This guide is for owners and admins who need to organize their team into departments and control which content is visible to which groups. Departments let you mirror your real organizational structure inside Simply Asking.
If you have not yet invited your team, complete the Inviting Your Team and Assigning Roles guide first.
By the end of this guide, you will have created departments that reflect your team structure, set appropriate visibility for each one, assigned members to departments, and uploaded department-specific content. Your team will see exactly the knowledge they need.
Click "Create Department"
Start building your department structure by creating your first department.
In the Departments section, click the Create Department button. A dialog will appear where you can configure your new department.
Name the Department
Give your department a clear, recognizable name that matches your real team structure.
Enter a name for the department. Use names that match your actual teams, such as Engineering, Sales, Legal, or Product. Optionally add a description to help members understand what this department covers and what kind of content belongs here.
Set Department Visibility
Choose whether this department's content is visible to everyone in the organization or only to its members.
Select Public if all org members should be able to search and find this department's content. Select Private if only explicitly added members should see the content. Click Create to finalize the department. You can change the visibility setting later if needed.
Add Members to the Department
Assign team members to the department so they can access its content and contribute knowledge.
Click on the department you just created to open its detail view. Click Add Members and select the team members who belong to this department. Confirm the selection. Members will immediately gain access to the department's content based on its visibility setting.
Upload Department-Specific Content
Add documents that belong to this department. Tag them during upload so they are associated with the right team.
Navigate to Upload and select documents relevant to this department. During upload, select the department tag to associate these documents with the correct department. Documents tagged with a private department will only be searchable by that department's members.
Verify Content Visibility
Confirm that department members see the right content by testing the experience.
Ask a department member to log in and search for content you uploaded to their department. Confirm they can find the department's documents in Search results. If using a private department, verify that a non-member cannot see the private content in their search results.