Organization Configuration

Audience: Org Admin; System Admin while intentionally operating in a selected organization context
Related: Administration and Operations · Platform Configuration · Configuration Workspace · Organizations · Backups and Restore

This guide covers the ongoing and operationally significant areas under Administration → Configuration → Organization. It is task-oriented: what an organization administrator should review, when a setting is worth changing, what the setting affects, and which areas should normally remain stable once they are tuned.

Organization configuration applies to the Active Organization. An Org Admin works only within their organization. A System Admin should switch organization context deliberately before opening or changing Organization configuration; do not assume the Default organization represents another tenant.

This guide does not replace the deeper feature documentation. It focuses on administration decisions and safe operating habits rather than listing every implementation detail.

Before changing Organization configuration

1. Confirm the Active Organization shown in Blackcap before editing anything.
2. If you are a System Admin, be especially careful when the Active Organization is Default. Some Default-organization values are templates that can later be pushed to other organizations.
3. Understand whether the setting affects new data only or changes behavior immediately. For example, Default Recipe Layout applies to newly added recipes, while Inventory Expiring Soon Warning affects current warning state immediately.
4. Change one logical area at a time when troubleshooting.
5. Test the user-facing workflow after changes to authentication, meal slots, inventory behavior, rendering, menu capture, sharing, or backups.
6. Use Config Push/Pull for supported Default-organization domains rather than manually reproducing values in every organization.

Configuration changes are audited. Organization settings are tenant-owned and should not be treated as global platform defaults unless Blackcap explicitly supports that domain through Organization Configuration Sync.

What deserves recurring attention

Organization area	Typical cadence	Why it matters
Backup	Weekly/monthly and after cloud-account changes	Confirms automatic backups, destination, retention, and folder policy still match the organization’s recovery plan.
Cookbook Categories	As the recipe library grows	Keeps recipe organization useful without accumulating stale or overly deep category structures.
Household List	When shopping workflow changes	Controls whether the persistent household list participates in Admin/Mobile shopping flows and how aggressively external lists are refreshed.
Inventory	Monthly and after workflow changes	Defines whether Kitchen Inventory is automatic, whether package-level tracking is used, and when freshness warnings appear.
Login Providers	Quarterly and after authentication/user changes	Controls which platform-configured login providers the organization can use, allowed domains, linking policy, and internal-login MFA.
Meal Planner	When household schedule or planning behavior changes	Controls week start, people served, Meal Slots, slot Recipe Types, time windows/timezone, and display refresh coalescing.
Menu	When the source site or display result changes	Controls the organization’s menu URL and capture/OCR/render tuning.
Share	Periodically / branding or PDF changes	Controls sender display name and recipe PDF delivery format for the organization.

The following areas are usually tuning/change-management settings, not something to adjust on a calendar: General Rendering, Noun Project Footer, Recipe Info, and Recipe Rendering. Review them when displays, fonts, layout, readability, recipe metadata presentation, or organizational branding changes.

Understand Default-organization push versus local organization settings

Blackcap supports versioned configuration sync from the Default organization for selected domains. A normal push applies a newer Default value only when the target organization is behind and has not explicitly overridden that item.

Current pushable domains include:

• Login Providers;
• Rendering Settings — Menu rendering/processing values, General Rendering, and Recipe Rendering;
• Noun Project Footer;
• Noun Project Rules — organization-scoped rule data managed outside the generic Configuration page.

Not every Organization configuration area is a push domain. In particular, organization-specific values such as the Menu URL, Backup policy, Household List, Inventory policy, Meal Planner structure, Cookbook Categories, Recipe Info thresholds/colors, and Share identity/format settings should be treated as local organization choices unless Blackcap explicitly adds them to Configuration Sync.

For normal administration, preserve local overrides. Use Override in Config Push/Pull only when a System Admin intentionally wants to replace an organization’s reviewed choice.

See Organizations and the Config Push/Pull section of the Administration and Operations.

Configure Backup policy

Navigation: Administration → Configuration → Organization → Backup

The Backup configuration page controls the organization’s preferred destination and automatic-backup policy. The actual backup/restore workflow remains under Tools → Backups.

Review:

• Enable Automatic Backup — whether scheduled backup checks may create backups for the organization;
• Automatic Backup Frequency Days — minimum interval between automatic backups; 0 means every scheduled check is eligible;
• Automatic Backup Provider — Local, Dropbox, or Google Drive;
• Automatic Backups To Retain — newest automatic backup files retained before older automatic artifacts become eligible for cleanup;
• Preferred Provider — default destination selected for manual backup operations;
• Remote Folder — Dropbox/Google Drive destination path for the organization.

