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Setting Up Departments

Group teams by department for better organisation.

Last updated April 2026

If you manage multiple teams, departments help you group them logically. This is especially useful for managers who oversee teams across different functions or for organisations with many teams in the system.

What Departments Do

A department is a label you can assign to a team. Teams with the same department name are grouped together in the sidebar, making navigation faster and more intuitive. For example, you might group your teams under "Engineering", "Design", or "Operations".

Departments are purely organisational - they do not affect permissions, data access, or how features work. They simply make it easier to find and switch between teams when you have several.

Adding a Department to a Team

Navigate to Teams and select the team you want to update.
Open the team settings or edit the team details.
Enter a department name. If the department already exists on another team, use the same name so they group together.
Save your changes. The team will now appear under that department heading in the sidebar.
Use consistent naming for departments. "Engineering" and "Eng" will be treated as separate departments. Decide on a naming convention and stick to it.

How Teams Group in the Sidebar

Once departments are set, the sidebar organises your teams under collapsible department headings. You can expand or collapse each department to focus on the teams you are currently working with. Teams without a department appear in a default group.

This grouping is visible only to you and does not affect how other users see their own teams.

Filtering by Department

When using the team filter throughout Manager Toolkit, you can filter by department to see aggregated data across all teams in that department. This is useful for getting a department-level view of catchup cadence, action completion, or sentiment trends.

Departments are optional. If you only manage one or two teams, you may not need them. They become most valuable when you have three or more teams and want a cleaner navigation experience.

When Departments Are Useful

Departments work best for:

  • Managers overseeing teams across multiple functions (for example, both a development team and a QA team)
  • Senior managers or directors with many direct-reporting teams
  • Organisations where multiple managers use Manager Toolkit and want consistent team categorisation

If your team structure changes, you can update or remove department labels at any time without affecting the underlying team data.

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