Using Catchpoint Across Teams or Departments

Introduction

By default, Catchpoint is a multi-tenant SaaS solution. Each account is a single tenant environment, set up to share all items such as Tests, Custom Dashboards, Zones across the account. This includes items such as:

• Tests/Folders/Products
• Custom Dashboards
• Custom Visualizations
• Zones
• Insight
• Node Groups
• API endpoints

However, some companies have multiple sets of users interacting with Catchpoint and require a more segmented implementation of portal and/or data access. Commonly, these needs are driven by point management, test management, security compliancy, and/or protection of proprietary property.

Companies like this include:

Subsidiary companies under a parent company

Parent Company A purchases and manages a single Catchpoint contract for Subsidiary A and Subsidiary B. Both Subsidiaries are independent of each other and manage their instances of Catchpoint separately. However, members of Parent Company A require access to both instances.

Companies with different departments/products

Software Company A purchases Catchpoint for QA, Dev, and IT/Ops to use*-or-*Software Company A purchases Catchpoint for Software Product A and Software Product B to use There is some sharing between the teams and no need to restrict data for proprietary reasons, but they need to manage their testing and usage without interfering with each other. There are also users responsible for maintaining overall service deliverability and need a view across all or multiple departments/products.

B2B Companies

Infrastructure Company A and is keeping an eye on Client1 and Client2. The data from each client must be kept separate for security compliance and/or protecting proprietary rights. There may be employees that belong to multiple client teams.

Companies with Technology Partners, Vendors, and Consultants

Some companies partner with outside services and require these partners to have access to Catchpoint data for troubleshooting and reporting. However, for security and proprietary reasons, they must be limited to view only a particular subset of test data and cannot view the rest of the data in the account.

To manage testing, data, and point consumption, Admins can either (a) create a sub-tenant instance of Catchpoint or (b) restrict a user’s access within an account or subtenant account. Both methods allow Admins to control what users can see, create, or modify.

Divisions

Using Divisions, Admins can create sub-tenants within their Catchpoint account. Each Division is completely isolated from other Divisions. If contacts do not have access to a Division, then they are unaware of it, or any of its objects or data.

The following items can be configured per Division:

• Time zone
• Available Test Types
• Available Network Types
• Point Allocation

The following items are isolated to a Division:

• Contacts
• Custom User Roles
• Tests/Products/Folders
• Zones
• Insight
• Custom Visualizations
• Custom Dashboards
• Widgets
• Favorite Charts
• Node Groups
• API endpoints
• RUM
• Enterprisenodes

Contact Access and Permissions

Contacts can have access to a single Division, multiple Divisions, or all Divisions. A contact’s permissions may be set per division or applied across all Divisions.

Examples:

• Bob is a contact in Division A and Division B. He is a Division Admin in Division A and a Division Observer in Division B.

• Olivia is a contact with access to all Divisions as a Client Admin.

Data Access

Contacts with access to multiple Divisions can only modify tests, report, and troubleshoot data from one Division at a time.

Client Admins, or other users with permission to view all Divisions, may access data from all Divisions at the client-level, but they are also limited to viewing data by Division.

However, Client Admins are able to create Dashboards containing data from multiple Divisions in a single view.

Sharing Data

If there is a need to share data between Divisions, users may do so via sharing public links, using Reports, or using the Data API or Alert API to push the data to a common endpoint.

Managing Usage

All Divisions share a common contract at the client level. A portion of the contract’s points may be allocated to any Division to manage how points are consumed over the contract lifetime.

Dealing with Reorganizations

As companies, teams, employees change ownership of different services, Admins may have the need to move contacts or data across Divisions. Admins may manage contacts on their own, but moving data and tests requires working with Support to do a data migration. Some items may not be able to be migrated.

Restricting Test Access

Within an account or subtenant account, Admins can control which contacts have access to view which tests while still sharing items such as Dashboards and Zones across the whole account or subtenant account.