A cloud provider choice is useful only when the corresponding organization account connection is healthy. Do not treat a configured destination as proof that backups are succeeding. Review recent backup runs and, periodically, confirm that a usable restore path exists.

Healthy state: recent successful backups exist at the intended destination, automatic cadence matches recovery expectations, retention is large enough to provide useful recovery history, and no cloud-account reauthorization is pending.

See Backups and Restore.

Organize recipes with Cookbook Categories

Navigation: Administration → Configuration → Organization → Cookbook Categories

Cookbook Categories provide an organization-owned recipe hierarchy. A recipe can belong to multiple categories, and moving a category preserves its stable identity and recipe assignments.

Use this page to:

• add root or child categories;
• create a hierarchy up to 9 levels deep;
• drag/reorder categories or use the ↔️ move action for keyboard/touch workflows;
• rename/reorganize the hierarchy as the recipe library grows;
• remove recipe assignments from a category when cleaning up the taxonomy;
• delete a category only after its child categories and recipe assignments have been moved or removed.

Avoid creating a category for every minor attribute. Use categories for durable browsing concepts that users will actually navigate. Recipe Types, ingredients, ratings, and search already provide other ways to find recipes.

Healthy state: the hierarchy remains understandable, commonly used categories are easy to reach, duplicate/obsolete categories are cleaned up, and categories are not so deep that browsing becomes harder than search.

Configure the Household List

Navigation: Administration → Configuration → Organization → Household List

The Household List is the organization’s persistent shopping list that can participate in Shop a List workflows.

Review:

• Enable Household List — turns the organization feature on/off;
• External Sync Freshness — how recently an external shopping-list sync must have occurred before Blackcap suggests syncing again;
• Default Include in Admin Shop a List;
• Default Include in Mobile Shop a List.

Choose the external-sync freshness based on how often household members change external lists. Always ask is appropriate when stale external data would be costly; longer windows reduce prompts when the external list changes infrequently.

The two inclusion settings are defaults, not a requirement that every shopping session include the Household List.

See External and Household Shopping.

Choose the organization’s Kitchen Inventory policy

Navigation: Administration → Configuration → Organization → Inventory

Inventory configuration defines the level of automation and detail the organization expects from Kitchen Inventory.

Track Kitchen Inventory

Track Kitchen Inventory allows shopping and other indirect workflows to update Kitchen Inventory automatically. Turn it off only when the organization intentionally wants manual-only inventory management.

Inventory Tracking Detail

Choose:

• Full Inventory Tracking when the organization needs products/packages, quantities, Put Away behavior, and package-level freshness dates;
• On Hand Only when the organization only needs a simple on-hand/not-on-hand state and does not want package detail.

Changing the tracking mode changes what Blackcap asks users to maintain and what quantity/freshness context can be supplied to features such as Plan Meals.

Expiring Soon Warning

For Full Inventory Tracking, Expiring Soon Warning is the number of organization-local calendar days before a tracked package date when Blackcap marks it Expiring Soon. The default is 7 days.

Changing this threshold does not rewrite package dates; the warning state is derived using the current setting.

Healthy state: the selected tracking detail matches what users will realistically maintain, automatic tracking is not enabled when nobody completes Put Away/quantity workflows, and the warning horizon is useful rather than noisy.

See Kitchen Inventory.

Manage organization Login Providers and MFA

Navigation: Administration → Configuration → Organization → Login Providers

This page controls organization policy for login providers that have already been configured and enabled at the Platform level. An unavailable platform provider cannot be enabled by the organization.

For each provider, review:

• Enabled — allows that provider for this organization;
• Allowed Domains — optional comma-separated verified email domains permitted for provider login;
• Auto-link — links a trusted, verified provider email to an existing active Blackcap user with the same email; it does not create a user;
• Invite-only — requires an existing Blackcap user or valid invite before provider login succeeds and prevents open self-registration;
• Self-link — allows an already signed-in user to connect their own provider account.

The page also controls Require MFA for internal/password logins. External-provider logins do not receive a second Blackcap MFA challenge.

Review User MFA Status when the organization requires internal MFA. Authorized administrators can reset a user’s MFA enrollment when recovery is required; the user must enroll again if policy still requires MFA.

Healthy state: only intended providers are enabled, domain restrictions match organization identity policy, invite-only/self-link behavior is deliberate, and MFA requirements match how internal login is used.

See Authentication Providers and Users, Permissions, and Authentication.

