How to set up departments

A department is a team inside your workspace. Settings › Departments describes them as "Teams inside this workspace", each with a chat category and a roster, and it is where they are built, changed and retired.

Get these right first. Most permissions in Tideswell are checked against the department a piece of work belongs to, so departments are the shape everything else takes.

Before you start

Settings sits at the foot of the menu, and only admins see it. The department actions have their own rows in Settings › Permissions: Create departments, Edit departments, Archive departments and Permanently delete departments, all starting at admin.

How do you create one?

Press New department. One dialog sets it up completely.

1. Type a Name, for example Marketing or Warehouse.
2. Fill in What this team plans (see below), or leave it blank.
3. Pick one of the five swatches under Color, and an Icon.
4. Under Team members, pick each person on the team. Tap Lead beside anybody who should lead it.
5. Under Subtask templates, add the subtasks this team's planned items should create (see below).
6. Press Create department.

Fill in the team now rather than creating an empty department. The roster and the leads are what make the department useful the moment somebody opens it.

How do you change one later?

Press Edit on its row. The dialog holds Name, What this team plans, Color and Icon, with Save, and the Subtask templates section with its own Save.

To change who is on the team, or who leads it, go to Settings › Members and use the Departments button in each person's row. See How to add people and set roles.

How many should you have?

As many as you have real teams, and no more.

The test is whether the group has work that is genuinely theirs and somebody accountable for it. Marketing, Production and Warehouse are departments. "Everyone who touches the autumn drop" is a campaign, per How to set up a campaign.

Too many departments makes permissions fiddly and puts a long list in the menu. Too few means everybody can edit everybody's work.

What is "What this team plans"?

The singular word this team uses for a planned item, such as Editorial, Prep or Visit. The plural is worked out for you, and a blank box means "Item".

That word appears on the team's projects, so a warehouse team can plan Preps while a content team plans Editorials. It can be up to 40 characters. See How to plan what goes out and when.

What are subtask templates?

Rules that fill in the subtasks created when one of this team's planned items becomes a task.

Press Add subtask template and pick a type from How to set up the kinds of work your team does, or choose Custom subtask… and type a name. Each row then takes:

• a number of days from the planned item's date, where -2 means two days before it;
• a priority, from Urgent, High, Medium, Low or No priority;
• an assignee, chosen from anybody active in the workspace.

So "every Blog Post goes to Dana, due three days after the planned date" is set once and used every time. When somebody presses Promote on a planned item, the Promote to task dialog turns each type it is tagged with into a subtask filled in from its template, and offers the team's other templates unticked.

A new department starts with no templates, and its projects offer only the sub-task types applied to it.

How do you archive a department?

Make sure the team is finished before you archive it: an archived department cannot be brought back.

Press Archive on its row and confirm. For a department named Marketing, the message reads "Archive Marketing? Its chat category is hidden but history is kept."

The department leaves the menu and the department pickers, and takes no new members. Its history stays. In Settings › Departments it stays on the list, dimmed, with an Archived badge and a Delete button.

How do you delete a department?

Make sure before you delete one, because a deleted department cannot be brought back. Press Delete on its row; for a department named Marketing, the dialog is titled "Delete Marketing?".

• If it still holds work. The dialog lists its projects, tasks and recurring tasks, archived ones included. Choose the department that takes them over from Move the work to…. Nothing in that list is deleted.
• If there is no other active department. The dialog says "There is no other department to move the work to. Create one first."
• If purchase orders or records still point at it. The dialog says the department "can't be deleted yet" and names them. Move those to another department first, then come back.

Under Deleted with it, not moved:, the dialog lists what goes with the department: people's membership of it, its subtask templates and any unused invite links. Press Delete permanently to finish.

Where are archived projects?

At the foot of Settings › Departments, under Archived projects. Each one shows its department, a Restore button that puts it back with its tasks, and a Delete button.

See How to archive, restore or delete a project.

What does a department scope?

Its own task list, board and calendar. Its projects. Its chat category. Its planning word and subtask templates.

Most importantly, it scopes who can do what to its work. A lead of Marketing is not a lead of Warehouse, which is the thing to explain to everybody once. See How to work out who can do what in your workspace.