What's the Difference Between a Tenancy and a Cohort?
Tenancies are separate environments; cohorts are groups of users inside one. Here's how they differ and how they work together.
Tenancy and cohort are two of the most confused terms in Acorn, mostly because they sound like they could mean the same thing. They don't — they operate at different levels of the platform, and it's important not to mix them up. This article explains what each one is, how they relate to each other, and where each is used.
What is a Tenancy?
A tenancy is a completely separate organisational environment within the platform — think of it like a separate "account" or "portal" for a distinct organisation or business unit. Each tenancy has its own:
- Branding (logo, colour scheme)
- Users
- Content library
- Features, which can be turned on or off per tenancy
- Support contact information
- Settings (e.g. file size limits, password rules, locale/language)
- Email templates
Users belong to a tenancy, and everything they see and do is scoped to that tenancy. Nothing in one tenancy is shared with another — if two business units each have their own tenancy, they don't see each other's users or content.
What is a Cohort?
A cohort is a group of users inside one tenancy. Cohorts are used to target content, capabilities, reporting, and workflows at a subset of users, for example New Starters or Compliance 2026. A cohort always exists inside a single tenancy and always carries a tenancy ID — it can never span two.
How They Nest
Tenancies and cohorts sit at different levels of the platform. The tenancy is the outer environment; cohorts are the groups of users inside it. A user belongs to a tenancy and, within it, can be a member of one or more cohorts.
A user can belong to multiple tenancies through a tenancy swap — this lets them switch between organisational environments without needing separate accounts. What a tenancy swap cannot do is let a cohort span two tenancies — a cohort belongs to exactly one tenancy at all times.
Side by Side
Here's how a tenancy and a cohort differ across the areas admins ask about most.
| Tenancy | Cohort | |
| Level | A whole organisation or business unit; its own environment | A sub-group of users inside one tenancy |
| Purpose | Separate branding, users, content, features, settings, and email templates | Group users for content, capabilities, reporting, and workflows |
| Users | Users belong to a tenancy; everything they see is scoped to it | Users are members of one or more cohorts |
| Features | Turned on or off per tenancy (e.g. face to face, image library) | Not applicable; features are never set per cohort |
| Membership | Set at account creation, or switched via a tenancy swap | Manual, dynamic by profile field, supervisor based, or self join |
|
Admin Role |
Tenancy admin: full control of that environment | Cohort manager: members and reporting for their own cohorts only |
|
Shareable? |
Fully separate; nothing crosses between tenancies | Cannot be shared across tenancies |
Four Ways Into a Cohort
Users can end up in a cohort in one of four ways:
- Manually. An admin or cohort manager adds the user directly.
- Dynamically, by profile field. Users are added or removed automatically based on profile data such as department or job title, on a scheduled recalculation.
- By supervisor assignment. Users who supervise others are placed into supervisor type cohorts automatically.
- Self join. If enabled, users can request to join the cohort themselves.
What Cohorts Are Used For
Once users are grouped into a cohort, that cohort can be used to:
- Restrict content. Only members of chosen cohorts can see certain content.
- Assign at scale. Push learning content or capabilities to a whole group at once.
- Scope reporting. A reporting officer can be limited to specific cohorts.
- Drive workflows. For example, a cohort manager approving face to face registrations.
Worth Knowing
Scope. A tenancy is platform-wide separation; a cohort is a sub-group of users within one tenancy. You can't share a cohort across tenancies.
Features are tenancy level only. Product features such as face to face training or capability assessments are enabled per tenancy, never per cohort. New tenancies start with face to face and the image library turned on, plus a default colour scheme.
Cohort managers have narrow rights. Cohort managers manage members and view reporting only for their own cohorts. Anything outside those cohorts is invisible to them.
Two separate content controls. Tenancy level visibility decides which environment holds the content. Cohort restrictions then decide which groups inside that tenancy can see it.
Deleted cohorts soft delete. A deleted cohort stays attached to the content restrictions it was part of, on purpose, so admins can still see which cohorts were restricting what.