Creating departments

2023-09-21Last updated

Departments act as user access templates that allow the initial permissions for users and groups to be automatically applied to cases.

What you should know

Use departments to automatically define the access policy that users and groups within the department have to new cases only, not existing cases. If you add a new user or group to a department which is already assigned to existing cases, you must manually add the new user or group to each of these cases individually.
Example: Let us assume that the Loss Prevention Department is assigned to existing cases, Case A and Case B. A new user, Audrey Williams, enters the Loss Prevention Department, so you add her to the department. When you create Case C and assign the Loss Prevention Department to this case, Audrey automatically has access to the case; however, if you want Audrey to have access to Cases A and B, you must open each of these cases and add her as a user.

Procedure

  1. Click Configurations > Departments > .
    The departments page showing a list of existing departments.
  2. Click and enter a name for the department.
    If you have a department within your organization that handles thefts, you can call this department Loss Prevention.
  3. In the Permissions for new cases field, click and then select one of the following:
    Add existing groups or users
    Add users or groups whose accounts have been created and are current users of the system. If you are setting up your site and there are no current users or groups, you can save the department, create the user accounts or groups, and then add them to the department.
    Create a group
    Create a group that does not currently exist in the system. When you create a group, add the group's purpose or responsibility in the Role field. For example, in the Loss Prevention Department, you can create a group of users that handles the initial reporting phase of a case, and a group that manages the investigation phase.
  4. For each of the users or groups that you have added, use the Permission level field to define their respective permission level. You can choose one of the following levels:
    Manage
    Full access to a case or file. For cases, users can create cases, view and edit case details, download files, delete or restore files, share, and change access policies for the case. For files, users can view, edit, download, delete, restore, share, and change access policies for the file.
    Note: Guest users with Manage permission do not have full access. Access is restricted to sharing a case or file only.
    Edit
    For cases, users can create cases, view and edit the case details, and download files but cannot share cases with others or change the case access policies. For files, users can view, edit details, and download the files but cannot share cases with others or change the file access policies.
    View and download
    For cases, users can create cases and view the case information, and download files but cannot edit or share the case with others. For files, users can view and download files but cannot edit or share files.
    View only
    For cases, users can create cases and view the case information, but cannot edit or share the case with others. For files, users can only view files.
    Note: If delete or restore security policies are not active, any users with manage permission can delete or restore cases or files. If delete or restore security policies are active, only users with delete or restore permission can delete or restore cases or files if they have manage permission.
  5. Click Save.
    Note: At least one user or group must have manage permissions in a department. This ensures that cases are always accessible with full permissions by someone from the organization.
  6. (Optional) Click Disable to disable the department. Disabled departments are hidden from the department selection drop-down menu in the Case page. Existing cases that have the department assigned maintain it unless it is changed manually by a user with sufficient privileges.
Your department is created. For new cases assigned to this department, the users within this department will receive emails, notifying them that they have been assigned to a case.

Example

The following image shows an example of a department that consists of one user and two groups, each of which have been given different permission levels.
The Loss prevention department showing a list of members and the respective permission levels they are granted for new cases.

Watch this video to learn more. Click the Captions icon (CC) to turn on video captions in one of the available languages.