Departments

MembersUpdated July 15, 2026

Structure your organization into departments, delegate day-to-day member management to department admins, and control which roles a department can assign.


On this page

Departments are the structural units of your organization: Field, Communications, Finance, or whatever shape your work takes. They let you group members, hand day-to-day management of each group to a department admin, and bound what those admins can do — all without giving anyone workspace-wide admin access.

You'll find them in your workspace under Access → Departments.

Creating and managing departments

Workspace owners and admins (or a custom role with the Create, edit, and delete departments permission) manage the department structure from the Departments page:

  • Create a department by typing a name in the New department card.
  • Rename a department or edit its description from the row menu (⋯ → Edit). The description appears next to the name in the list and as the subtitle inside the department.
  • Reorder departments with the up and down arrows on each row. The order you set here is the order everyone sees.
  • Delete a department from the row menu (⋯ → Delete). Members of the department stay in your organization and keep their org roles — they just lose the department membership. Teams that belonged to the department become workspace-level teams. Deleting cannot be undone.

Click anywhere on a department's row to open it.

Adding and removing members

Inside a department, use Add member... to search your active org members by name or email address and add them with a click. Anyone already in the department won't appear in the search. Remove a member with the Remove button on their row; removal only affects the department, never their org membership.

Members can belong to any number of departments.

Department admins

A department admin manages their own department without needing any workspace-level role. To appoint one, open the department as a workspace admin and click Make admin on a member's row (demote with Make member).

Department admins can:

  • Add plain members to their department and remove them
  • Assign org roles to their department's members, within the department's allowed set (see below)

They cannot promote or demote other department admins, change the department's name or structure, or touch other departments. Members who administer at least one department see those departments listed under Access → Departments even without any broader permission.

Roles a department can assign

Each department has an allowed set of org roles — a ceiling on what its admins can hand out. Workspace admins configure it in the Roles this department can assign card inside the department.

The rules:

  • Member is the floor: department admins can always set someone back to plain member.
  • Custom roles appear in the picker only if you check them into the department's allowed set.
  • Owner and admin can never be delegated, and a department admin can never change someone who is currently an owner or admin.
  • A department admin can't change a member whose current role was granted from outside the department's allowed set, and can't change their own role.

This makes delegation safe by construction: a Field department whose allowed set contains only the "Field Coordinator" custom role can promote its members to Field Coordinator and back to member — nothing else.

Who can do what

ActionWho
View all departmentsWorkspace admins, or custom roles with View departments or Create, edit, and delete departments
Create, edit, reorder, delete departmentsWorkspace admins, or custom roles with Create, edit, and delete departments
Add and remove department membersWorkspace admins, that department's admins, or custom roles with Add and remove department members
Appoint and remove department adminsWorkspace admins, or custom roles with Appoint and remove department admins
Assign org roles within the allowed setWorkspace admins and that department's admins
Configure the allowed-roles setWorkspace admins, or custom roles with Create, edit, and delete departments

The custom-role permissions above live under the Access group when you edit a role.

All department changes — structure edits, membership changes, admin appointments, and role assignments — are recorded in your organization's audit log.