Creating an organizational unit (OU) with Amazon Organizations - Amazon Organizations
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Creating an organizational unit (OU) with Amazon Organizations

When you sign in to your organization's management account, you can create an OU in your organization's root. OUs can be nested up to five levels deep. To create an OU, complete the following steps.

Important

If this organization is managed with Amazon Control Tower, then create your OUs with the Amazon Control Tower console or APIs. If you create the OU in Organizations, then that OU isn't registered with Amazon Control Tower. For more information, see Referring to Resources Outside of Amazon Control Tower in the Amazon Control Tower User Guide.

Minimum permissions

To create an OU within a root in your organization, you must have the following permissions:

  • organizations:DescribeOrganization – required only when using the Organizations console

  • organizations:CreateOrganizationalUnit

To create an OU

  1. Sign in to the Amazon Organizations console. You must sign in as an IAM user, assume an IAM role, or sign in as the root user (not recommended) in the organization’s management account.

  2. Navigate to the Amazon Web Services accounts page.

    The console displays the Root OU and its contents. The first time you visit the Root, the console displays all of your Amazon Web Services accounts in that top-level view. If you previously created OUs and moved accounts into them, the console shows only the top-level OUs and any accounts that you have not yet moved into an OU.

  3. (Optional) If you want to create an OU inside an existing OU, navigate to the child OU by choosing the name (not the check box) of the child OU, or by choosing the Gray cloud icon with an arrow pointing downward, indicating download or cloud storage. next to OUs in the tree view until you see the one you want, and then choosing its name.

  4. When you've selected the correct parent OU in the hierarchy, on the Actions menu, under Organizational Unit, choose Create new

  5. In the Create organizational unit dialog box, enter the name of the OU that you want to create.

  6. (Optional) Add one or more tags by choosing Add tag and then entering a key and an optional value. Leaving the value blank sets it to an empty string; it isn't null. You can attach up to 50 tags to an OU.

  7. Finally, choose Create organizational unit.

Your new OU appears inside the parent. You now can move accounts to this OU or attach policies to it.

To create an OU

The following code examples show how to use CreateOrganizationalUnit.

.NET
Amazon SDK for .NET
Note

There's more on GitHub. Find the complete example and learn how to set up and run in the Amazon Code Examples Repository. 

    using System;
    using System.Threading.Tasks;
    using Amazon.Organizations;
    using Amazon.Organizations.Model;

    /// <summary>
    /// Creates a new organizational unit in AWS Organizations.
    /// </summary>
    public class CreateOrganizationalUnit
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// Initializes an Organizations client object and then uses it to call
        /// the CreateOrganizationalUnit method. If the call succeeds, it
        /// displays information about the new organizational unit.
        /// </summary>
        public static async Task Main()
        {
            // Create the client object using the default account.
            IAmazonOrganizations client = new AmazonOrganizationsClient();

            var orgUnitName = "ProductDevelopmentUnit";

            var request = new CreateOrganizationalUnitRequest
            {
                Name = orgUnitName,
                ParentId = "r-0000",
            };

            var response = await client.CreateOrganizationalUnitAsync(request);

            if (response.HttpStatusCode == System.Net.HttpStatusCode.OK)
            {
                Console.WriteLine($"Successfully created organizational unit: {orgUnitName}.");
                Console.WriteLine($"Organizational unit {orgUnitName} Details");
                Console.WriteLine($"ARN: {response.OrganizationalUnit.Arn} Id: {response.OrganizationalUnit.Id}");
            }
            else
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Could not create new organizational unit.");
            }
        }
    }
CLI
Amazon CLI

To create an OU in a root or parent OU

The following example shows how to create an OU that is named AccountingOU:

aws organizations create-organizational-unit --parent-id r-examplerootid111 --name AccountingOU

The output includes an organizationalUnit object with details about the new OU:

{
        "OrganizationalUnit": {
                "Id": "ou-examplerootid111-exampleouid111",
                "Arn": "arn:aws:organizations::111111111111:ou/o-exampleorgid/ou-examplerootid111-exampleouid111",
                "Name": "AccountingOU"
        }
}