'Taken Over by' knowledge article'Taken Over by' knowledge article

What

The taken over by functionality makes it possible to indicate that an organisation has been "taken over" by another organisation, and keep the correct organisational information on Research Output, Activities etc.

This way, when one former organisational unit (A) is “taken over by” another organisational unit (B), the content associated with organisational unit A will be shown as related to organisational unit B on the Pure Portal and in reporting. The organisation indicated as ”taken over by” is treated as a parent of the organisation it has taken over.

How

You can add the taken over by relation on the organisations in Pure either manually, by the Configurable Organisation Synchronisation job, or by the XML import wizard. It's not supported in Masterlist, so if you're using Masterlist import, you need to handle it manually after creating the new organisation. This article will describe the steps manually only; please check out the document Taken over by.pdf, if you use the Synchronisation job or the XML import wizard to manage organisations and persons in your Pure. But we encourage you to go through the manual procedure to better understand the process. 

To handle it manually, the user needs permission to update both Organisations and Persons. This will be either Administrators or combinations of Editor/Administrator of Organisation + Editor/Administrator of Persons.

Steps:

1. Old organization (A) already exists in Pure.
2. Create New organization (B) and place it correctly in your organisational hierarchy, by adding the correct Parent organisation.
   At this stage the Organisational hierarchy should look like this:
   
3. Open Old organization (A)
   1. Add End date of when this Organisation closed down.
   2. Select how you would like to handle the association between the Old organization (A) and the related Persons.
      
   3. Add New organization (B) in the field Organisational unit taken over by of the Old organization (A).
      
   4. Save the settings.
4. Old organization (A) has now been ‘taken over by’ New organization (B). The organisational hierarchy should look like this:
   

After the Taken over by functionality has been applied, a few changes will be visible in Pure.

Organisational hierarchy:

Old organization (A) will still be visible under the existing Parent, but the New organization (B) will be visible as an additional Parent (sometimes referred to as a pseudo-parent because the New organization (B) will not be listed in the Parent section of the editor, only in the Taken over by section).

Note: In Pure, you can choose whether to include/show pseudo-parents in the organisational hierarchy under Administrator > System settings > Content hierarchy > Organisation hierarchy resolution strategy.

If you select Only use regular parents, your organisational hierarchy will not display the overtaken organisational units under their pseudo-parents (new parents). Applying this setting to our example organisations A and B will result in the following hierarchy:

Enabling this setting will not affect how content is displayed on the Portal or in reporting.

Short format of an organisation:

Anywhere we display information regarding an organisation in Pure, will now include information on the New organization (B) that has taken over the Old organization (A). For example, when listing organisations, or when you search for Old organization (A) to add Organisational unit to a piece of content, New organization (B) will appear too.

Expected behaviour on related content:

Existing content that is related to the Old organization (A) in Pure:

• Existing content related to the Old organization (A), prior to it being taken over by the New organization (B), will not be affected by the change. The affiliations on the content will stay the same, and the correct history of the content will be preserved. For example, when looking at a piece of content on the Portal, you will be able to see that it was produced under Old organization (A), but will also see it listed as content that belongs to the New organization (B).

Content added after Taken over by has been applied:

• When the Old organization (A) has been closed down and the New organization (B) has overtaken it, we recommend that the Persons associated with Old organization (A) be updated at the same time (either manually in Pure, through your synchronization, Master list or through the API). Persons will therefore have a former association to Old organization (A) and likely a new association to the New organization (B). When creating new content in Pure, New organization (B) will be set by default as associated to the content.
  

What to expect in reporting:

It is possible to create a report on an organisation that includes the content created in organisation(s) it has taken over.  Below, we describe how this works with the new Reporting module.

Example: you want to know how many Research outputs the New organization (B) has produced and you would like to include the Research outputs that were created by the Old organization (A). 

In the new Reporting module, the Old organization (A) that is taken over by the New organization (B) is seen as a child of the New organization (B).  
You can get the results in various ways. Below, we present 2 ways of generating the report, but there are more ways of getting the same result.

• Scenario 1:
  • Start your report on Research Output
  • Include a filter on Organisational unit.
    • Select New organization (B).
    • Tick Include all units below.
    • 
•  Scenario 2:
  • Start your report on Organisations (can be filtered by Organisational unit = New organization (B))
  • In column B – select related Research Output > Managed by this unit or any unit below.
  • 

What to expect on Pure Portal:

• On the Pure Portal, content related to “taken over by” organisations, will be shown on the lists of content for the new Organisation (e.g. content related to “Old organization (A)” would be displayed on the list of content for “New organization (B)").
• On the Organisational profile of an organisation that has taken over other organisations (such as New organisation (B)), you will now see a list of content related to both new and “taken over by” organisations.
  
• On an individual piece of content, if the content was added to Pure prior to the organisational change (i.e. before applying Taken over by), they will not be affected by the change. This content will still show the same (old) organisation:
  
• Note: If you configure the Portal to display former organisations, Pure will show a link to the former organisation on the individual piece of content. If you configure not to display former organisations on your Portal, it will not show former organisation affiliations on the individual piece of content. You can set your preferences under Administrator > Pure Portal > Portal > Configuration > Content types > Organisational Units > Only show active organisations in the Portal.

FAQ:

• Q. What is the difference and consequences of "merge" and "taken over by"?
  • A. The "merge" functionality is a technical feature that merges two organisations in Pure, effectively replacing one with the other. After the merge, Pure will see the two organisations as one, even if the organisations are still synched in from an external source. The content fields will be merged according to the merge settings, and Pure will keep track of the fields in future syncs.
    
    "Taken over by" is a feature designed to show organisational changes on an organisational level, retaining the history of the former organisation as distinct from, but related to, the new one. The former organisation will still be shown in Pure and on the portal, and publications created under the old organisation will still be associated with it.
    
    If you are unsure which feature to use, check whether you want to retain a history of the old organisation in your system (taken-over-by would be better then), or whether the two organisations are identical/duplicates and only the new organisation should contain data (merge would be better for this case).
     
• Q. We synchronize organisations and persons with external databases. After doing the 'taken over by' steps, the persons relating to the former organisation didn't get the org's endDate, and it's also not possible to edit the field manually. Why?
  • A. Pure does not support changing the end date on persons that have synchronized associations. If you need to change these dates, you need to do so in the external source data and get that synchronized into Pure. 
     
• Q. Is it possible to use "taken over by" if we subscribe to PRS?
  • A. Yes, but when you request a new PRS round, make sure that the PRS team is aware that the new org has been added, so that a new publication will get the correct affiliations when it is imported through the PRS process.

More Information
Taken over by.pdf