Organization Management

Streamlining the creation and management of Organizations and their Sites in the Forge Onboarding Portal through an interactive tree view and accessible user flows.

3 screen designs showing the Organization Management feature
3 screen designs showing the Organization Management feature
3 screen designs showing the Organization Management feature

Product

Honeywell, Forge Onboarding Portal

Project type

Feature design

Project type

Feature design

Platform

Web app

TL;DR

Overview

Honeywell's Forge Onboarding Portal is configuration software that supports building "digital twins" of objects like sites and assets. A digital twin's details and real-time data run in Honeywell Forge's front-end applications so customers can monitor their physical objects.

Role

UX designer

Tools

Figma, Miro, Jira, Trusted Tester

Tools

Figma, Miro, Jira, Trusted Tester

Completed

March 2025

Problem statement

The Forge Onboarding Portal must introduce "Organization" as an object to allow customers, site reliability engineers (SREs), and systems integrators to create and manage organizations directly in the UI. This capability is essential to support the Honeywell Connected Buildings business unit and enhance data management across Forge applications.

Goals

  • Design user flows for creating and managing organizations in the Onboarding Portal

  • Create a hierarchical "tree view" that enables users to create and edit an organization from the parent organization to individual sites

  • Ensure role-based access controls (RBAC) to restrict non-admin actions

  • Comply with Section 508 guidelines for designs and user interactions

User flow: Standard Account User

Background

Before a new customer can begin using Honeywell's end-applications, they must be setup in the Forge Onboarding Portal. Setting up a customer involves adding objects like assets and sensors, as well as event handling and KPIs.

What the customer sees in their application's dashboard is dependent on the setup process in the Onboarding Portal.

What information goes into the Onboarding Portal that powers the end applications
What information goes into the Onboarding Portal that powers the end applications
What information goes into the Onboarding Portal that powers the end applications

Research

The Onboarding Portal supports Honeywell's SBGs (strategic business groups) configure and set up customers to their front-end software solutions. We met with our SBG stakeholders to identify needs and pain-points to efficiently onboard customers and reduce the workload done directly in the front-end applications.

Approach

  • Methodology: Stakeholder and user interviews

  • Participants: 4 total (2 SBG project managers, 2 SREs)

  • Stimuli: Live review of the Onboarding Portal and the front-end application of Enterprise Buildings Integrator (EBI)

Interface showing the Enterprise Buildings Integrator Dashboard
Interface showing the Enterprise Buildings Integrator Dashboard
Interface showing the Enterprise Buildings Integrator Dashboard

Research insights

  1. Currently cannot configure organizations directly in the Onboarding Portal's UI—causing inefficiency by relying on back-end services and Microsoft Excel

  2. There are inconsistencies between how organizational data is managed between the Onboarding Portal and front-end applications—resulting in data discrepancies and the inability to integrate the Portal to the front-end apps

Onboarding Portal menu with the "Organizations" page highlighted
Onboarding Portal menu with the "Organizations" page highlighted
Onboarding Portal menu with the "Organizations" page highlighted

Feature definition

The organization management feature in the Onboarding Portal enables users to scope, view, and sort data based on organizational structures, enhancing the data management experience across Forge applications.

User stories

The Onboarding Portal is built for 3 user groups: Honeywell SREs, System Integrators, and Customer Configurators. Each user's end-goal is to configure the customer's "digital twin" of an organization efficiently and accurately.

SREs, System Integrators, and Customer Configurators:

  • "As a SRE (or system integrator, customer configurator), I need to create and manage organizations within the Forge Onboarding Portal so I can accurately configure digital twins, ensure proper data management, and facilitate seamless integration across Forge apps."

Personas for the Honeywell Setup Support and Customer Configurator
Personas for the Honeywell Setup Support and Customer Configurator
Personas for the Honeywell Setup Support and Customer Configurator

User flows

  1. Global Admin User

I.E., Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)

  1. Sign in to the Onboarding Portal

  2. From the home-page, navigate to "Organizations"

  3. Decide which task(s) needs to be done (I.E., Edit schema, Deactivate an organization)

  4. Complete task and submit into the system (I.E., Update & save, Confirm & deactivate)

  5. Log out of the Onboarding Portal

User flow diagram for actions a Global Admin User can do for Organizations
User flow diagram for actions a Global Admin User can do for Organizations
User flow diagram for actions a Global Admin User can do for Organizations

  1. Standard Account User

I.E., Customer Configurator

  1. Sign in to the Onboarding Portal

  2. From the home-page, navigate to "Organizations"

  3. Decide which task(s) needs to be done (I.E., Create organization, Add sites to organization)

  4. Complete task and submit into the system (I.E., Fill out & create, Fill out & add)

  5. Log out of the Onboarding Portal

User flow diagram for actions a Standard Account User can do for Organizations
User flow diagram for actions a Standard Account User can do for Organizations
User flow diagram for actions a Standard Account User can do for Organizations

