Create departments and choose message contacts

Help center / Your team

Open Departments from the sidebar or Business setup to group people by function. A department records membership and, separately, the people who should receive a message addressed to that department. It does not grant a new role or change a person's reporting manager.

1. Create a department with a unique name.
2. Add a short description of its purpose.
3. Select its members from the current business.
4. Choose designated contacts from those members.
5. Save and review the resulting membership and contact lists.

The public workspace is coming soon. The department directory workbook is available now for planning names, coverage and contact responsibilities.

Name a business department clearly

Use a name that colleagues recognize, such as Stockroom or Customer Support. Department names must be unique within the business. Similar names with unclear boundaries can make people choose the wrong message destination even when the records themselves are valid.

The description can explain what the group handles and when to use it. Keep that description concise enough to check during a handover. For example, distinguish the team that receives supplier deliveries from the person authorized to approve new purchasing commitments.

Add people to multiple departments

Select members from the business's existing people. A person can belong to more than one department, which is useful when a small team shares several functions. Adding membership does not create a new user account or duplicate the person.

Review the list when responsibilities change. A member may remain in one group while leaving another. Do not remove someone from the business merely to correct department membership; those are separate decisions with different effects on their access and assigned work.

Choose designated message recipients

Designated contacts must be selected from the department's members. Choose the people expected to receive and triage messages for that function. A business can have up to 100 departments, with up to 24 designated contacts in a department.

More recipients are not always more useful. Agree who takes the next action and how backup coverage works. The app records the destination audience, but it does not decide which contact is on duty, assign a rotating inbox owner or guarantee that someone will respond within a particular time.

Separate membership from access rights

A department is a grouping of people. It is not a permission role. Adding someone does not grant access to stock, sales, assets, private conversations or other business screens. Keep permission decisions in People and roles.

NIST's role-based access overview explains why roles and groups serve different purposes. In headoffis, a person's department, saved role and organization-chart connections should be reviewed as separate records. Similar labels across those records do not make their effects interchangeable.

Preview a department message audience

In Messages, select the department destination and inspect the named recipients before sending. The destination uses designated contacts rather than all members. A department with no designated contacts is not an available messaging destination.

All selected contacts must be active, have access to Messages and be reachable under the sender's communication rules. The app blocks an invalid destination rather than sending to an undisclosed subset. If the contacts change during preparation, review the updated audience before proceeding with the message.

Understand department conversation history

Each message request to a department starts a new private group. Its audience is fixed, and the conversation keeps the department name as it was when the group was created. Later edits to the department do not rewrite those earlier groups.

A newly designated contact does not automatically gain access to past private conversations. If they need context, review what is appropriate to share through a new conversation. See Messages and communication rules for participant limits, directional sending rules and the behavior of unavailable recipients.

Review inactive department members

Inactive people remain labeled in the directory so you can see that the record needs attention. Their presence should prompt a membership and contact review, especially if the person was the only destination for an important function.

Choose an eligible replacement contact before relying on the department for new requests. The directory does not automatically infer a successor from job titles or the organization chart. NIST's least-privilege guidance provides a useful principle for reviewing access separately when a person's responsibilities change.

Edit or delete a department

Update the saved record when the team's name, purpose or membership changes. Department editing requires team-management permission. Viewing the directory depends on the relevant screen access and team or role-management access; a visible name is not permission to modify it.

Deleting a department removes that grouping. It does not delete its people, revoke their business access or erase earlier private conversations. Before deleting, consider whether another department should handle future requests and update your team's instructions so colleagues know which destination to choose next.

Handle a stale department edit

If someone else saves a change while your editor is open, close the older draft and reopen the current record. Compare the saved contacts and members with the change you intended. Do not assume an earlier list should replace a colleague's more recent update.

Department data is separate from the operational JSON backup. Keep that distinction in mind when preparing a move or testing a restore. The backup instructions describe the scope of those files; restoring operational stock data is not a way to recreate the business's people structure.

Coming soon

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