which they collaborate. As part of this restructuring, you’ll notice a few things…

Organizations – Previously known as sites, we now refer to the owner of an item master (part database) as an organization. This is more aligned with modern conventions in the cloud software industry. As an account holder, you can now create multiple organizations and set them up as private or public.

Invitations – Previously, user accounts were created by the site administrator as part of the site management role. Now, user accounts may be created at any time by users and the association to an organization is handled as an invitation to collaborate. This distinction is important as it allows users to collaborate with multiple organizations.

Public Organizations

Since its introduction in 2006, Aligni has offered a free service for Open Source Hardware projects known as Open Aligni. We have merged this service with our standard (private) service to make it easier for account holders to manage and access multiple organizations and their item masters using a single account.

Public organizations are established as a way to share your projects and the data associated with them with the world. This is a great way to share your BOM, schematics, and other associated information with colleagues, customers, and hobbyists. For example…

• Open Source Hardware – Makers and creators can share their designs with the world in an open, organized environment. Bill of Materials (BOMs), part data, revisions, design files, and change management information is all available in one place.
• Evaluation Boards – Share your company’s evaluation board designs in a consistent presentation. You can include part alternates, supply chain information, and design documentation to make it easy for your customers to access and easy for your design team to maintain the information.
• University Labs – Many universities have departmental labs or student stores. These labs can share their parts database, inventory, BOMs, and other project materials with students and the public.

New Terms of Use

In order to better represent the language used in defining accounts and organizations, we have a new Terms of Use Agreement. Please review this document. Continued use of the Aligni application and API indicates an agreement to these terms.

Future Directions

This restructuring lays the groundwork for a lot of new capability we’re working on. We’re really excited about what’s to come!