Managing Departments in your Help Desk

Managing Departments in your Help Desk

Departments are the various business divisions within your organization. They can be categorized based on your products, geographical locations or teams. Zoho Desk enables you to create departments and manage customer support individually for each of your divisions within your organization. Each department can have its own agents, mail boxes, live chat agents, community forums, web forms and social media channels. Besides these, you can set automation, service agreements, business hours, etc., specific to the departments. This allows you to customize a support process independent of your other departments. 

You can also create departments for private purposes that can be used for internal ticket management. Your customers cannot access such private departments in their Help Center.

Adding Departments

You can add multiple departments according to your business requirements. The Professional plan allows you to add a maximum of 10 departments (inc. private departments). However, you can override this limit when you subscribe to Enterprise.
To add a department:
  1. Click the Setup icon (  ) in the top bar.
  2. In the Setup Landing page, click Departments under General.
  3. In Department Lists page, click New Department in the upper right corner.
  4. In the Add Department page, enter the following details:
    • Department Name: Provide a name for this department
    • Display Name in Help Center: Enter the name as it should appear for your customers in the Help Center
    • Logo: Browse and select a logo for the department. The logo is used to identify the department in the Help Center
    • Display in Help Center: Uncheck this option to add a private department
    • Associate Agents: Add agents to handle the tickets received in this department
    • Description: Enter the description for the department
  5. Click Configure Channels.



Now that you've added a new department, you must configure the support channels for it. You can continue to configure the channels in the following screen or come back to it later. 

Editing Departments

You can edit the departments you have in added in Zoho Desk. For example, you can choose to mark a public department as private if needed.
To edit a department: 
  1. Click the Setup icon (  ) in the top bar.
  2. In the Setup Landing page, click Departments under General.
  3. In the Department Lists page, click the Edit icon (  ) displayed alongside the name of a department.
  4. Perform the necessary changes. You can click Change logo to browse and select a new logo for the department.
  5. Click Save.

Disabling Departments

If required, the Administrator can disable the departments based on the business needs. When you disable a department, all the Tickets, Articles, Contracts, Products, Activities, Workflows and SLAs associated with it cannot be accessed. Also, web forms that were created for the department need be re-generated. 

Note:
  • When you disable a department, you must transfer the agents and the support mail boxes associated with it to an active department.
  • You can only disable the departments and cannot delete them.

To disable a department:
  1. Click the Setup icon (  ) in the top bar.
  2. In the Setup Landing page, click Departments under General.
  3. In the Department Lists page, hover the mouse pointer over a department you want to disable. 
  4. Click on the toggle to disable the department.
  5. Specify an active department from the drop menu to transfer the agents and the support mail box.
  6. Click Transfer and Disable.

Enabling Departments

You can enable a previously disabled department in Zoho Desk. To enable a department:
  1. Click the Setup icon (  ) in the top bar.
  2. In the Setup Landing page, click Departments under General.
  3. In the Department Lists page, click the Inactive tab at the top to list the inactive departments.
  4. Hover the mouse pointer on a department and click on the toggle to enable it. 
The department is enabled. You must associate agents with this department since those who were a part of it were transferred when you disabled it.

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