Choose an enterprise type
Before you start using GitHub Enterprise Cloud, you must choose a type of enterprise. You can allow people to use a personal account on GitHub.com to access your enterprise's resources and optionally configure additional SAML access restriction, or you can provision and control the accounts for your enterprise using your identity provider (IdP) with Enterprise Managed Users.
For help identifying the type of enterprise that will best meet your needs, see "Choosing an enterprise type for GitHub Enterprise Cloud."
Assign multiple owners
If an enterprise only has one owner, the enterprise's resources can become inaccessible if the owner is unreachable. To protect access to your resources, we recommend that at least two people within the enterprise have the owner role. For more information, see "Inviting people to manage your enterprise."
Use policies
We recommend using policies to enforce business rules and regulatory compliance.
Each enterprise policy controls the options available for a policy at the organization level. You can choose to not enforce a policy, which allows organization owners to configure the policy for the organization, or you can choose from a set of options to enforce for all organizations owned by your enterprise. For more information, see "About enterprise policies."
Minimize the number of organizations
Most businesses are best served by a single organization. Some enterprises may need multiple organizations for compliance or security reasons, but try to create as few as possible. A smaller number of organizations encourages innersource practice, allows discussions to involve a wider audience, and reduces administrative overhead.
For more guidance on how many organizations to create and how to structure them, see "Best practices for structuring organizations in your enterprise."
Avoid extensive collaboration in user-owned repositories
We recommend collaborating in organization-owned repositories whenever possible and minimizing collaboration in user-owned repositories. Organization-owned repositories have more sophisticated security and administrative features, and they remain accessible even as enterprise membership changes.
Use human-readable usernames
If you control the usernames for enterprise members, use human-readable usernames, and avoid machine-generated IDs that are difficult for humans to read.
You can manage the display of usernames within your enterprise's private repositories. For more information, see "Managing the display of member names in your organization."
Create a README
To help people understand what is happening in your enterprise, you should create a README. For example, you can use a README to help members learn about different organizations in the enterprise, to share links to important resources, or to communicate information about the settings and policies of your enterprise. For more information, see "Creating a README for an enterprise."