Organizations
A Twilio Organization is a resource that helps you manage all of your company's Twilio accounts. As your company's Twilio usage grows, Organizations provide you with control over your accounts, your users, and the security policies you implement to govern their access.
Organizations give you a way to reduce your operational risk by centrally managing all of your accounts and the users who may have access to them and configuring your Organization-wide policies.
You will first need to create your Organization from the Console's Create an Organization option.
After you have created your Organization you will have access to manage your Organization in the Console's Admin Center area. This is where you can:
- View accounts and users associated with your Organization.
- Grant users access to your accounts, or remove their access.
- Manage the lifecycle of accounts and users associated with your Organization.
- Claim ownership of an Internet domain, and then invite the Organization users with email addresses from that domain.
- Control what happens to new users signing up with the registered domain.
Let's see how all these parts fit together.
When a developer first signs up with Twilio, we create both a unique user entity and an account for them. Think of the user as the 'who' and the account as the 'what': the former is the developer, and the latter is a container for the application they are building. The account houses relevant resources, such as phone numbers, along with custom application configuration. It also holds billing information, because one user's applications might all be billed in different ways.
Every account has one specific user who is its owner, but there's no limit to the number of users that can be invited to access the account — even users who have accounts of their own.
This model lets anyone visit Twilio, sign up, create an account, and start building straight away. As your business grows, you can create new accounts — new applications — and invite additional users to access them.
However, if your company has reached a scale where you find you need more control of your users and accounts, or you now have to meet compliance requirements, then you will need a more structured approach to user and account management than the basic model can provide. This is where Organizations can help. It allows you to take the standard Twilio accounts model to the next level by consolidating all of your accounts and managing them centrally.
The key benefit is that all of your accounts, regardless of which employee created them, can roll up into one Organization. Your designated Organization Admins can then perform appropriate management actions such as adding and removing users, assigning them to accounts, and updating account settings, for example.
If you have personnel changes, the Organization lets you easily transfer administrative responsibilities to different members of your team.
When you create an Organization, you become the Organization Owner. All of the accounts that you currently own become part of the Organization too. Your users will continue to have permission to access their accounts, which you can now review and manage.
You can assign certain Organization Roles to users when you invite them into the Organization. These roles govern what actions a user can perform within your Organization. You can set and change these roles in a specific user's detail page, accessed from the Admin Center's Users area.
Info
Organization roles are different from account roles, which are roles you can assign to users within a given account. We'll cover those on the Managed Accounts page
These are the current Organization roles:
- Owner — This role is automatically assigned to the person who created the Organization, and gives them full control of it. There can only be one Organization Owner at a time. They — and they alone — can delete the Organization.
- Administrator — A managed user in the Organization who has permission to manage it. For example, they can invite and remove users, add existing accounts, create new accounts, modify accounts, and change Organization settings. However, they cannot delete the Organization.
- Standard User (Account Creation) — A managed user who does not have permission to manage your Organization in any capacity. This role is the default you would assign to most of the users in your Organization. Standard users only have access to the accounts that you specify.
Ready to establish your Organization? Let's do that now.
- To create an Organization, first log into the Twilio Console .
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Once you're logged in, click on the account switcher icon in the upper left corner of the screen, just to the right of your account name, and then click Create Organization:
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In the Create Your Organization panel that appears now, enter a name for your Organization. Usually, this is your company's name, but you can enter anything you like now and change it later by going to the Settings section:
- Click the Create Organization button. Twilio will create a container that holds all your company's accounts and users.
Warning
You must be the Owner of an account with a verified phone number to create an Organization
The Admin Center's Accounts section provides you with lists of all your managed accounts, independent accounts, and pending accounts. This is also where you can add existing accounts to your Organization, and create new accounts within your Organization.
These are the types of accounts that an Organization can include:
- Managed accounts are part of your Organization. Organization Admins can change the settings and lifecycle of all managed accounts.
- Independent accounts are not managed by your Organization, but are accounts that your managed users have access to.
- Pending accounts are the accounts that an Organization Admin has invited to become part of your Organization, but the account owner has not yet accepted your invitation.
Info
To find out more about working with managed accounts, please see the Managed Accounts page.
The Admin Center's Users section is where you can view lists of all your managed users, independent users, and pending users. This is also where you can invite users to be part of your Organization.
These are the types of users that can work with an Organization:
- Managed users are part of your Organization. Organization Admins can control their settings and access.
- Independent users are not part of your Organization, but they have access to one or more of your managed accounts .
- Pending users are users that an Organization Admin has explicitly invited to join your Organization but have not yet accepted your invitation.
Info
To find out more about working with managed users, please see the Managed Users page.
You can update your Organization name in the Settings section.
The Domain Settings determine how new users from your registered domain(s) are processed when they attempt to create Twilio accounts:
- Prevent users from signing up with email addresses from your domain, unless they have been explicitly invited to do so by the Organization. In this case, they will need to request an invitation or sign up using an alternative email address if they are setting up an entirely separate user entity.
- Users that sign up with email addresses from your domain will automatically be added to this Organization and will be granted permission to create accounts within the Organization. This allows your employees to get working as quickly as possible.
- Users that sign up with email addresses from your domain will not be added to this Organization. Use this to tightly restrict access to your Organization and its accounts.
These settings apply to any or all of the domains you have verified. Please see the Domains page for further details.
Billing is currently independent of the Organization. New accounts created in the Organization will be in trial mode until they are upgraded or added to your invoice through the existing process. New accounts do not inherit custom pricing models.
Organizations introduce a new Personally Identifiable Information (PII) element: the Organization's friendly name. This name is retained for up to 30 days after an Organization has been deleted (PII MTL: 30 DAYS).
For customers subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Twilio will execute a Business Associate Addendum (BAA) to Twilio's Terms of Service. To obtain a BAA, please contact your Twilio Account Representative.
If your Organization has a BAA with Twilio for usage subject to HIPAA, you will be able to manage HIPAA Accounts through the Admin Center.
You can enable or disable HIPAA for the accounts of your Organization.
- Log in to the Console and navigate to Admin Center > Accounts .
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Click on the name of the account you are managing.
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Select the Enable HIPAA for this account or Disable HIPAA for this account option in the HIPAA enablement section.
- Click on the Save option at the bottom of the page.
Info
The same action could be done in Console, under Account -> General Settings, you will see HIPAA enablement self-service.
The same steps must be repeated for all existing Subaccounts to be designated as HIPAA. Once an Account is designated as HIPAA, then any future Subaccounts created in that Account will also be automatically designated as HIPAA Subaccounts.
Note: Any new Accounts created will not automatically be designated as HIPAA eligible. It is the Customer's responsibility to ensure that all Accounts and Subaccounts requiring HIPAA are designated as such through the Admin Center or Console.
To learn more about how to build a HIPAA compliant workflow using Twilio's offerings, please refer to Architecting for HIPAA on Twilio.
At this time, you can't delete your Organization from the Console. If you need to delete your Organization, please contact the Twilio support team.
Note Only the current Organization Owner can complete this update.
- Ensure the new owner is currently a user listed within the Organization. If not, you will need to add them as a user first. See the Manage users section above to learn how to add a new user.
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Go to the Users section within the Admin Center, then click on the Owner of the Organization:
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On the Owner's profile page, click on Change Ownership:
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Under the Change Organization Ownership panel, type the new owner's email into the Choose a new owner field, then select their user and click Change Owner:
