Skip to main content

You have no organisation

If you sign up to AfriAnnotate without an invite link and without being the first user on the platform, you have no organisation membership. You still get a working home page: it notes that you're not in an organisation yet and lists the open public projects you can join and contribute to right away.

This is a real, deliberate state — not a bug. AfriAnnotate doesn't auto-create an organisation around every signup because that produces dozens of single-user orgs sprinkled across the database, none of them coordinated.

Why you're here​

Three paths land you on this page:

  1. You self-signed-up without clicking an invite link. The platform created your account but has no way to know which org you should belong to.
  2. You were on an org and got removed. The org admin removed you (intentionally or accidentally), and you have no membership in any other org.
  3. Your org was deleted. A platform owner deleted the org you were on. Deleted orgs are soft-deleted, so ask a platform owner whether it can be restored.

What to do​

Join an open project​

If your goal is to contribute, you may not need an organisation at all. Your home page (which is also where /projects takes you while you have no organisation) lists the same public projects as Discover: Join on the ones open to anyone, Members only on the ones a team keeps to itself. Pick one, review its consent terms, and join. Your work is attributed to your account, and you can leave a project at any time.

Get an invite​

The fast path. Ask an existing platform owner / org admin to:

  1. Open Organization → Members → + Invite people
  2. Type your email
  3. Pick a role (Annotator / Reviewer / Manager / Admin)
  4. Send

You'll get an email titled "You've been invited to join <Org> on AfriAnnotate" with a link. Clicking the link from the same browser that's already signed in attaches you to the org immediately and lands you on the org's overview page.

If somebody sent you a link before you signed up, opening it now (while signed in) attaches you to that org. An invite link carries the org's shared invite token, so it keeps working for anyone who has it until an admin resets the link.

Be added by a platform owner​

Platform staff can pre-create your membership directly without an email round-trip:

  1. Platform owner opens Platform → Users → + Create User or finds your existing user record
  2. Clicks + Add to org
  3. Picks the org + role
  4. Save

You'll see the org appear in your sidebar on next page reload.

Create your own org​

Currently this is not something every user can do — by default only platform staff and existing org owners/admins can create new orgs (staff do it via Platform → Orgs). Platforms can lift this restriction with Platform → Settings → Policies → Let anyone create an organization, but very few do — it leads to fragmented data.

If you genuinely need your own org (e.g. you're a consultant working with multiple teams), ask the platform owner to flip the setting OR create the org for you.

What you can do while on this page​

  • Join open public projects from the home page or Discover (the home page shows the same public projects, with Members only on the ones you cannot join), then label in them as a contributor (your own annotations stay visible to you)
  • Switch accounts via the user menu (if you have another login)
  • Edit your profile — name, password, language preference
  • Sign out

What you can't do:

  • See an org's private projects
  • Create projects, manage members, or open org/platform settings
  • Anything else that requires an org role

The platform's design philosophy: an org-less user is a real person who's just not connected to work yet, not a broken state. Once you get an invite, everything works normally.

For platform owners reading this​

A signup that lands here represents either:

  1. Intentional self-signup — somebody you want on the platform just signed themselves up. Invite them to the appropriate org
  2. Accidental signup — someone reading the website signed up without realising they need an invite. Email them an explanation, or just send an invite to the org you want them on
  3. Removal recovery — the user was removed and now has no org. Decide if they should be re-added

Org-less users show up in Platform → Users (search by name or email; the list filters by status and staff flag, not by org membership). If a user is in this state for more than ~24 hours and isn't being actioned, it's worth following up — they likely need explicit shepherding.

What's next​