The following items are shared or can be visible to all contacts in the instance. Only users with permission to modify the below items can do so.

• Contacts
• Custom User Roles
• Tests/Products/Folders
• Zones
• Insight
• Custom Visualizations
• Custom Dashboards
• Widgets
• Favorite Charts
• Node Groups
• API endpoints
• RUM
• Enterprise nodes

The following items can be isolated per contact:

• Custom Dashboard
• Which Tests they are able to view, modify, or analyze

Contact Permissions and Data Access

Contacts can be configured so their User Role is applied across all tests/products/folders, or some tests/products/folders. Additionally, contacts may be able to have a specific set of permissions applied to some tests/products/folders while still being able to view all test data.

Unlike Divisions, users can report and analyze all data together at once.

Examples:

• Bob is a consultant and can only view the data under Product A. He has view only permissions applied to Product A and his dashboard is locked to only contain data from Product A. When Bob logs in, all he is able to see is data from Product A.

• Olivia is a member of the QA team. She needs to be able to modify QA tests and not Prod tests. However, she needs to see all test data to isolate issues she is seeing in QA. She has modify test permissions applied to the QA team’s tests, but also has ability to view all test data.

• Frank is a manager of the entire team. He needs to be able to analyze or report any combinations of tests at the same time. He has no restrictions applied to his contact.

Sharing Data

Since all contacts exist in the same account, it is very easy to share data across tests and contacts. This includes:

• Creating dashboards for all contacts
• Creating dashboards for all tests
• Creating reports for all tests
• Sharing portal links to specific pages, charts and dashboards
• Creating favorite charts for all contacts

Managing Usage

Tests are organized by a file system, with Products as parent item. Contract points may be allocated by Product in order to control how the point consumption is spread across all tests.

Dealing with Reorganizations

As companies, teams, employees change ownership of different services, Admins may have the need modify a contact’s test restrictions or move tests across products and folders. Admins are able to do so on their own without assistance from Catchpoint.

Deciding which method is right for you

Admins are able to employ either or both Divisions or Restricting Test Access to manage portal and data access. In order to decide which method is right, it is good to think about the following questions:

• Can users be aware of other teams?
• Do users need to be able to share, report, and analyze data across teams?
• Do users require different permissions for access to different sets of data?
• Do teams require their own set of dashboards?
• Do these teams reorganize often?
• Do Enterprise nodes need to be isolated or shared?
• Who is responsible for usage? Who is responsible for the contract?

Pros and Cons

**Divisions:**Good for teams working in subsidiaries, B2B companies, or companies with technology partners. Data is completely isolated and contacts can have different permissions per Division.

Pros:

• Data per division is kept completely isolated.
• Users can create dashboards that contain widgets per division to see data across all divisions
• Access to Enterprise nodes can be specified to a Division or All
• Dashboards are customized and maintained per Division
• More flexibility with user permissions if contacts belong to multiple Divisions
• Divisions have their own APIs
• Can limit which Test Types and Network types the Division can use

Cons:

• The user can only view data from one Division at a time
• If there is a reorganization, then moving tests and data requires filing a support ticket
• If contacts belong to more than one Division, than portal deep links may not work

**Restricting Test Access:**Good for teams across different products or departments within a company, B2B companies, or companies with technology partners. Data can be isolated or easily shared with everyone in the account.

Pros:

• Contacts can be configured to view all data or restricted to a set of data
• Contacts can have different combinations of restrictions
• Can report on tests across products at the same time
• Deep links will always work for all contacts (may have no data if do not have permission to view)
• If there is a reorganization or employees commonly change teams, Admins can move users, tests, objects in the portal without assistance from Catchpoint support
• Contacts may be restricted to a single dashboard or can view all dashboards

Cons:

• Cannot limit access to Nodes, Zones, Insight by contact
• Less flexibility than Divisions with a contact’s permissions to different tests. Contacts may only have 1 set of permissions with additional ability to view all data.