# Organizations, Teams, and Projects

Organizations help you manage your Projects and Teams. Projects are sets of Product data and Store configuration settings. Teams group members of your Organization into logical units that you can assign permissions to.

Organizations act as a parent to Teams and Projects. When creating a Project, you can assign it to an Organization of your choice. Teams within an Organization help you manage access permissions for a Project. Users can belong to multiple Organizations, but Projects and Teams can belong to only one Organization.

Learn how to set up Organizations, Teams, and Projects in our [self-paced learning module](/learning-model-your-business-structure/organizations-and-projects/overview.md).

## Manage Organizations

This section describes the steps to [create](/merchant-center/organizations-teams-projects.md#create-an-organization), [rename](/merchant-center/organizations-teams-projects.md#rename-an-organization), and [delete](/merchant-center/organizations-teams-projects.md#delete-an-organization) an organization.

### Create an Organization

By default, signing up for an account in a new Region and then accessing the Merchant Center will automatically create an Organization for you.

One Organization should be enough for most implementations. However, some implementations choose to have separate staging and production Organizations.

To create an Organization, do the following:

1. Click the profile icon, and then select **Manage organizations & teams**.
2. Click **Add organization**, enter the name of the Organization, and then click **Create**.

### Rename an Organization

To rename an Organization, do the following:

1. Click the profile icon, and then select **Manage organizations & teams**.
2. Select the respective Organization, and then click the Edit organization name icon.
3. Edit the name of the Organization, and then click **Update**.

### Delete an Organization

You cannot delete an Organization that has Projects assigned to it. As a result, you must first [delete all the Projects of an Organization](/merchant-center/organizations-teams-projects.md#delete-a-project) before deleting that Organization.

To delete an Organization, do the following:

1. Click the profile icon, and then select **Manage organizations & teams**.
2. Select the respective Organization, and then click the Delete organization icon.

### Export user activity in an Organization

Administrators can export the data of all members in an Organization. The data includes users' names, email addresses, assigned Teams, and last login date.
This is useful for auditing user access, reviewing Team assignments, or tracking engagement through last login information.

To export the data, do the following:

1. Click the profile icon, and then select **Manage organizations & teams**.
2. Select the Organization.
3. On the **Teams** tab, click **Export members (CSV)**.
   The CSV file is downloaded to your local machine.

## Manage Teams

Teams help in grouping members of your Organization into logical units that you can assign permissions to. Teams cannot exist outside of an Organization. Creating an Organization automatically creates a default Team of Administrators. We recommend that you invite at least one other user to the Team. You can manage associated Teams on the respective Organization's page.

### Create a Team

1. Click the profile icon, and then select **Manage organizations & teams**.
2. Select the Organization, and then click **Add team**.
3. Enter the name of the Team, and then click **Create**.

### Invite users to a Team

Users can belong to multiple Teams. Adding a user to a Team grants them access to the Organization's Projects that the Team can access.

To invite users to a Team, do the following:

1. Click the profile icon, and then select **Manage organizations & teams**.

2. Select the Organization and Team.

3. On the **Teams** page, click **Invite members**.

4. In the **Invite someone to the team** dialog, do any one of the following:

   - Enter the first name, last name, or email address to search for and invite an existing member of the same Organization.
   - Enter the email address to invite a new user to the Organization.

5. Click **Add member**.

A sign-up link is sent to the invited users. When the users sign up, they are automatically added to your Organization.

### Remove users from a Team

1. Click the profile icon, and then select **Manage Organizations & Teams**.
2. Select the Organization and Team.
3. On the **Teams** page, click the delete icon next to the user.
4. Click **Remove member** in the dialog. 
   To remove a user from the Administrators Team, enter the Team name as "Administrators" for confirmation and then click **Remove member**.

You must remove deleted users from all Teams in an Organization to remove user access to the Organization's data.

### Delete a Team

1. Click the profile icon, and then select **Manage organizations & teams**.
2. Select the respective Team, click the Delete team icon, and then confirm the action.

## Manage Projects

Projects are distinct sets of Product data and Store configuration settings that belong to a single Organization. A single Project can provide the data for multiple selling Channels. Users must belong to a Team with appropriate permissions to access a Project.

You can view and manage Projects on the **Manage projects** page.

### Create a Project

1. Click the profile icon, and then select **Manage projects**.

2. Click **Create new project**.

3. Depending on your requirement, select whether to start your project either with your own data or with pre-filled sample data.

4. Enter the details for your Organization and Project, and then click **Complete**.

   - **Organization name**: Organization to which the Project belongs.
   - **Project name**: display name of the Project.
   - **Project key**: key of the Project.

     By default, Merchant Center suggests a Project key, but you can replace it as needed. The key must be unique and contain between two and 36 characters. It can contain only alphanumeric characters (a-Z, 0-9), underscores (\_), and hyphens (-). The key must not contain any of these reserved words: local, admin, or config.

5. Click **Complete**.

After creating a Project, configure [permissions](/merchant-center/user-permissions.md) for the Team that needs access to the Project.

All new Projects have a 60-day trial period and are not in production. For more information, see [Use Advanced Project management actions](/merchant-center/organizations-teams-projects.md#use-advanced-project-management-actions).

After creating a Project, we recommend that you configure the [Project Settings](/merchant-center/project-settings.md).

### Switch between Projects and locales

- Use the Projects menu to switch between the Projects to which you have access.

  ![Projects menu to switch between Projects in Merchant Center](https://docs.commercetools.com/merchant-center/images/projects-and-organizations/projects-menu.png)

- Use the Locales menu to switch between different data locales. The Merchant Center uses the selected locale to display Project-specific data such as names, descriptions, and other localized attributes.

  ![Locales menu to switch between different data locales](https://docs.commercetools.com/merchant-center/images/projects-and-organizations/locales-menu.png)

  To view or modify locales, go to **Settings** > **Project settings**. Click the **International** tab, and then scroll to the **Languages** section.

  The locale setting does not change the display language of the Merchant Center interface (for example, menu items and button text). To view or modify the interface language, click your user profile and go to **My Profile** > **Personal Settings** > **Language and region**.

### Delete a Project

You can delete only those Projects that are not [marked as in production](/merchant-center/organizations-teams-projects.md#use-advanced-project-management-actions).

To delete a Project, do the following:

1. Click the profile icon, and then select **Manage projects**.
2. Click the Delete project icon in the Project row, enter the respective Project key, and then click **Delete project**.

You can reuse Project names; however, Project keys are unique and cannot be reassigned once used.

### Use Advanced Project management actions

- **Activate a trial Project**: If a Project is not activated at the end of the 60-day trial, it is marked with a **Trial Ended** flag.
  The Project data would still be available in the Merchant Center, but you can neither obtain API tokens for the Project nor make API calls.

  To activate a Project, contact the [commercetools support team](https://support.commercetools.com/).

- **Mark a Project as in production**: The **In production** flag lets our support team know that a Project is live and is accepting
  traffic from customers. By default, this flag is deactivated for all Projects that are created.

  To mark a Project as in production, contact the [commercetools support team](https://support.commercetools.com/).

  ![Example of a live Project marked as in production.](https://docs.commercetools.com/merchant-center/images/projects-and-organizations/project-in-production.png)

- **Transfer a Project to another Organization**: To transfer a Project to another Organization, contact the
  [commercetools support team](https://support.commercetools.com/).

## Related pages

- [Area overview page with navigation](/merchant-center.md)
- [Previous page: Administrators Team](/merchant-center/administrators-team.md)
- [Next page: User permissions](/merchant-center/user-permissions.md)