Departments and access

In SquadOS, each person’s access comes from two sources that add up:

• Departments — groups of people. Everything a department can access applies to whoever belongs to it.
• Individual access — permissions given to one specific person, on their profile.

You don’t need departments to get started: invitations and individual access work without them. Create a department when you want to give a group the same access at once.

Where departments live

Open Settings → Users → Departments. The tab appears for the owner and for anyone with the Manage people, departments and access permission, once the organization has more than one person or a sent invitation.

The list starts empty and shows, for each department, its Name, how many People it has and how many Pending invitations include it.

Create a department

1. Click Create department.
2. Give it a name and save. The name is required, up to 100 characters, and can’t repeat the name of another active department.
3. The department then opens, with the People and Permissions tabs.

Changes in both tabs are saved together with the Save button.

People

Under People in the department, search for and tick who belongs to the group. Whoever leaves the department loses only the access that came from it; individual access and access from other departments stay.

Below it, Pending invitations lists the invitations that already include this department. The person joins it on accepting the invitation.

Permissions

The Permissions tab has two parts.

General permissions apply to the whole organization, not to one item:

Group	Permissions
Create	Create agents, Create bases, Create shared folders, Create rooms, Create inboxes
Automations and email	Manage automations, Use commands, Manage emails
Contacts	View contacts, Manage contacts
Reports	Access reports
Tools	View tools, Manage tools and connections
Administration	Manage people, departments and access, Configure the organization, Configure payment

Resources define access to items. Each area has its own actions, and each action is an independent box:

Area	Actions
Agents	Use, Edit, Delete
Knowledge bases	View, Edit, Delete
Shared folders	View, Edit, Delete
Inboxes	View, Reply, Manage
Rooms	Participate, Manage, Delete
External and scheduled meetings	Participate, Organize, View transcripts

In each area, the first row is All — current and future (for example, All agents — current and future). Ticking an action on that row applies to the items that exist today and to the ones created later.

To pick specific items, use Add in the area (for example, Add agents), search this organization’s items and tick the actions in the table. Select all results adds the items the search found at once — only the ones that exist now, not future ones. The box at the top of each column applies the action to every listed item.

A closed area shows a summary, such as Use: all, Edit: 3 or No access.

Use is not Edit

Use on an agent lets a person chat with it, but doesn’t open its configuration, prompt or bases. To change the agent, the person needs Edit.

Individual access on a person’s profile

On the Users tab, open someone’s profile with Edit. Besides the name and email, the profile shows:

• Departments — which departments the person belongs to. Use Add to a department or the remove button next to each one. Without a department, the person has basic participation and individual access.
• Access — the same General permissions and Resources editor. The boxes are the person’s individual access. What comes from a department is written next to it, such as Received from Sales, and only changes in the department itself.

The owner has all access through ownership, and this screen doesn’t change that. Anyone with Manage people, departments and access is shown as someone who manages access: they can grant permissions to others, but they are not the owner.

Whoever manages access can change their own access

Manage people, departments and access lets a person invite, remove and move people and change permissions, including their own. Give this permission only to people who should run the organization.

Access from an item

You can also see and change access from the item itself:

• Agent — open the agent and use the Agent Access tab. See Agent Access.
• Knowledge base and inbox — use Access in the item’s menu.
• Room — choose the participating people and departments in the room settings. See Rooms and direct messages.

An item’s table shows the departments and people with access to it. It is the same permission shown in the department and on the person’s profile: changing it in one place changes it in the others. Anyone who gets access through a broad permission, such as All agents — current and future, appears under Who already has access through a broad permission.

Archive a department

Inside the department, use Archive department. The confirmation shows how many people, pending invitations and permissions stop applying. Accounts, resources and history are not deleted.

When two people edit at the same time

If someone else changes the same access while you’re editing, SquadOS tells you there was a change, reloads the screen with what changed and keeps what you ticked. Review it and save again.

Quick troubleshooting

• The Departments tab doesn’t appear: your account doesn’t have Manage people, departments and access, or the organization still has only one person. Invite someone or ask the owner for the permission.
• A person can’t see an agent: check on their profile whether Use comes from a department or from individual access. Without either source, they have no access.
• A person lost access after leaving a department: that’s expected. Give the access individually or add the person to another department that has it.
• A new item doesn’t show up for the department: the department only gets future items on the All — current and future row. Items picked one by one don’t include the ones created later.