Departments and Department Coordinators

🔒 Pro feature — requires the Pro plugin.

Group your staff into departments, teams or campuses, and let a manager in each one look after compliance for their own people without seeing anyone else’s records.

What it is and who it’s for

In a small organisation, one compliance manager can look after everyone. Larger organisations, such as an RTO with several campuses, a multi-site clinic or a childcare group, usually spread the day-to-day work across team leaders. Each leader needs to chase expiring documents and review evidence for their own team, and shouldn’t see other teams’ personal records.

Departments solve this:

• Site administrators create departments, assign staff to them, and choose one or more Department Coordinators for each department.
• Department Coordinators use the normal Attestation Core admin screens, but every list is filtered to the staff in their departments, and they can only open or change those people’s records.
• Staff members don’t need to do anything. Their department appears on their My Profile portal page.

Setting up departments

Where to find it

Attestation Core → Departments. The menu item sits just after Compliance Profiles and needs the plugin’s manage settings permission (administrators by default).

The Departments menu doesn’t exist in the free plugin. With Pro installed but its licence inactive (after the 7-day grace period), the menu is hidden. Departments, assignments and coordinator links you have already set up are kept.

The Departments list

The list shows each department’s Name and Description, with Edit and Delete buttons. Before you create any departments, it shows “No departments found yet. Add your first department”.

Create a department

1. Click Add Department.
2. Enter a Name (required), for example “Melbourne Campus” or “Nursing team”.
3. Add an optional Description.
4. Click Create Department. You’ll see “Department saved.” and the edit screen opens, now with an Assignments section.

To rename a department later, click Edit, change the details and click Update Department.

Assign staff

1. On the department’s edit screen, find Assignments → Trainers. The label reads “Trainers” whichever industry preset you use. It lists every active compliance profile by name, or by email address if the profile has no name.
2. Select everyone who belongs to the department. Hold Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac) to select more than one.
3. Click Save Assignments. You’ll see “Department assignments saved.”

A person can belong to more than one department. Saving replaces the department’s whole list, so anyone you deselect is removed from this department, though not from any others.

Choose Department Coordinators

The Department Coordinators list on the same screen only offers people who meet both of these conditions:

1. Their compliance profile is active and linked to a WordPress user account.
2. Their profile has the Leadership / manager workforce type, either as their main type or as an additional type.

Anyone who is already a coordinator for this department also stays in the list. If someone is missing, edit their compliance profile, add the Leadership / manager workforce type and make sure the profile is linked to their WordPress login. Then come back to this screen.

Select the coordinators and click Save Assignments. Each selected person automatically gets the Department Coordinator permission. You don’t change their WordPress role. One person can coordinate several departments, and a department can have several coordinators.

Removing a coordinator or deleting a department

• Deselect someone in Department Coordinators and save. If they no longer coordinate any department, the Department Coordinator permission is removed automatically.
• Delete a department from the list and confirm “Delete this department?”. This removes the department, its staff assignments and its coordinator links. Coordinators left without any department lose the permission. Staff profiles, documents and evidence aren’t deleted.

The Department Coordinator role and permission

“Department Coordinator” isn’t a separate WordPress role. It is a permission added to the person’s existing account. While a person holds it, the plugin gives them these four abilities for their own departments only:

Ability	What it unlocks (admin menu)
Manage staff profiles	Compliance Profiles (and other screens that use the same permission, such as Staff for administrative staff)
Manage documents	Documents
Validate evidence	Evidence (the review queue)
Manage plans	Plans / Annual Plans and Upskilling Plans

Coordinators don’t get access to Reports, Calendar, the audit bundle, Settings, Departments, the Notifications log, the Action Log or the plugin Dashboard. Organisation-wide reporting deliberately stays with administrators.

What a coordinator can and can’t see

Can:

• See the lists of compliance profiles, documents, evidence and plans, filtered to the staff assigned to their departments. The counts and page numbers on these lists reflect only those people.
• Open a staff member’s profile, documents, evidence or plans when that person is in one of their departments.
• Upload and replace documents, validate or return evidence, and approve or return plans for those staff members.
• Run bulk actions, as long as every selected record belongs to their departments.

Can’t:

• Open, change or download any record for someone outside their departments. Attempting it gives an access-denied message, and the same rule applies to the plugin’s internal data requests (REST), not just the admin pages.
• Run a bulk action that includes even one record from another department. The whole action is refused, not just the out-of-scope items.
• Create new compliance profiles or import profiles. The Add profile and Import profiles buttons are hidden for coordinators, and the server refuses any attempt.
• Make any other change that isn’t tied to a specific in-scope record.

A coordinator whose departments have no staff assigned sees empty lists.

The scope notice

When a coordinator opens Compliance Profiles, a blue information banner at the top shows exactly what they are looking at:

You are coordinating Melbourne Campus, Geelong Campus — 23 trainer profiles in your scope.

It lists every department they coordinate and the total number of staff profiles assigned to them. Administrators never see this banner.

Signing in as a coordinator

Coordinators are usually staff members too. If they have an active compliance profile, they land on the staff portal (Compliance Portal) when they sign in, and the WordPress toolbar is hidden. To reach the coordinator screens, they go to https://your-site/wp-admin/ and open the Attestation Core menu. You may want to add a link to that address on your intranet.

Important: don’t make administrators coordinators

The coordinator restriction applies to whoever holds the permission, including administrators. If you choose a site administrator as a Department Coordinator, their access to profiles, documents, evidence and plans is narrowed to that department as well. Keep coordinator duties for non-administrator accounts.

Data and privacy

• Departments (name and description) and the department–staff assignments are stored in the plugin’s own database tables. Each coordinator’s departments are stored against their WordPress user account.
• Each staff member’s department appears on their My Profile portal page.
• When you erase a person’s data through Tools → Erase Personal Data, the plugin also removes their department assignments.
• Nothing about departments is sent outside your site.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Fix
A manager doesn’t appear in Department Coordinators	Their profile must be active, linked to a WordPress user, and carry the Leadership / manager workforce type.
A coordinator says the Attestation Core menu is missing	They are probably on the front-end portal. Send them to /wp-admin/. Also check that they are still selected as a coordinator on at least one department.
A coordinator sees an empty list	No staff are assigned to their department(s). Assign staff on the department’s edit screen.
A coordinator gets “access denied” on a bulk action	One of the selected records belongs to someone outside their departments. Narrow the selection.
The Departments menu has disappeared	The Pro licence is inactive. Reactivate it under Settings → Licence.

Worked example

Coastline Training College (an RTO) runs two campuses. The compliance manager creates Brisbane Campus and Gold Coast Campus and assigns each trainer/assessor to their campus. Mei, the Gold Coast program manager, already has a compliance profile, so the manager adds the Leadership / manager workforce type to it and selects Mei as a Department Coordinator for Gold Coast Campus. When Mei goes to /wp-admin/ and opens Compliance Profiles, the banner reads “You are coordinating Gold Coast Campus — 14 trainer profiles in your scope.” She works through the Evidence review queue for her 14 trainers and returns one item with a comment. The compliance manager still sees all 31 trainers across both campuses and runs the organisation-wide reports herself.

Related: Staff profiles and credential management · User roles and permissions · Department Coordinator guide