Setting Up Departments

Introduction

Departments are central to the efficient operation of your 3CX as they define an organizational unit having its own office hours, time zone, language, and other settings - even though these can be overridden at the user level if necessary.

In Multi Company Mode, each Department becomes a separate and isolated PBX tenant.

These settings are applied to all members of the department. A department can also include IVR’s, SIP Trunks, and any system extension.

Extension users are assigned roles, and these roles are effective for all departments they are a member of. By setting up departments, you can delegate tasks and limit user roles to certain departments only; you can get more information about Access Roles here.

Department Members

To add members to a department:

  • In the Admin Console, navigate to "Admin → Departments"
  • Click on the Department you wish to add members to

  • Click the Add button

  • Select one or more users to add to the Department, and click the OK button

Options

To configure the department options:

  • In the Admin Console, navigate to "Admin → Departments"
  • Click on the Department you wish to set options for

  • Click the Options button

  • In the Options dialog, you can configure the following:
  • Department name
  • Department Prompt Set and Department Language
  • The selected prompt set will be used for IVR and Voicemail menus
  • The selected language will be used for email notifications, such as welcome emails and meeting invitations
  • Useful since it allows you to have different departments set to different languages if necessary
  • Outbound Rules
  • This is informational, giving you a quick view of which outbound rules are available for outbound calls made by users in the department
  • Publish department information to all extensions
  • When enabled, members of this department become visible to users who are not members of the department
  • When disabled, members of this department are hidden from users who are not members of the departments
  • Keep in mind that this has implications for users who are members of multiple departments
  • Transcription
  • This allows you to select whether or not to transcribe voicemails and/or recordings
  • Department Music on Hold (Update 10 and later)
  • Department Music on Hold allows each department (or company in a multi-tenant system) to set their own hold music for normal call holding by extensions, incorporating custom music, announcements, branding information, legal notices or language specific messages into it.
  • Recordings and audio files added as "Department Music on Hold" files by the System Owner or System Administrator roles are made available throughout the system, and can be used in all other Music on Hold locations by all Departments.

  • In addition, when in Multi Company Mode you can also configure the following Options:
  • User Extension Range
  • This allows you to set the range in which User Extensions can be created in this Company/Department.
  • System Extension Range
  • This allows you to set the range in which System Extensions can be created in this Company/Department.
  • Trunk Limit
  • The maximum number of SIP Trunks that this Department can create.
  • Department Music on Hold
  • Recordings and audio files added as "Department Music on Hold" files by the Company/Department Owner are available only within the Company/Department.

  • Company/Department Owners can also access the Department Options via their Admin Dashboard.

Call View Restrictions

Departments allow you to configure which calls a particular department user can see, and what call interactions are allowed for the user.

Although the setting is made at the user level in the View tab, it defines what operations are allowed to the user in departments in which the user is NOT a member.

In this example, extension 101:

  • is a member of ONLY the Marketing department
  • has his calls visible to other members of the Marketing department (Show My Calls)
  • can perform Barge-In, Listen, Whisper for the Marketing department users, and ALSO for users who are members of the Sales Engineering department (Barge-In, Listen & Whisper)
  • can see the presence information for the Marketing department, and ALSO for users who are members of the Sales Engineering department (See Presence)
  • can see calls in progress for other members of the Marketing department (See Calls)
  • can perform call operations, such as call pickup, call park, and call transfer, on calls in progress for other members of the Marketing department (Call Operations)
  • can perform user operations, such as changing status, setting reminders, and viewing forwarding rules, on other members of the Marketing department (User Operations)

You can apply similar settings to multiple users simultaneously using the multi-edit facility:

  • select multiple users in the "Admin → Users" page in the Admin Console
  • click the Edit button

  • go to the View tab and edit the permissions as for a single user:
  • Disabled: Cannot activate that permission for the selected users.
  • Empty: Permission is currently inactive for all selected users.
  • Dashed: Permission is currently active for some of the selected users.
  • Active: Permission is currently active for all selected users.

See also

Last Updated

This document was last updated on 3 August 2026

https://www.3cx.com/docs/manual/departments/