How to Set Up Your First Department in DeptOps

DeptOps is built around departments as the primary operating units of your organization. A clean first setup gives every person a home, every responsibility a department, and every piece of work a clear place to land.

What you will set up

• At least one department
• People in the directory, with roles and primary departments
• A few responsibilities with primary owners (and backups where needed)
• Optional first work items so My Work has something concrete to show

Create your first department

1. As an organization admin, open Departments from the app navigation.
2. Choose Add department.
3. Enter a clear Name, such as Operations, Facilities, or IT Support.
4. Leave Parent department as None (top level) unless you already need a subdepartment.
5. Save. Your plan shows how many departments you can create. Subdepartments count toward that limit.

Only organization admins create, edit, or archive departments. Department managers work within the departments they manage. Use Overview on a department to see people count, due and overdue work, and responsibility health for that unit.

Add people and assign roles

1. Open People. The directory is lightweight: add people before you invite them to sign in, or use Add & invite.
2. Choose Add person and enter Name, Email, and optional Title.
3. Set Primary department to the department you just created.
4. If you are an organization admin, optionally set a Direct Manager and Role (User, Department manager, or Organization admin).
5. Save. Then open the person and use Send invite when you are ready for them to sign in, unless you already used Add & invite.

Adding a person does not invite them automatically unless you choose Add & invite. Invite when you want that person to access DeptOps. Admins can also import people with a CSV of name, email, and title.

Create your first responsibilities

1. Open Responsibilities and choose Create responsibility (managers).
2. Enter a Name that describes an ongoing area of ownership, not a one-time task.
3. Select the Department and add a short Description of what the area covers.
4. Assign a Primary owner. Leave Unassigned only if you are still deciding.
5. Assign a Backup owner, or check Backup not required when a backup truly is not needed.
6. Optionally add Tags so you can find related responsibilities later.
7. Save, then open the responsibility to confirm ownership and health.

Responsibility health is Critical when the primary owner is missing or inactive, or when critical-priority linked work is overdue. It is Needs Attention when a required backup is missing or inactive, or when linked work is overdue (non-critical), blocked, or due soon. Rejected forms appear as separate Needs Attention items and do not change responsibility health by themselves.

Establish basic ownership with a little work

1. From Work, create a few concrete items tied to your new responsibilities.
2. Set Department, Due, Priority, and Assigned to person (or a department for team-owned work).
3. Under More options, link Related responsibility so ownership and execution stay connected.
4. Complete one item from My Work to confirm the loop from assignment to completion.

When the department, people, responsibilities, and a few work items are in place, DeptOps can show what the team owns, what needs to be done, and what needs attention.