> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.sterndesk.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Organizations and Projects

> Learn about how organizations and projects are structured in Sterndesk

# Organizations and Projects

Organizations and projects provide a hierarchical structure for organizing your extraction workflows in Sterndesk.

## Hierarchy Overview

```
Organization
└── Project
    ├── Extraction Schema
    ├── Upload Collector → Uploads → Extractions
    └── Crawl Collector → Crawls → Extractions
```

**Organizations** are the top-level container. They group related projects together and serve as the boundary for team access and billing.

**Projects** belong to an organization and contain all the resources needed for a specific extraction workflow: [extraction schemas](/concepts/02-extraction-schemas), [collectors](/concepts/03-collectors) (upload collectors and crawl collectors), and the resulting [extractions](/concepts/04-extractions).

## Authentication and Access Control

API keys grant access to all organizations and projects that the associated user is a member of. When you authenticate with an API key, you can:

* List and manage organizations you belong to
* Create, update, and delete projects within those organizations
* Access all resources (schemas, collectors, extractions) within those projects

See [Authentication](/get-started/02-authentication) for details on obtaining and using API keys.

<Note>
  API keys inherit the permissions of the user they belong to. A user can be a member of multiple organizations, and their API key provides access to all of them.
</Note>

## Common Use Cases

### Separating Customers

If you're building a platform that processes documents for multiple customers, create a separate project for each customer:

```
My Company (Organization)
├── Acme Corp (Project)
├── Globex Inc (Project)
└── Initech (Project)
```

This ensures complete data isolation between customers—each project's data is entirely separate.

### Deployment Environments

Use separate projects within an organization to manage different environments:

```
My Company (Organization)
├── Ocean Research - Development (Project)
├── Ocean Research - Staging (Project)
└── Ocean Research - Production (Project)
```

This allows you to test extraction schemas and workflows before deploying to production, while keeping all environments under the same organization.

### Teams or Departments

Organizations can represent different teams or business units:

```
Finance Department (Organization)
├── Expense Reports (Project)
└── Vendor Invoices (Project)

Legal Department (Organization)
├── Contract Review (Project)
└── Compliance Documents (Project)
```

## API Reference

For detailed information on creating, updating, and deleting organizations and projects, see the API Reference:

* [Organization endpoints](https://api.eu.sterndesk.com/r/#tag/organization)
* [Project endpoints](https://api.eu.sterndesk.com/r/#tag/project)

## Next Steps

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Extraction Schemas" icon="code" href="/concepts/02-extraction-schemas">
    Define the structure of data you want to extract
  </Card>

  <Card title="Collectors" icon="inbox" href="/concepts/03-collectors">
    Set up upload and crawl collectors to ingest documents
  </Card>
</CardGroup>