What is a TIMU network?
A TIMU network organizes content belonging to a single organization so that the organization can retain control over the things that are being done in TIMU. Organization administrators can take ownership of groups, archive users that should no longer have access, and configure SSO for their network so that people don't need to manage a separate password for TIMU. In other systems that you are familiar with, a network might be referred to as a tenant. One of the major differences between TIMU and other systems is that while TIMU networks do allow an organization control over the content within the network, they do not prevent people from collaborating with people from other networks, force people to switch between tenants to communicate across organizations, or require administrator involvement to enable cross organization groups or chats.

How are networks assigned?
‍When you sign up for TIMU, if you sign up using a free email service like gmail.com or hotmail.com you will be placed into a personal network. Otherwise, you will be placed into a non-personal network.

Personal networks
‍You are the administrator of your personal network by default. You may invite other administrators to your network, but you cannot be removed as an administrator of your personal network. Any teams or spaces that you create, and all the content within them will live within your personal network. Personal networks do not currently allow you to create groups that anyone in your organization can join, since you will always be the only person in your organization.

Non-personal networks
‍When you sign up using your work email address or an email address that is not associated with a free email service, you will be placed into a non-personal network. Any other people who sign up using the same domain, will also be placed into your network. This makes it easy to find each other, as you will be able to chat with anyone in your network without knowing additional details such as email addresses. All groups and spaces created by members of your network will live within the network. When creating a group, you may choose to allow any user who is a member of your network to find it. Groups created in this manner only be discoverable in the network directory by people who have the same email domain—however, you still can invite people from other organizations to any of your groups. There is no administrator of a non-personal network until a user claims the domain. This can be done in the settings page by anyone with access to the DNS records for the domain associated with your email address (for example, if you sign up with john.doe@timu.com then you will need to have access to modify the DNS records for the timu.com domain in order to become the first administrator).

Cross network communication
‍Whether you have a personal network or you are a member of a larger organization, you can communicate with people in other networks without needing to involve your IT department or switch between tenants in the user interface. This makes it easy to communicate with anyone else in the world.

Cross network groups
You can invite people outside your organization to your groups by sending them a link to the group, or typing their email address in the invite screen. Content within a cross network group will belong to the network of the person who originally created the group. Any spaces created in the group will show up in the spaces nav under the domain for that network.

Cross network direct messages
You can send a direct message to people outside your organization by typing their email address on the to line. If you are both members of the same group, you can also simply type their name in any invite dialog. Content from a cross network direct message will be split across the companies or organizations that the direct message has been sent to. If a user with an @timu.com email a user with an @microsoft.com email are having a direct message conversation, the timu.com organization will retain control over the messages sent by the user with the @timu.com address, while the microsoft.com organization will retain control over the messages sent by their users. By default, file attachments will also be stored in the network of the user who attaches the file.

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