Departments¶

Departments extend SeaTable's group concept with a hierarchical structure. They allow you to map your organization's structure (e.g. divisions, teams, units) directly into SeaTable.

How departments differ from groups¶

When a user is added to a sub-department, they automatically become a member of all parent departments above it.

Disable departments¶

Departments are enabled by default. If you don't want to use departments, set the following in dtable_web_settings.py:

ENABLE_ADDRESSBOOK_V2 = False

Changes to dtable_web_settings.py require a restart of SeaTable.

Manage departments¶

Once enabled, departments are managed in the admin areas:

• The system admin creates and manages departments under System Admin > Departments.
• In multi-tenant setups, team admins manage the departments of their own team under Team Admin > Departments (see ENABLE_ORG_DEPARTMENT below).

Departments can be nested to any depth. Each department member is either a Default member or an Admin. Department admins can manage the members of their department and of all its sub-departments.

Departments can also be populated automatically from an LDAP or Active Directory server, see SYNC_GROUP_AS_DEPARTMENT.

Additional settings¶

The following settings are optional. The values shown are the defaults in SeaTable 6.2.

Enable departments within teams¶

ENABLE_ORG_DEPARTMENT = True

If you use teams/organizations, this setting allows team admins to create and manage departments within their team. Set it to False to restrict department management to the system admin.

Let users browse the bases of department members¶

ENABLE_DEPARTMENT_ADMIN_MANAGE_MEMBER_BASES = False

If enabled, a Departments entry is added to the navigation of every user. There, users can browse the departments they belong to, including sub-departments and their members. Users in a parent department can also open the bases owned by members of its sub-departments with read-only permission.