Company Structure in CRM: Departments and Vacation Cover

A sales rep goes on vacation for two weeks. Clients call their number, new inquiries land on them, tasks sit with their name on them, and all of it stalls until they're back. If your company structure and a substitution rule are set up in the CRM, the work doesn't wait: everything new goes to a colleague automatically.

How the structure works

A department has a name, a description, a head and a parent department, so subdepartments can go as deep as you need. An employee can belong to several departments at once, and a head doesn't have to be a member of their own department. Everyone can view the structure; only the administrator can change it.

The “Company structure” screen works like a map: you drag the chart with the mouse and zoom with the wheel, a pinch or buttons, and there's a full-screen mode and search by department and employee. Branches collapse; a department card shows the head, the employees and their count including subdepartments, and employees without a department are gathered in the “General list.”

What departments are for

• Permissions. A role granted to a department applies to all of its employees. The “Department” visibility scope shows records of colleagues in the same department.
• Chats. Whoever joins a department is added automatically to the work chats linked to it.
• Telephony. A department gets its own lines and a default line, and an incoming call can be routed to the whole department, so everyone's phone rings at once.
• Email and analytics. Mailbox access is granted per department, and company analytics compares departments with each other.

Vacation, sick leave, business trip

In the employee's card, the administrator marks an absence: vacation, sick leave, business trip, no-show or other, for one day, for a period or with no end date, with a note. Colleagues see an “Away until …” banner in the card and the list of substitutes. An absence can be ended early, and the employee can still sign in to the CRM.

What the substitute gets

• Leads and deals. New records assigned to the absent employee go to the substitute, including leads from email, messengers and calls, and the original owner is remembered.
• Calls. An incoming call from the absent employee's client goes to the substitute.
• Tasks. The assignee doesn't change: the substitute becomes a co-assignee and gets the “You are substituting on a task” notification.
• Deals and chats. The substitute sees and handles the absent employee's deals as their own and replies in their clients' chats.

There can be several substitutes. For each one, you mark what they take over (tasks, calls, leads, deals, chats) and how to split the flow: to everyone at once, in rotation or in list order. The CRM skips employees who have been dismissed or blocked or who are away themselves, and automatic distribution of emails, messenger conversations and tasks bypasses absent employees.

How to set it up in half an hour

1. Create departments and assign their heads.
2. Assign employees to departments; anyone without a department shows up in the “General list.”
3. Grant roles to departments rather than to each employee separately.
4. Link work chats and telephony lines to departments.
5. Before the next vacation, mark the absence and choose substitutes.

We covered how roles and visibility scopes tie in with departments in our article on roles and permissions.