Departments

Departments organise users into logical units that mirror your company's structure. A department is used for cost reporting and allocation, for controlling access to scan templates and other resources, for scoping the Department Manager role, and — when associated with a group — for granting permissions to everyone in the unit at once. Each user belongs to at most one department.

How Departments Work

Departments are a lightweight organisational layer that several other features build on:

• Reporting and cost allocation — print, copy, and scan activity can be reported and filtered per department, so costs can be attributed to the right organisational unit.

• Resource access — scan templates can be restricted so that only users in specific departments see them on the MFP panel.

• Permission inheritance through groups — a group's Departments tab associates whole departments with the group. Every user in those departments inherits the group's role, device operations, and access rights, without being added to the group individually.

• Department Manager scope — a user whose effective role is Department Manager can see jobs and reports for their own department only.

Departments can be created by hand on this page, or created automatically during user import — both Active Directory and CSV imports create any department that does not yet exist. Unlike user accounts, which are soft-deleted and excluded from counts, departments are removed permanently when deleted.

Navigating to Departments

1. In the left sidebar, expand Users and click Departments.

2. The department list displays all departments in a sortable, paginated data grid with the following columns:

Use the search bar to filter departments by name. Results update automatically as you type.

Screenshot: Departments management view

Creating a Department

1. Click the Add Department button in the page header.

2. In the creation dialog, enter the following:

3. Click Create to save the new department.

The department form holds a single field — the name. All other relationships (which users belong to it, which groups it is associated with) are configured elsewhere: on the user form and on the group's Departments tab respectively.

Editing a Department

1. In the department list, click the three-dot menu (⋮) on the row of the department you wish to modify.

2. Select Edit from the dropdown menu.

3. Update the Name field as needed.

4. Click Save to apply changes.

Deleting a Department

1. Click the three-dot menu (⋮) on the department's row.

2. Select Delete.

3. A confirmation dialog appears showing the department name. Click Delete to confirm, or Cancel to abort.

Note: Deleting a department is permanent. It does not delete the users that were assigned to it — those accounts simply have no department until they are reassigned — but you must clear the assignments before the department itself can be removed.

Bulk Operations on Departments

Each row includes a checkbox for multi-selection:

• Click the header checkbox to select or deselect all departments on the current page.

• When departments are selected, a Delete button appears in the page header with a count of selected items.

• Click Delete to open a bulk deletion confirmation dialog.

The same rule applies to bulk deletion: departments that still contain users are not removed.

Assigning Users to Departments

Users are assigned to departments through the user creation or editing dialog:

1. Navigate to Users and open the user you wish to assign.

2. In the user form, select a department from the Department dropdown.

3. Click Save to confirm the assignment.

A user can belong to only one department at a time. Changing the department replaces the previous assignment. Directory and CSV imports can also set the department automatically from a mapped attribute or column.

Department-Based Access Control

Departments play an important role in controlling access to resources within OptimiDoc:

• Scan templates can be restricted so that only users in specific departments see them on the MFP panel.

• Reports can be filtered by department to show printing, copying, and scanning statistics for specific organisational units.

• Department Managers (users whose effective role is Department Manager) can view jobs and reports for their own department only.

• Group inheritance — associating a department with a group on the group's Departments tab grants that group's permissions to every member of the department.

In Summary

• A department is an organisational unit; each user belongs to at most one.

• Departments drive reporting, scan template access, and the Department Manager scope, and can grant group permissions to all their members.

• They can be created manually or automatically during import.

• A department cannot be deleted while it still has users assigned.

Related articles

• Managing Users

• Groups

• Mass Operations