This feature creates a new department administrative layer to improve the management of large or geographically distributed groups.

Department Administrators

Like groups, departments can be assigned an administrator who shares most of the group administrator's privileges for the users and services assigned to the group. Hence, the group administrator can delegate most of the day-to-day service management of the department to a department administrator. Specifically, department administrators have the following management capabilities:

• Add, modify, and delete users in their department.
• Modify Auto Attendants, call centers, hunt groups, and instant conference bridges belonging to the department.
• View group directory and modify group common phone list.

The group administrator defines the administrative scope of the department administrators by assigning users and services to specific departments. The department administrators can manage users and services belonging to their department the same way the group administrator can. Furthermore, the department administrator can create new users in the department and assign them services the same way the group administrator can. The department administrator can also delete users in the department.

Department Provisioning

The following services can be assigned to a department:

• Auto Attendant - When an Auto Attendant is assigned to a department, the department administrator can configure it. Also, assigning Auto Attendant to a department allows the option to restrict the scope of name dialing to the users in the department. This is especially useful with large groups to limit the number of collisions between user names.
• Call Centers - When a call center is assigned to a department, the department administrator can configure it and populate the list of agents with any user from the group.
• Hunt Groups - When a hunt group is assigned to a department, the department administrator can configure it and populate the list of agents with any user from the group.

Finally, this service allows the group administrator to assign phone numbers (DID) to departments. Any phone number assigned to a department shows up as such in the list of phone numbers when assigning new phone numbers to users or group services.

Configuration

Group administrators create departments and only a group administrator can assign or modify users or services for a department. Once users and services are assigned to specific departments, they can be configured and managed by the department administrators. Any user created by the department administrator is automatically assigned to the same department.

NOTE: The use of departments is optional. Department selection for users and services may be omitted (left as "None"), which leaves provisioning at the group level.