Configure Meal Planner defaults and Meal Slots

Navigation: Administration → Configuration → Organization → Meal Planner

Meal Planner configuration is more than cosmetic. It influences calendar behavior, Plan Meals candidate selection, shopping-list date ranges, display scheduling, and how newly discovered recipes are typed.

Calendar defaults

Set:

• Week starts on — controls week view, month alignment, and default shopping-list date ranges;
• Default people served — default serving target used by Meal Planner when a date/slot does not override it.

Meal Slots

Meal Slots are organization-owned and ordered. For each slot, maintain:

• Name;
• Abbreviation;
• optional Start and End time;
• Recipe Type;
• shared Meal Slot timezone.

The Meal Slot Recipe Type matters to AI Plan Meals: it guides which existing Recipe Library candidates fit that slot and which Recipe Type Find & Add assigns when it creates a new recipe.

Optional start/end times are used by displays that have Auto-show Meal Planner Recipe enabled. The selected timezone is shared across Meal Slots; saving a slot synchronizes the stored timezone across the organization’s slots.

Keep slot names and Recipe Types semantically useful. If the organization adds a special slot such as Dessert or Snack, assign a Recipe Type that reflects how Plan Meals should search and classify recipes for it.

Display refresh delay

The organization’s Meal Planner display-refresh delay coalesces rapid planner changes before updating local e-ink hardware. A value of 0 requests immediate refresh; use that only when immediate display updates are more important than avoiding repeated e-ink refreshes.

Healthy state: the calendar matches the household/organization schedule, default people served is realistic, Meal Slots represent actual planning behavior, slot Recipe Types are intentional, timezone is consistent, and e-ink refreshes are not being triggered unnecessarily.

See Meal Planner.

Maintain the organization Menu source and capture tuning

Navigation: Administration → Configuration → Organization → Menu

Use Menu configuration only when the organization actually uses menu display/capture behavior.

Source

Menu URL is organization-specific and is intentionally excluded from Default-organization Rendering Settings sync. Changing it changes what Blackcap fetches and caches for the organization’s Menu display.

Page wait seconds controls how long Blackcap waits after loading the source page before capture/OCR. Increase it when the source renders slowly; avoid increasing it globally just to mask an unrelated network or source-site failure.

Image/OCR tuning

The organization can tune:

• contrast;
• sharpness;
• black/white image threshold;
• OCR scale;
• OCR threshold;
• image-difference threshold used to decide whether a refreshed capture changed meaningfully;
• Type K rendering mode for supported Waveshare hardware.

Change these values only with a real source/display problem to solve. Capture one variable at a time and compare the rendered result before continuing.

The Default organization can distribute the rendering/processing values through Rendering Settings config sync, but Menu URL remains local.

Tune General Rendering only when images are misaligned

Navigation: Administration → Configuration → Organization → General Rendering

General Rendering controls crop and content offsets shared by generated Menu and Meal Plan images:

• Crop Left;
• Crop Top;
• Crop Right;
• Body X Offset;
• Body Y Offset.

These are organization-level rendering corrections, not display hardware geometry. Display-specific resolution, panel type, rotation/capabilities, credentials, and linking belong on Display Details.

Use General Rendering when generated content consistently needs organization-wide crop/position adjustment. After changing it, inspect both Menu and Meal Plan output where those features are used.

These values are part of the Default organization’s Rendering Settings sync domain.

Tune Recipe Rendering carefully

Navigation: Administration → Configuration → Organization → Recipe Rendering

Recipe Rendering controls how recipe pages/cache artifacts are laid out and fitted, including:

• Default Recipe Layout — Full Width or Split Columns for newly added recipes; existing recipes are not changed;
• Split Column Ratio;
• outer/minimum margins;
• title, heading, body, and small-text starting sizes;
• minimum auto-fit font sizes;
• line spacing and section spacing;
• monochrome rendering threshold;
• optional normal/bold/emoji font paths.

The renderer can shrink typography within the configured minimums to fit content. Avoid raising minimum sizes so aggressively that long recipes can no longer fit cleanly.

Changing Recipe PDF/cache orientation is handled under Share, not here.

These values are part of the Default organization’s Rendering Settings config-sync domain. After significant changes, inspect recipes with both short and long ingredient/instruction content rather than validating only one easy recipe.

See Recipe Editing and Cache Artifacts.

Tune Recipe Info thresholds and colors

Navigation: Administration → Configuration → Organization → Recipe Info

Recipe Info controls the compact metadata pills shown on surfaces such as recipe cards, Meal Planner add tiles, and kiosk recipe search.

Two families are configurable:

• Total Time — green/yellow/red thresholds and colors;
• Cleanup — very-low/low/medium/high/very-high score thresholds and colors.

