Getting familiar with Blackline Live terminology

Blackline Live is our web-based software platform that allows customers and employees alike to manage and configure fleets of Blackline safety devices. Blackline’s structure can be complex, so it is valuable to be familiar with the different terms used throughout the portal to make sense of how the different parts of the system are related and work together.

BLACKLINE LIVE

This is the name for the visible User Interface (UI) for the entire software platform. Anything with the live.blacklinesafety.com domain is part of Blackline Live. It is also generally referred to as the Blackline Live “Portal”.

ORGANIZATION

Blackline Live is made up of organizations. These organizations are meant to mimic the real-life structures of our customer’s companies. From a more functional and technical perspective, organizations are what store a customer’s resources. “Resources” can include devices, accessories, team member profiles, device configurations, emergency response protocols, device data and much more.

The organization creates a common space in Blackline Live that allows users within the same organization to see the same pool of resources when they log in.

You cannot see other organizations in Blackline Live unless you have agreed to have a relationship. Relationships can act as a “bridge” between organizations to grant users in one organization visibility and access to the other’s resources. The most common use for relationships is to allow one organization — such as Blackline’s Safety Operations Center — to monitor alerts on devices in another organization.

TEAM MEMBERS

Team members are a type of resource within each organization. Team member profiles list contact information for a person that comes in contact with Blackline devices, whether it is an end user, an emergency contact or a Blackline Live administrator. Team members can be broken down into two sub-categories: contacts and account users. The only difference between the two is that account users can log into Blackline Live while contacts cannot.

Contacts

Contacts are typically end users, emergency contacts or any kind of administrator that needs automatic notifications (for billing, news about new features ect.). They can be assigned to devices, alert profiles, notification profiles and contact groups, but cannot not log into Blackline Live. The same person can exist as a contact in multiple organizations if needed.

Account users

Account users are team members with log-in access to an organization in Blackline Live. They can still be assigned to devices, profiles and contact groups the same way contacts can. While someone can exist as a contact in multiple organizations, they can only have log-in access to one organization.

SUMMARY

When talking about Blackline Live, and logging into Blackline Live, all of these terms can seem similar. To summarize, an account user can log into the Blackline Live portal to see the resources of the organization they belong to. Account users and contacts are both considered resources in an  organization, and can both be assigned to devices or profiles in their organization, but only an account user can log in to see and manage these resources.