Divisions and Teams

Required · Organize your support team

Give your support organization a simple structure. A division groups a business area and its defaults and access scope. A team groups staff and provides a shared service schedule. Neither is the customer company or the queue holding unassigned work.

Before you begin

An administrator needs permission to administer divisions and teams. Agree which people provide support and when they work. Review existing records first: Northstar can reuse Customer Support and Support Team if those accurately describe its operation. A new trial does not need a complex hierarchy.

Review or create a division

1. Open Settings → Organization → Divisions. Open the appropriate existing division, or select New Division.
2. In Division Profile, enter a short Name, such as Customer Support, and a Description explaining its purpose.
3. Leave Parent division at the root for a single support operation. Use a child only when a distinct business area needs it. Core supports a root and its children; do not build an arbitrary hierarchy.
4. Review Display order and Active division. An inactive division is hidden from active choices, along with its children.
5. Open Defaults & Linking. Review the reply identity, knowledge community and asset categories. A default reply identity affects outgoing mail; it does not create an incoming email route. Do not retain asset access merely because a new form preselected categories.
6. Select Save Changes, reopen the record and confirm the saved profile and links.

Saved Customer Support division reused by the Northstar training example.

Division defaults and scope describes the individual settings. Moving or deactivating a division does not automatically move all its existing cases.

Review or create a team

1. Open Settings → Organization → Teams. Open Support Team, if appropriate, or select New Team.
2. Give it a clear Name and Description. Keep Parent team empty for a single team. Keep Active team on for a team that receives work.
3. Open the team’s SLA availability settings. Select the actual Timezone, Working days and Working hours. For example, Northstar may support customers Monday–Friday, 09:00–17:00 in its office timezone. These are example hours, not defaults.
4. Leave Enable off-day hours off unless there is real coverage on nonworking days. If enabled, fill Off-day hours deliberately.
5. Review Holiday schedule. The service-hours chapter explains how to create and assign one. Check the effective schedule if the team uses an account fallback.
6. Leave KB review group unchanged unless this team is part of an agreed article-review process.
7. Select Save Changes, reopen the team and confirm its saved schedule.

Saved Support Team profile reused for the Northstar example.

Saved team SLA Availability. Demo hours differ from the suggested training schedule; the effective holiday calendar is shown.

Team membership is set in Settings → Organization → Agents. Add primary and secondary team memberships there. Queue membership is a separate step. Teams and SLA availability explains the connection.

Verify and recover

Ask a representative agent to reopen a case form and check the intended division is available. If it is absent, check active state and the agent role’s division scope, then refresh the workspace. For a team, reopen its schedule and compare timezone and hours with the actual coverage agreement.

Do not rearrange an existing hierarchy casually: changing a team’s parent resets its direct children to root. If that was unintended, review each affected child and restore the agreed hierarchy through its editor.

If a save fails, check the required timezone, hours and name shown in the validation message. If an agent still cannot see cases after joining a team, inspect role and case access separately; team membership is not universal access.

Completion check

• The division and team have clear purposes.
• Existing suitable records were reused.
• The team’s hours and timezone match agreed coverage.
• You know where staff and queue memberships will be assigned.
• A representative agent can see the intended division.

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