Organization Settings
are available from the organization badge menu in the top-left of the application. There are several pages of settings available, many of which are only available to the organization’s administrator.
Subscription Management
Visit this page to manage your organization’s subscription, update your billing information (make sure you update your Aligni subscription before your credit card expires!) or cancel your subscription.
Assign a New Administrator
You may use this function to assign the role of administrator to another existing account. Once you make the new assignment, you will be logged out so that control transfers gracefully.
Organization Backups
If you have an Amazon S3 account associated with your Aligni database, you can enable automatic weekly backups of your database that gets stored in your S3 bucket. For more information, see the Backup Tool Documentation.
General Settings
From the Settings tab, you can enter an optional billing contact email, set your organization name, and manage your API access token. You can also setup an Amazon S3 bucket to enable file storage with your Aligni organization. There are also additional settings to control how part numbers and other information is displayed as well as some security settings.
Part Numbers
In addition to the manufacturer’s part number that is assigned to every part in your database, you’ll also have an internal part number. Aligni provides the ability to use manually-assigned part numbers but you can also allow Aligni to automatically assign part numbers with optional manufacturer or part type prefixes.
If your organization does not already have a part numbering policy in place, we strongly recommend using a simple autoincrement style without prefixes and keeping the part number length relatively short (e.g. 6). This will provide a short, unique SKU for each part to reduce errors when communicating about your parts. Of course, Aligni always shows the manufacturer’s part number and allows you to search by manufacturer’s part number as well.
For more detail, please visit the Part Numbering page.
Manufacturer Numbers
When you choose to include manufacturer numbers in your part numbers, you can setup how Aligni assigns manufacturer numbers (manually or automatically) and how long the prefix is.
Part Type Numbers
When you choose to include part type numbers in your part numbers, you can setup how Aligni assigns part type numbers (manually or automatically) and how long the number is.
Inventory Asset Numbering
Inventory asset IDs are unique IDs (optionally) assigned to inventory units for tracking. Configure numbering options here.
Purchasing
On the purchasing tab are a few settings that determine how Aligni generates purchase orders for your vendors. The company phone number and bill-to address will appear on purchase orders you generate for vendors as PDFs.
You may also choose to have Aligni automatically generate purchase order numbers in sequence and set the number length and next number to be generated. If you choose to manually specify each PO number, Aligni will enforce uniqueness so that duplicate PO numbers are not entered.
Database Usage
Some items in your Aligni organization are limited based on your subscription level. Usage information for these items is displayed at the bottom left and lets you monitor your levels as your organization grows.
If you approach (or reach) any of your limits, you can update your subscription on the Subscription tab.
Data Retention
Keeping detailed audit history of past actions, discussions, and other records can be a helpful operational tool. Aligni provides free data retention for such history for up to a year depending on your organization’s subscription plan. Additional data retention may be purchased by changing your data retention settings.
Quarterly emails will be sent to your organization’s administrator summarizing data retention removal actions and provide a reminder to adjust your settings if you’d like to avoid these removals.
If you set your data retention to 5 years and you have been with Aligni for 5 or more years, Aligni will remove data (see details below) that is older than 5 years.
You may change your data retention setting at any time but data that has already been removed cannot be retrieved or restored.
Billing
Data retention is billed based on the number of years of data retention that are required for your organization. In your subscription settings, you set the maximum number of years of data retention that you need for your organization. We then bill you for the actual number of years required.
For example, if you set your data retention setting to 10 years but you have only been using Aligni for 2 years, you will only be billed for 2 years of data retention.
Records Subject to Data Retention Removal
The records listed below are subject to the data retention removal process. Unless otherwise noted, these records are deleted according to the data retention interval specified for your organization.
- Change Entries – These capture the minor changes to records such as builds, contacts, manufacturers, parts, purchases, relationships, vaults, and vendors.
- Discussion Comments – Ephemeral discussions on items like safety stock.
- Event Logs – Ephemeral event logs such as API logs are removed. These logs are removed after 30 days.
- Finalized ActiveQuotes – The quotes remain attached to their respective items, but the parent ActiveQuotes are removed.
- Finalized Builds
- Finalized Inventory Adjustment Batches
- Finalized Purchases – Purchases remain until they are received in full (closed), but are subsequently subject to removal.
- Inventory History – All inventory history records such as adjustments and transfers.
- Inventory Transfers
Records Not Subject to Data Retention Removal
Many records have historical information that is considered to be core to the functionality and intent of the record. These records are not subject to data retention removal processes and remain intact as long as your subscription remains in good standing:
- Engineering Change Management – ECM records and their associated discussions.
- Item Revisions – All past revisions of items.
- Attachments – All attachments associated to an item or item revision.
- Vaults – All vaults attached to all items and item revisions.
Stale Record Removal
In addition to the data retention policy above, several incomplete or draft records are removed if they are left in this state for more than 60 days. Record removal occurs automatically once per month. The following records are subject to stale record removal:
- Inventory Adjustment Batches – Any uncompleted batches that are not “touched” are subject to removal.
- Purchases – Purchases left in the draft state are subject to removal.
- Quote Requests – Quote requests left in the draft state are subject to removal.
You can review the stale record removal state by visiting the Data Retention page in your organization settings. A stale record removal email is also sent monthly with a list of stale records.