Treat these as organization presentation policy rather than data correction. Changing a threshold changes how existing recipe metadata is categorized visually; it does not rewrite a recipe’s underlying total-time or cleanup estimate.

Keep threshold ordering logical. If users can no longer distinguish quick/medium/long recipes or cleanup levels at a glance, review the thresholds and color contrast together.

Recipe Info is currently a local organization configuration area and is not part of the Default-organization Rendering Settings push domain.

Configure the Noun Project Footer

Navigation: Administration → Configuration → Organization → Noun Project Footer

The Noun Project Footer is shared by Menu and Meal Plan rendering. Configure:

• placement — Menu + Meal Plan, Menu only, Meal Plan only, or None;
• reserved footer height;
• icon and text vertical offsets;
• maximum icons;
• icon size;
• footer font path and font size.

These settings control layout/presentation. The organization’s actual Noun Project keyword/icon matching rules are managed separately and have their own Default-organization config-sync domain.

Footer settings themselves are also a supported Default-organization sync domain. When tuning the footer, validate both icon density and the remaining space available for the primary Menu/Meal Plan content.

See Noun Project Footer.

Configure organization Share behavior

Navigation: Administration → Configuration → Organization → Share

Share settings control organization-facing output details:

• From Name — display name used as the sender for recipe-sharing emails;
• Email PDF Page Size — Letter, A4, or Legal;
• Recipe PDF Orientation — Portrait or Landscape.

Changing PDF orientation creates a separate render variant and may require recipe cache artifacts to be rebuilt as users request/share them.

Choose page size/orientation based on the organization’s recipients and printing habits. The actual SMTP connection is Platform configuration; the organization’s From Name is only the display identity layered on top of that shared delivery capability.

See Recipe Sharing.

Areas related to organization administration but outside Organization Configuration

Several recurring organization-admin tasks intentionally live elsewhere:

• Noun Project Rules — organization-scoped rules, managed through their dedicated administration surface and included in Default-organization Config Push/Pull;
• Users, invites, roles, MFA recovery, and API tokens — Administration → Users / Security;
• Cloud backup account connections — configured through the backup/provider connection flow rather than by editing Backup policy fields alone;
• Displays — hardware/capabilities, display tokens, assignments, defaults, and display-specific behavior live under Displays;
• AI Usage — organization usage/spend/AI Seed review is on the AI Usage page; provider definitions and Quality Profiles are Platform AI administration;
• Organization profile/lifecycle — organization name, time zone/time format, lifecycle, primary admin, and related tenant management belong to Organization administration rather than generic Configuration.

This separation is intentional. Organization Configuration should express stable organization behavior and presentation, not become a catch-all for every organization-owned record.

Suggested organization review cadence

Weekly or when actively changing workflows

• Confirm automatic Backup runs are succeeding rather than only being enabled.
• If Menu is actively used, investigate source/capture problems when the rendered result changes unexpectedly.
• Review Household List/Inventory workflow settings when users report repeated prompts, missing Put Away behavior, or excessive freshness noise.

Monthly

• Review Backup destination/cadence/retention.
• Confirm Inventory tracking mode still matches how the organization actually maintains inventory.
• Review Meal Planner Meal Slots, Recipe Types, default people served, and timezone when household/planning patterns have changed.
• Clean up Cookbook Categories when the hierarchy is accumulating obsolete or duplicate structure.

Quarterly or after security changes

• Review enabled Login Providers, allowed domains, invite-only/auto-link/self-link policy, and internal-login MFA.
• Review Share sender/page format if branding or document expectations changed.

After display/layout changes

• Validate Menu, General Rendering, Recipe Rendering, Recipe Info, and Noun Project Footer only where affected.
• Run a focused functional/regression check when Default-organization Rendering Settings or Noun Project Footer changes are pushed to multiple organizations.

What good Organization configuration looks like

A healthy organization does not have every possible feature enabled. It has configuration that accurately reflects how its users actually work:

• backups run successfully to an intentional destination and retention policy;
• categories are useful rather than cluttered;
• Household List and Inventory automation match real user behavior;
• login providers and MFA are deliberate and current;
• Meal Slots, people served, Recipe Types, and timezone match the organization’s planning routine;
• Menu capture is stable if the feature is used;
• rendering settings are tuned once and then left alone unless the display/content changes;
• Share output identifies the organization correctly;
• local overrides are preserved when they are intentional, and Default-organization push is used only for domains meant to be centrally managed.

When users report a problem, start with the feature’s user-facing behavior and logs before changing unrelated configuration. A configuration page is not a maintenance checklist where every value needs periodic adjustment.