Departments represent the various groups in your organization. They provide a way of organizing system content so that KANA Response users have access only to the parts of the KANA Response system that are relevant to them.
Departments enable you to address the needs of multiple divisions within a single organization. Each department represents a different set of:
Users
Queues
Categories
Address book entries
Standard phrases
Rules and rule groups
These items make up the department's content.
You can use departments to:
Organize system content so that users see only the information that is relevant to their jobs
Set up system content so that all users can see all information, but only users in certain departments can make changes
Group content, users, and queues to help you manage and route incoming messages more easily
KANA Response has at least one department, called Root, unless you change the default name. You can set up a fully-functional KANA Response system with only this department. However, you can choose to create additional departments as needed.
You can assign each category and user to multiple departments. You can assign each queue, rule, rule group, standard phrase, and address book entry to only one department. The number of departments that you can create is determined by your KANA Response license certificate.
You can also create departments within a department to create a hierarchy. You can refer to the original department as the parent and the sub-departments its children. A series of parent and child departments is called a branch.
Each subdepartment must have a unique name within its parent department.
Every user has a home department, but users can also be assigned to additional departments. The departments to which a user belongs help determine which parts of the system the user can see and edit. Roles also help determine what the user can see and edit. See About users roles for more information about roles.
Users assigned to departments higher in the hierarchy can view the content in those departments and their child departments. Therefore, these users can see and edit more parts of the system than users assigned to departments lower in the hierarchy.
The primary purpose of departments is to organize information so that users can efficiently perform their jobs. The purpose of departments is not to secure the content. In fact, users can indirectly access content from departments to which they are not assigned. For example, an agent can display the customer's history, which would include references to content from different departments.
Content Administration users can see the following department items:
Items in departments to which the user belongs
Items in the children of the departments to which the user belongs
Items in departments along the branches connecting the root department to the departments to which they belong
However, Content Administration users can only edit items in departments to which they belong and in the children of those departments.
Find results are only affected by department assignment if you select the Enforce departmental constraints in searches option under Workflow Settings. If you select this option, agents and content managers must use the Owned by option in the Find Messages window, which restricts the Find results to those messages that are owned by departments that are visible to the user.
You can hide a department by setting the Hide contents option in the Department window. In the default department (Root), you can view everything, including the hidden departments and their sub departments, and all the associated content or queues.
You can view what is below you in the department tree and you can also view what is directly above you in the department tree. So, if your parent department is hidden, it doesn't affect you; you can still view other components, such as users, queues, or categories.
The concept of hidden departments is as follows: if the hidden departments are not in your parent tree, then only the department is visible but not the details of the department.
For most businesses, it makes sense to hide just a few of the high-level departments, such as Finance and Human Resources.
Users who are assigned the role of Response Administrator can edit all aspects of all departments and their contents.
Users who meet the following requirements can create and edit a department's categories, standard phrases, and address book entries:
They are assigned to the department or one of its parent departments.
They are assigned the Content Manager, Workflow Manager, or Response Administrator role.
Users who meet the following requirements can create and edit a department's information, rules, users, and queues:
They are assigned to the department or one of its parent departments.
They are assigned the Workflow Manager or Response Administrator role.