How to Create and Manage Departments and Groups

Overview

This article walks through creating departments and groups, and the settings you configure at each level. Every group belongs to a department — there is no way to create a standalone group.

Before you start, read Understanding Department and Group Configuration. It covers whether your institution should use narrow departments with one or two groups each, or broad departments holding several. That decision shapes how you work through the steps below.

At a Glance

Who can do this: Institution Administrator · ConexED Administrator
Where: Dept & Group Manager → Manage Departments
Prerequisites: A decision about your department structure — narrow or broad. Assigning someone as a Group Manager requires Department Director or above.

Steps

Create a department

Go to Dept & Group Manager → Manage Departments.
Select + Add Department.
Enter a Department Title and choose the Institution. Both are required. Department Code is optional.
Select Add to save.

Institution Administrators and below have Integration filled in automatically. ConexED Administrators see it as a selectable dropdown.

Add groups to a department

Open the department you just created, or an existing one.
Select + Add Group.
Enter a Group Title. This is the only required field.
Select Add to save.

The group is now nested under this department and cannot exist independently.

Assign admins

Department-level admins automatically gain admin access to every group inside that department, so assign them carefully. See Understanding Department and Group Configuration for why this matters.

Group-level admins — the Group Manager role — are assigned individually within each group, in addition to whatever access flows down from the department.

Please note: Assigning someone as a Group Manager requires Department Director or above. A Group Manager cannot grant that role to someone else.

Delete a department or group

Please note: Deleting requires typing delete — lowercase, exact match — into a confirmation field before the Yes button becomes active. This is intentional, and there is no undo once confirmed.

To remove a department and its data completely, delete each group individually first, then delete the empty department. See Things to Know below for what happens if you delete the department directly.

Things to Know

Deleting a department does not clean up everything inside it. It removes the department record, its groups, and their member and admin associations — but it leaves orphaned data behind: student contact records, conversations, intake form submissions, notification history, cohort associations, drip campaign triggers, early alert forms, milestones, and kiosk and queue monitor data. Deleting each group individually first cleans up that data properly and shows you exactly what will be removed.

A new group in a kiosk-linked department becomes visible immediately. If a kiosk linked to the department is configured to include all of its groups automatically, a newly added group appears at the kiosk before its own settings, intake forms, or reason codes exist. Configure a new group as soon as possible after creating it.

Adding a group to a broad department extends existing admin access. Anyone with admin access to that department automatically gains admin access to the new group.

Group settings do not carry over from the department. Each group needs its own configuration for display and scheduling options, intake forms including appointment intake and reason codes, locations, and kiosk and queue setup where applicable.

A department with one group scopes a supervisor tightly. To give a supervisor oversight of exactly one service area, create a department, add a single group under it, and assign them as the department admin.

Next Steps

Understanding Department and Group Configuration
Configure group-level settings — see the setup articles for intake forms, locations, and kiosk and queue configuration