1What it is

Departments are optional: without them, everything works the classic way (a single set of tasks for the organization). As soon as you create the first department, the task system switches to “per area” mode: the Tasks menu shows the selector, and every area gets its own board, its own reviews, its own statistics.

Tasks that belong to no department live in the General area, visible only in the private chat: it has no groups, so no feed and no digest — it's the home of cross-cutting tasks.

2Creating and managing

From ⚙️ Management → 🗂 Departments: open to the staff or to whoever has the “Manage Departments” permission. With ➕ New department you give it a name (up to 60 characters); if the organization has connected groups, the bot opens the list of groups to assign to it right away. You choose the icon later with 😀 Emoji: a single emoji, flags and keycaps like 1️⃣ included, and 🗑 Remove goes back to the default icon. Up to 20 departments per organization.

In the department's card: ✏️ Rename, 😀 Emoji, 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Members, 🎭 Roles, 👥 Groups, 🎖 Managers, 🛡 Permissions, the “Receives Service desk requests” switch and 🗑 Delete. There's a shortcut from the inside as well, for whoever can manage departments: Tasks menu → the department → 🗂 Manage department.

3The department's groups

From the department → 👥 Groups you assign the connected groups with one tap: ✅ = in this department, ⬜ = free, 🔒 = taken by another one. Key rule: a group belongs to at most ONE department.

In a department's groups you only see that department's tasks: board, feed, digest and commands show exclusively its own.
Groups with no department = tasks and shifts off (in organizations that have at least one department): whoever types /newtask, /board or /shifts gets a notice only they can see, until an admin assigns the group. When you create the first department, its card lists the groups that had tasks switched on, with 👥 Assign the groups and 👌 Fine as is.
A department with no groups says so in its card: its tasks don't send alerts to groups (digest, task updates, reminders), and instead of 👥 Groups you find 👥 Assign a group. The private message to whoever gets a task still arrives.

4Managers and permissions

Inside a department, whoever creates, whoever works on and whoever manages can be different people.

Managers by person: with ➕ Add manager you appoint them from the member list (with search). Appointed managers are listed with a number in the text: you tap the number and confirm with ➖ Yes, remove (❌ Cancel goes back to the list). Removing someone only takes them off the appointed managers: if they also hold a manager role, they keep managing through it, and the confirmation says so. Whoever is appointed or removed gets a private message in the organization's language.
Managers by role: switch a custom role on and whoever holds it manages the department — whoever joins the role becomes a manager on their own, whoever loses it stops. The right route when the people in charge change often. The card shows them on the «🎭 Managers by role» line, and the “Managers: N” count in the department list adds appointed managers and role managers, counting each person once.
🛡 Permissions, two separate levers: 📝 Create tasks and 🔧 Work on tasks, each with three choices: all organization members, department members only, selected roles only. A new department starts with “create: selected roles only, none selected” (at first only staff, managers and enabled job titles create) and “work: all organization members”, meaning the whole organization, not just the people in the department. With “department members only”, the department's Members list also counts in its groups.

The staff always bypasses. Whoever created a task, and whoever is assigned to it, can always work on it. And whoever only has “Manage Departments” can't give themselves powers: they can't appoint themselves manager nor switch on a role they hold.

Department managers also use the group commands /assign, /unassign, /delete and /workload — but only in their own department's groups.

5Members and job titles

A department has real members, from 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Members: you add them one by one with the search, import them in one go from the department's groups with 📥 Import from groups, remove them when they change team. One person can be in several departments.

Membership does concrete work: it offers the right people when you assign shifts and tasks, filters the member list by department, opens the Library documents reserved to the department and, if you choose so in the permissions, decides who creates and works on tasks. A department with no Telegram group makes perfect sense: it exists and works inside the bot.

Job titles, from 🎭 Roles, are the department's internal roles — “Coordinator”, “Shift worker” — with local capabilities: create/work on/manage tasks, manage the department's requests, shifts or members. Up to 6 job titles per department, one per person, and they grant no power outside the department. With job titles nobody gives themselves powers (founders and admins aside): you can't assign yourself a job title or switch on a capability on your own. And whoever manages the department only through a job title with “manage members” can't hand out capabilities they don't have.

6What else they get

📮 Service desk: with “Receives Service desk requests” on, the requests addressed to the department are handled by its managers.
Shifts per department: each department has its own board.
Reserved documents: Library resources with 🗂 Selected departments visibility, seen only by the members and managers of those departments.
📊 Department stats: active by status, delays, average closing time, punctuality %, top performers and workload per member.
The department's ⚙️ Settings: feed in the groups (Important/All/Off), deadline alerts with the first-alert threshold, digest with frequency and time.

These stay with the whole organization: proposals, votes, forms and events.

7Numbering and deletion

Task numbers (#1, #2, …) are independent for each area: two departments can each have a task #1. When you quote a number in a group, it refers to that group's department. Numbers are never recycled.

Deleting a department (🗑 Delete → 🗑 Yes, delete) is irreversible: its tasks return to the General area (renumbered there) and its groups are detached. If the department has tasks, the bot first tells you how many; to whoever has “Export data” it offers the PDF export with 📄 Export the tasks first. The confirmation also lists, with numbers, what happens to the rest:

scheduled tasks move to the General area, paused: you switch them back on from 📅 Scheduled tasks;
shifts move to the General area's shifts, and whoever was on shift stays assigned;
open Service desk requests move to the general Service desk;
the department's members and job titles disappear with it (the people stay in the organization);
Library documents visible only to that department become “staff only”;
if at least one other department remains, the deleted department's groups stay without tasks or shifts until you assign them to another department.

Departments can't be reordered. A task can't change department from the buttons: the 🤖 Task AI assistant can move it, and the task gets a new number in the department it moves to.