Understanding Entities
An entity can be viewed as a separation within an Actito licence. This notion allows the partition of databases within a licence (this is therefore effectively used to partition different databases, not to partition data within a single table).
Entities are where you can truly store all the resources, ranging from the databases in themselves (profiles or additional data) or the communication objects created by you (campaigns, scenarios, forms…), but also the custom templates that you might have ordered or created.
By default, there is a single entity in your licence, which bears the same name as the licence. It will be the only entity if the data are available for every user.
Why are entities needed?
The concept of entity can be useful when databases and the related resources must not be shared by every user of the Actito licence.
For example, a company present in 2 countries (France and Belgium) can create an entity by country. As such, French users will only have access to the database for France (Profile table, Purchases table, e-mail campaigns…), while Belgium will only have access to the Belgian database. However, the headquarters may have a global view on databases for both countries.
It can also be useful for 2 separate business units or for B2C and B2B departments operating on completely different databases and communications.
Entities are useful when data partition is necessary.
However, they can be a source of frustration if users find themselves restricted from resources which they require for their work. We therefore advise to only request the creation of additional entities if your organization and your data management policy requires them.
In the opposite case, the existing single default entity will be enough.
Any resource limitation of the licence will be therefore shared between the entities. For instance, the maximum allowed number of active scenarios will be shared between both entities.
Entity groups
When there is more than one entity in a licence, a user may have the right to access several entities. It will even often be necessary for Management users, who will require a global overview.
In Actito, access rights towards entities is given based on entity groups. Each user can only access one entity group.
If there is a single entity, an entity group bearing the same name will be created.
In case of multiple entities, a specific entity group must be created for each combination of entities given to a user.
To request the creation of a new entity or of a new entity group, the licence administrator can contact their account manager or to the Actito support (support@actito.com).
Once created, an entity cannot be deleted or renamed.