Difference between an organization, a folder and a collection

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1

Can some one please explain the difference between an organization, a folder and a collection? Why would I use one over the other? It seems I can only be an admin of one org also show what is its purpose

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2

Since I don’t personally use these features, I’ll give you the short version until someone else responds with a more detailed answer:

SAT-Style: A collection is to an organization as a folder is to an individual user.

Also, an organization “owns” a set of vault items that are stored in the organization’s vault. Users who are members of the organization have shared use of the items stored in the organization’s vault. Using collections to organize these shared vault items, it is possible to control which users have access to what items.

3

Okay so if all i use Bitwarden for is personal I would only ever user folders…

If I use Bitwarden for Personal & Business I would create an org and possibly inside that Org you could have 3 teams like Finance, Sales, IT and collections would go under the org which is the same as folders but collections could have permissions on them allowing others to only see that collection??

4

I don’t use Collections, but I believe the answer is yes based on what I read here:

5

Yes, my understanding is that your staff would each have their own individual vault (for non-shared credentials), and be invited to become members of the organization, where you can then designate the Sales team to only get access to the “Sales” collection, the Finance team to only get access to the “Finance” collection, etc. These collections would contain credentials that the team members can share. You can also specify whether specific users should have only read access or read/write access to the credentials within the collection(s) that they can access.

6

Perfect, Sorry one more question, is it possible to give a user “Use only permission” to a collection or a login so that all they can do is have the browser plugin type in the password for them but they cannot see the stored password?

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7

This doesn’t actually make sense. If a user can copy a password to their system clipboard then they can see it. And having a password hidden behind asterisks does not provide any protection beyond over-the-shoulder visibility. it’s a simple browser hack to make those fields visible.

8

Yes, and…

  • You can mix the two. You can put organizational vault items in your folders, but that doesn’t change how they appear to others.
  • Collections have permissions. When you put an organizational vault item into a collection, you are sharing it with everyone who has access to the collection.
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10

There is one other usage that I’m aware of for organizations and collections, apart from business purposes.
Say you wanted to allow someone - for example, your kids - to only have access to a restricted area of the vault. You could set up a Family organization, then within that a Kids Area collection.
You could then set up a user that has access only to that area. By assigning specific items to that Collection, the kids can see and edit them.

In the Free plan, as I understand it, you can only have one login user in the restricted area, but that could be shared amongst the kids.
Ah I found it … quote
“Free organisations may have up to 2 members. Upgrade to a paid plan to invite more members.”
One of the members would be the admin owner, the other would be the kid login.

11

Just a heads up — it is against Bitwarden’s Terms of Service for more than one person to share a user account (and in case your kids are not yet teenagers, it is also prohibited for persons younger than 13 years to use Bitwarden).

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12

Folders are assigned to the vault.

Collections are folders in organizations. It is only a different name and icon

Collections can be shared with other people or family members.

Vault and organizations exports to separate .json files

I also did not find information on how to move a collection from organization1 to organization2.

Vault
–Folder1
password1 password2
–Folder2
password3 password4
Organization1
– Collection1
password5 password6
–Collection2
password7 password8

13

To move a collection from org1 to org2 you need to export it from org1 to a file (in .csv or .json format) and then import that file into org2.

Check carefully if all is well and then you can delete the collection in org1.

A bit clumsy, but it works.