Quick Answer
For organizations that need to assign training by both department (enterprise-wide) and location (site-specific), we recommend keeping locations as a parent/child Group hierarchy and departments as flat, standalone Groups, with each employee given dual membership in one of each.
What This Article Helps With
This article is for Pinnacle Series Administrators setting up Group structures for an organization with multiple sites and departments, who need to assign training both by department (enterprise-wide) and by location (site-specific).
Group Hierarchy Constraint: One Parent Per Child Group
By design, a child Group can only belong to one parent Group at a time. If an existing child Group is added to a second parent, it is reassigned away from the first parent. The same Group cannot exist within two separate hierarchies at once. Creating an individual Group for every possible site-and-department combination to work around this would produce an excessive number of Groups, so we recommend separating the location hierarchy from the department assignment Groups instead.
Recommended Group Structure
- Use location as the parent/child hierarchy. Create a top-level Group (for example, "Manufacturing") and add your site Groups as children (for example, Site A, Site B, Site C).
- Create department Groups as flat, standalone Groups. Create your departments (for example, Quality, Maintenance, Shipping) as standalone Groups that do not sit underneath the locations or any other hierarchy.
- Give each employee dual membership. Assign each employee directly to both their respective location Group and their department Group.
- Use the appropriate Group as the Assignment target. Assign training to the location Group for site-specific content, or to the department Group for enterprise-wide content.
Confirm that each employee holds two Group memberships — one location Group and one department Group - and that training Assignments target the correct Group for the intended audience.
How the Structure Works
Locations Remain Hierarchical
The location hierarchy establishes organizational scope. Group Owner status can be applied deliberately at the appropriate level alongside Reporting Manager and/or Assignor Manager permissions. For example, a Site A Group Owner can have scope over the Site A population, while someone with equivalent permissions at the top level can have scope across all child site Groups.
Departments Remain Flat
Each department is an enterprise-wide population containing employees from multiple sites. For example, a Quality employee at Site A belongs directly to both the Site A Group and the Quality Group. A Quality employee at Site B belongs to both the Site B Group and the same Quality Group.
Benefits of This Structure
- Enterprise-wide department training: Assigning training to a department Group reaches those employees across all sites.
- Site-specific training: Assigning training to a site Group reaches all employees at that site, regardless of their department.
- Site-level management and reporting: A site manager does not need to own every departmental Group to have site employees within their scope. Permissions can be established against the site Group.
- Enterprise-wide functional management: If a central manager needs to report on or assign learning to a specific department across the organization, permissions can be applied to the department Group.
Operational Considerations
- Department changes: When an employee moves to a different department, remove their membership from the old department Group and add them to the new one. Their location membership remains unchanged.
- Location transfers: If an employee transfers to a different site but remains in the same department, update their location membership while leaving their department membership unchanged.
- Onboarding: Ensure that each new employee receives both memberships (location and department).