Wireframes

Functional requirements

  1. CRUD (create, read, update, delete) functionality for Organizations

  2. Multiple ways to add Sites to an Organization

  3. Ability to build a "tree view" of Organization's hierarchy

  4. Supports drag-and-drop and keyboard accessible user actions

Wireframe - Organizations list and creation form

  • Navigates to the "Organizations" list view

  • Selects "Create" to open the "Basic details" section of the Organization

  • Selects "Next" or the icon to swap to the tree view of the Organization

Mid-fidelity design showing the Organization pages in the Portal
Mid-fidelity design showing the Organization pages in the Portal
Mid-fidelity design showing the Organization pages in the Portal

Wireframe v1 - Top-down tree hierarchy

  • First node (top-right) is created by default as the "Organization"

  • Select the "More" button on the node to add a segment

  • Define the segment (name and type), then repeat to build the hierarchy

  • Add sites (predefined in system) from the list in the right panel

Mid-fidelity design showing how to create a horizontal hierarchy in the Portal
Mid-fidelity design showing how to create a horizontal hierarchy in the Portal
Mid-fidelity design showing how to create a horizontal hierarchy in the Portal

Wireframe v2 - Left-right tree hierarchy

  • Nodes with no child segment have a prompt to "Add segment"

  • "Sites" side pane is floating rather than static

  • Hierarchy builds from left-to-right

Mid-fidelity design showing how to create a vertical hierarchy in the Portal
Mid-fidelity design showing how to create a vertical hierarchy in the Portal
Mid-fidelity design showing how to create a vertical hierarchy in the Portal

Wireframe decision

The left-right tree hierarchy allows better readability and maintains the visual hierarchy compared to the top-down tree, so I moved forward with the left-right approach.

Mid-fidelity design of the tree view for an Organization being built
Mid-fidelity design of the tree view for an Organization being built
Mid-fidelity design of the tree view for an Organization being built

Instead of the "Sites" side panel being floating or sticky, I created separate, sticky panes for both the "tree view" and "Sites" to better distinct them as separate entities and give balance to the UI.

Final designs

The final designs were designed and implemented with the Forge UI Design System, and were added as a new navigation page and feature in the Forge Onboarding Portal.

CRUD functionality for Organizations

  1. Create, read, update, or deactivate/delete Organizations

  2. Actions are found on both the list view and individual Organizations

High fidelity designs showing how to deactivate an Organization
High fidelity designs showing how to deactivate an Organization
High fidelity designs showing how to deactivate an Organization

Multiple ways to add Sites to an Organization

  1. Add Site from the Organization's list view through the data table

  2. Add Site through the Organization's tree view during creation or revision

High fidelity designs showing ways to add Sites to an organization
High fidelity designs showing ways to add Sites to an organization
High fidelity designs showing ways to add Sites to an organization

Build a "tree view" hierarchy

  1. Select "Add segment" to create one node at a time

  2. Move or delete segments to revise the tree while building

  3. Collapse segments and levels in the tree to consolidate the hierarchy

High fidelity designs showing how to add a segment to an organization's tree
High fidelity designs showing how to add a segment to an organization's tree
High fidelity designs showing how to add a segment to an organization's tree
High fidelity designs showing how to move a segment in an organization's tree
High fidelity designs showing how to move a segment in an organization's tree
High fidelity designs showing how to move a segment in an organization's tree

Supports drag-and-drop and keyboard actions

  1. Select an existing segment or Site to drag it to a new destination

  2. Use keyboard-friendly actions if the mouse is not available

High fidelity designs showing how to use drag and drop or keyboard functions
High fidelity designs showing how to use drag and drop or keyboard functions
High fidelity designs showing how to use drag and drop or keyboard functions

Prototypes for handoff

User flow: Global Admin User

Accessibility

Before handing the final designs off to my engineering team, I completed accessibility annotations in Figma to support correct keyboard functionality, labelling, and navigation.

Sample accessibility annotations

  1. Landmarks, heading levels, and labels for UI components

  2. Tab order with "Skip to main"

Organization management feature with accessibility annotations for landmarks, labels, and headings
Organization management feature with accessibility annotations for landmarks, labels, and headings
Organization management feature with accessibility annotations for landmarks, labels, and headings
Organization management feature with accessibility annotations for tab order
Organization management feature with accessibility annotations for tab order
Organization management feature with accessibility annotations for tab order
Organization management's tree view with accessibility annotations for landmarks, labels, and headings
Organization management's tree view with accessibility annotations for landmarks, labels, and headings
Organization management's tree view with accessibility annotations for landmarks, labels, and headings
Organization management's tree view feature with accessibility annotations for tab order
Organization management's tree view feature with accessibility annotations for tab order
Organization management's tree view feature with accessibility annotations for tab order

Conclusion

Impact

  • Enabled the Connected Buildings business unit to migrate from Microsoft Excel to the Onboarding Portal to create and manage Organizations.

  • Reduced time required to setup Organizations and improved data consistency across Forge applications—increasing business unit retention.

  • Designed for Section 508 (WCAG 2.1) accessibility compliance, making the feature usable for a broader range of users.

Outcome

The introduction of the Organization Management feature in the Forge Onboarding Portal successfully addressed the needs of the Connected Buildings business unit.

By streamlining data management and providing a UI solution to manage Organizations, we established a scalable framework for future enhancements within Honeywell Forge while ensuring compliance with Section 508.