Quick explanation of the difference between PERSON and ORGANIZATION type Members.

Introducing “Member Type”

Every person or company in LearningBuilder is a Member. All Members are able to log in and use the system, and most features function the same way for all Members.

However, there are two distinct types of Members, indicated by the MemberType property:

PERSON - The Member represents an individual
ORGANIZATION - The Member represents a company or organization, not a specific person

The Member Type is displayed on the Account Profile screen:

Member Type is indicated on the Account Profile screen

People vs Organizations in LearningBuilder

	`PERSON`	`ORGANIZATION`

	`PERSON`	`ORGANIZATION`
Purpose	Allows a single individual to log in and manage their own credentialing account. Also used to represent a specific Staff member of an Organization.	Allows a corporate entity to maintain a “root account” that “owns” its data, while allowing Staff members to log in and manage that data.
How is the Member identified?	People have a “First Name” and a “Last Name”	Organizations have a single “Member Name” Organizations also have a “Website” field
Typical default Role	Practitioner	Provider
Can the Member have “staff” users beneath it?	No	Yes. See Training - Intro to Providers and Organization Staff
Can the Member own Activity Definitions?	No	Yes. Providers can create Activities, and their staff members can manage those Activities.
Can the Member own Learning Plan Instances?	Yes	Yes (Staff members can manage the Learning Plans owned by their parent Organization using the Account Switching feature)
Can the Member be listed within a complex hierarchy of accounts?	Only at a “leaf” level; People can belong to an Organization, but a Person cannot belong to another Person.	Organizations can be placed into a hierarchy representing departments of a larger entity (e.g. the government), different regions of a large corporation, etc. See Organization Hierarchy
How are permissions determined?	A Person “has” all of the Permissions linked to each of their granted Roles.	A Organization “has” all of the Permissions linked to each of their granted Roles.

Members and Organizations

Introducing “Member Type”

People vs Organizations in LearningBuilder