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g. Organizations/Organisaatiot

Last modified by Meeri Rannisto on 2025/03/27 17:04

Page in Finnish: Organisaatiot

NOTE: Organizations section was renewed 03/2025 and these instructions have been updated

General

"Organization" is information or a resource found in Kotka about an organization doing scientific work. Organization can be e.g. a university, a research institution or a team. Organization data is used mainly for managing the ownership of records and managing transactions.

  • All resources in Kotka have an owner organization. This organization defines, which user has the rights to edit the information of each resource. Owner of record will be the organization you belong to, but if you belong to several organizations, you need to choose the owner of record when entering data.
  • All transactions have a correspondent organization

The catalogue of organizations works a kind of "address book" in Kotka. The system allows e.g. transaction of specimens only to the organizations it knows. Kotka users must all belong to at least one organization, but all organizations known by Kotka don't include people that use Kotka. For example, the organization resource MOS.1012 is a team in Luomus, which includes Kotka users. On the contrary, the organization resource MOS.17 is an Egyptian university's herbarium, which doesn't include Kotka users, but is used e.g. for loaning specimens to this herbarium. Because the organization resources mainly operate as addresses, any Kotka user can create a new organization (see below). Giving access or edit rights to people in the organizations is a more complex procedure and needs to be agreed with Luomus admins. If you need edit rights to an organization, please ask your Kotka contact person or team leader to contact kotka(at)luomus.fi

Organization list/search

From Kotka top menu, click Organizations → All to browse organizations. You can choose the columns or adjust their order by clicking the "Select columns" button. URI column cannot be removed or moved, it is always the first column. The list remembers your selected columns and order as long as you use the same browser.

The list can viewed with and filtered by:

  • URI - The unique identifier of the organization
  • Owner - Full name of the owner organization
  • Organization - Organization name (level 1)
  • Suborganization - Suborganization name (level 2)
  • Department - Department name (level 3)
  • Section, team - Section or team name (level 4)
  • Abbr - Official abbreviation of the organization
  • PC - Postal Code of the organization
  • City - City of the organization
  • Country - Country of the organization
  • Tags - TagsTagit the organization is tagged with (used in this manner mainly for botanical garden seed exchange partners)
  • Orders due - Date when seed orders are due (for botanical garden seed exchange partners)
  • Hidden - Visibility status of the organization (some organizations are hidden due to them being duplicates or otherwise unnecessary)

You can also sort the list by any column.

Adding an organization

Before adding a new organization, please double-check that the organization doesn't already exist in Kotka. Try searching from all possible fields by all possible names and their formats. There are already over 2000 organizations in Kotka (situation 03/2025). For some organizations, some other section or department may already exist but the one you need is missing (for example, you may need the details of the herbarium of an institution, but the details in Kotka are for the botanical garden of the same institution). In this case, add a new organization and don't edit the existing one, as someone else may be using it for another purpose. In some cases, old organizations with very little information can be edited and updated to be used for a new purpose. Contact kotka(at)luomus.fi if you have any questions.

To add an organization, choose from Kotka menu Organizations → + Add Organization.

There are only a few mandatory fields for an organization. These are Owner of record and Level 1 Name of the organization (in English). Naturally, many more fields need to be filled in to have enough information about an organization. Field specific instruction are in Kotka Field documentation or on the Organization form, symbol  next to the fields.

After an organization has been added, it should be immediately available on transaction form or somewhere else in Kotka.

It is possible to give a web address for the logo of the organization in the field Logo URL. This is then used on transaction PDFs based on the owner of record of the transaction in question. So if you add an URL for the logo of an organization here, it will be displayed on all transaction PDFs generated for those transactions whose owner of record is the organization in question. More information about Transactions/Transaktiot (lainat). The logo should be of good enough quality for prints but not too large. If you don't have a web address where to store the logo, contact kotka(at)luomus.fi for help.