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Organizational Units

An Organizational Unit (OU) is a logical grouping of devices that share the same security policy. By assigning templates to an OU, every device in that OU automatically inherits those templates’ snippets. Instead of configuring each device individually, you define policies at the OU level and any device placed in that OU gets the full set of rules.

A device can belong to multiple OUs simultaneously. When it does, it receives the combined set of snippets from all templates across all its OUs (see Policy Chain for how the final configuration is assembled).

Each organization also has a default OU that serves as a catch-all for newly approved devices that are not explicitly assigned elsewhere.

List Organizational Units

Terminal window
ndcli ou list
╭────────────────┬──────────────┬─────────┬───────────┬───────────┬──────────────────╮
│ Name           │ Organization │ Devices │ Templates │ Status    │ Created          │
├────────────────┼──────────────┼─────────┼───────────┼───────────┼──────────────────┤
│ branch-offices │ example-org  │ 3       │ 2         │ ● ENABLED │ 2026-02-20 19:16 │
│ default        │ example-org  │ 0       │ 0         │ ● ENABLED │ 2026-02-20 17:51 │
│ guest-networks │ example-org  │ 1       │ 2         │ ● ENABLED │ 2026-02-20 19:16 │
│ production     │ example-org  │ 2       │ 3         │ ● ENABLED │ 2026-02-20 19:16 │
│ staging        │ example-org  │ 1       │ 2         │ ● ENABLED │ 2026-02-20 19:16 │
╰────────────────┴──────────────┴─────────┴───────────┴───────────┴──────────────────╯

Describe an Organizational Unit

Terminal window
ndcli ou describe production
Name:         production
Organization: example-org
Status:       ENABLED
Description:  Core production firewalls protecting primary infrastructure
Created:      2026-02-20 19:16:50
Updated:      2026-02-20 19:19:06


Devices (2):
  • fw-hq-primary
  • fw-hq-secondary


Templates (3):
  • base-hardening (5 snippets)
  • corporate-services (4 snippets)
  • intrusion-prevention (3 snippets)

List Devices in an Organizational Unit

Terminal window
ndcli ou device-list production
╭─────────────────┬───────────┬────────────┬─────────┬───────────┬───────────╮
│ Name            │ Status    │ OU         │ Version │ Heartbeat │ Synced At │
├─────────────────┼───────────┼────────────┼─────────┼───────────┼───────────┤
│ fw-hq-primary   │ ● ENABLED │ production │ 2.4.1   │ 4m        │ 5m        │
│ fw-hq-secondary │ ● ENABLED │ production │ 2.4.1   │ 4m        │ 5m        │
╰─────────────────┴───────────┴────────────┴─────────┴───────────┴───────────╯