Team Hierarchy & Structure

Overview

Communities can be organised into hierarchical structures that mirror your organisation. Parent-child relationships between teams help with reporting roll-ups, content inheritance, and organisational clarity.

This guide covers setting up team hierarchy, using the Org Chart, and understanding how hierarchy affects other features.

Functionality Breakdown

Hierarchy Concepts

How Hierarchy Works

• A community can have one parent team (optional)

• A community can have multiple sub-teams (optional)

• Hierarchy can be any depth (teams under teams under teams)

• Circular references are prevented (A can't be under B if B is under A)

Pre-requisites

To configure team hierarchy, you'll need:

• Owner or Admin role

• Existing teams to link together

Required User Roles

Quick Start Guide

Setting Up Hierarchy

When creating a new community:

1. In the creation wizard, navigate to the Hierarchy step

2. Select a Parent team from the dropdown (optional)

3. Select Sub-teams to nest under this community (optional)

4. Continue with the wizard

For an existing community:

1. Navigate to the community

2. Click Edit

3. Go to the Hierarchy step

4. Select a Parent team from the dropdown

5. Select Sub-teams to add

6. Save your changes

💡 Tip: You can only select teams that aren't already sub-teams of another team (to prevent conflicts).

Viewing the Org Chart

The Org Chart provides a visual representation of your team hierarchy:

1. Navigate to People, then Teams

2. Click Org Chart (or look for the org chart icon)

3. The chart displays all teams in a hierarchical tree view

4. Click on any team to:

   • View the team

   • Edit the team

   • See members

Understanding the Org Chart

The Org Chart shows:

• Top-level teams at the top (teams with no parent)

• Sub-teams branching below their parents

• Team names and basic info

• Clickable nodes for navigation

⚠️ Warning: Very deep hierarchies may be harder to visualise. Consider keeping hierarchy to 3-4 levels for clarity.

How Hierarchy Affects Features

Reporting Roll-ups

When viewing reports for a team, you can include sub-team data:

1. Navigate to any team report (Activity, People, Content, Tasks)

2. Enable Include sub-teams option

3. The report aggregates data from the selected team AND all its sub-teams

This is useful for:

• Department heads viewing all their teams

• Programme managers overseeing multiple cohorts

• Regional managers with location-based sub-teams

Content Visibility

Content can cascade down through hierarchy:

1. When setting content visibility to "Selected" teams

2. Enable Visible to sub-teams option

3. Content becomes visible to the selected team AND all its sub-teams

This is useful for:

• Company-wide policies visible to all departments

• Regional training cascading to local teams

• Programme content visible to all cohorts

Member Inheritance

Users in sub-teams are considered part of the parent team for certain features:

• Nested user counts include sub-team members

• Reports can roll up sub-team data

• Content visibility can cascade down

However, sub-team members are NOT automatically members of the parent:

• They don't appear in the parent's Members tab

• They don't see the parent's Feed posts

• They must explicitly join the parent to participate

Hierarchy Best Practices

Organisational Alignment

Mirror your company structure:

Programme Structure

Organise cohort programmes:

Guild Organisation

Group related guilds:

Stand-in Manager

When a community manager is away, you can assign a stand-in to handle their responsibilities.

What Stand-in Managers Can Do

• Approve/decline join requests

• Add/remove members

• View team reports

• Manage community settings (if also a secondary manager)

Assigning a Stand-in Manager

1. Edit your Community

2. Navigate to the Managers step

3. In the Stand-in manager section, search for a user

4. Select the user

5. Save your changes

Stand-in Limitations

• Cannot assign someone who is themselves "on break"

• Stand-in doesn't automatically become a secondary manager

• Stand-in assignment doesn't affect hierarchy

FAQs

Q: Can a community have multiple parent teams?
No. A community can only have one parent team. This prevents complex multi-inheritance scenarios.

Q: What happens to sub-teams if I delete a parent?
Sub-teams become top-level teams (their parent_team_id is set to null). They are not deleted.

Q: Can I move a community to a different parent?
Yes. Edit the community and change the parent team selection. The move is immediate.

Q: Do sub-team members automatically join the parent community?
No. Being in a sub-team doesn't make you a member of the parent. You must explicitly join.

Q: How deep can hierarchy go?
There's no hard limit, but very deep hierarchies (5+ levels) can be hard to manage and visualise.

Q: Can I bulk-set hierarchy via CSV import?
Yes. Use the parent_team_name column in the Teams CSV import to set parent relationships.

Q: Can standard teams be in the same hierarchy as communities?
Yes. Hierarchy works for both standard teams and communities. You can mix them.

Troubleshooting