Organisations
An organisation is a shared workspace for a team.
It provides a common space where multiple people can collaborate on projects, repositories, and commits while keeping everything under one controlled environment.
If you have ever worked in a lab, think of an organisation as the digital equivalent of your lab space or research group.
What an organisation represents
Typically an organisation maps to:
- a lab
- a research group
- a company
- a department
- a course cohort
- or any group of people working together regularly
It is not tied to biology itself — it exists to manage people and access. It helps to separate three ideas:
- Organisations → ownership and membership
- Labs → grouping and structure only
- Projects/Repositories → actual access control
Labs do not grant or restrict access by themselves. Permissions are always managed at the project or repository level.
What lives inside an organisation
Organisations contain:
- members
- labs (sub-groups of members)
- projects
- repositories
- commit templates
- visibility rules
Everything inside an organisation can be shared safely among members.
This keeps collaboration structured and avoids manually managing permissions for every single resource.
Why organisations exist
Without organisations, collaboration becomes messy:
- you add users one by one everywhere
- permissions are duplicated
- templates are scattered
- ownership becomes unclear
Organisations solve this by:
- centralising people
- centralising permissions
- enabling shared templates
- keeping work grouped logically
Do I need one?
Not always.
If you work alone:
- you can create private projects
- you can create repositories
- you can make commits normally
CellRepo works perfectly without organisations.
Organisations are only needed when multiple people need shared access.
Best practice
Create one organisation per:
- lab
- company
- or long-term team
Avoid creating many small organisations unless groups are truly independent.
Simple idea
Organisation = shared workspace for a team.