# Organizations and projects

> Choose boundaries for your team, applications, and retained project data.

Use an organization for a team that shares membership and billing. Within it, projects separate the telemetry and configuration for applications or environments, including their credentials, saved views, investigations, Signals, simulations and integrations.

Choose separate organizations when access or billing needs independent ownership. Projects within an organization share its membership and roles.

## Create a project

Select the organization first. An owner or admin can open the project selector, choose **New project**, and complete **Create project**. Name the project for its application or environment so exporters and teammates can distinguish it from other targets.

Configure [ingestion credentials](/docs/platform/administration/api-keys-and-credentials.md) for that project before sending traces. The ingestion key determines where telemetry is stored; a span attribute cannot redirect it to another project. Integrations and Meta Agent connections are also configured per project.

For initial organization creation, follow [Set up your project](/docs/platform/set-up-your-project.md). To bring colleagues into an existing organization, use [Team and permissions](/docs/platform/administration/team-and-permissions.md).

## Retention and deletion

### Set trace retention

Open **Settings → Project settings → General → Trace retention**, choose a **Retention period**, and **Save changes**. **Reset to default** restores the default policy.

Shortening retention requires confirmation because older traces can be permanently deleted at the next cleanup. This policy controls how long traces are retained. To change what future traces contain, configure [capture controls](/docs/platform/reference/telemetry.md#control-captured-content) in the application.

### Delete a project

Stop exporters and integrations that still target the project. Stop any active simulation runs and wait for resource cleanup. If Radiant cannot confirm that a run has ended, follow the reported deadline waiting period before deleting the project.

An owner or admin opens **Settings → Project settings → General → Delete project** and confirms the named project. Deletion permanently removes its project data and remains blocked while simulation execution or cleanup is unresolved.

### Delete an organization

Only an owner can delete an organization. Delete its projects first and ensure any subscription has ended; a cancellation scheduled for period end is still active until then.

From the account menu, open **Organization settings → General → Delete organization** and review the confirmation. If you want to leave a team rather than delete its data, [leave or transfer ownership through Team settings](/docs/platform/administration/team-and-permissions.md#change-membership).