What are Business Units?
Business Units let you partition your Akeneo instance by brand, subsidiary, or organizational entity. Each Business Unit has its own users, Product Grid views, and, when configured, roles. This gives each team a focused workspace and lets you control which roles Business Unit users can manage.
For example, a company running two brands, Brand A and Brand B, can create one Business Unit per brand. Each brand team sees the Product Grid views relevant to its products. The central organization can also define which roles each brand team can use when managing users.
Business Units are available only to Premium customers.
What changes for users
Once Business Units are configured, users who belong to one or more Business Units experience the following:
- Scoped Product Grid views: Public Product Grid views assigned to their Business Unit appear in their view selector. Views from other Business Units are hidden.
- Scoped user management: They can see and manage users within their Business Unit scope.
- Scoped User Group management: They can see and manage User Groups within their Business Unit scope.
- Scoped role management: When roles are configured for their Business Units, they can see, assign, and manage only those roles.
Users who do not belong to any Business Unit are not affected. They continue to see all public views, users, and roles that their permissions allow them to manage.
Key concepts
Business Unit
A Business Unit represents a distinct organizational entity within your instance, such as a brand, subsidiary, or regional team. It can contain User Groups, Product Grid views, and roles.
User Groups and access
A Business Unit does not grant access directly to individual users. Instead, it is linked to one or more User Groups. Every user in a linked User Group is automatically part of that Business Unit. A user can belong to multiple Business Units through different User Groups.
Users who are not in a User Group linked to a Business Unit are not affected by Business Unit scoping.
Scoped Product Grid views
When creating a public Product Grid view, users can assign it to a Business Unit. That view then appears in the view selector only for users whose User Groups are linked to that Business Unit. Super Admins can see all views, regardless of Business Unit assignment.
Roles linked to Business Units
A user with the Manage business units permission can link roles to a Business Unit from the Roles tab when editing that Business Unit. The linked roles define which roles users in that Business Unit can see and manage.
When a user belongs to multiple Business Units, they can access the roles linked to any of those Business Units. If none of their Business Units has linked roles, role access is not restricted.
Roles and permissions
| Role | What they can do |
|---|---|
| Manage business units (role permission) | Create, edit, and delete Business Units. Link User Groups and roles to Business Units. |
| Business Unit user | Manage users and User Groups within their Business Unit scope. Create public Product Grid views for their Business Units. When roles are linked to their Business Units, see and manage only those roles. |
A user becomes a Business Unit user by being added to a User Group linked to a Business Unit. There is no separate Business Unit role to assign manually.