📌 Departments vs. Groups

This is the most common source of confusion in kikuflow. Both seem to be about "grouping people," but they serve completely different purposes.

The one-line distinction

	Answers the question	Purpose
Group	"Who can handle this task?"	Task assignment target in workflows
Department	"Who is this person's manager?"	Org hierarchy and manager approval chain

A concrete example

Say your company has this structure:

CEO (Manager: Kevin)
 └── Finance Department (Manager: Sarah)
      ├── Alice
      └── Bob

For a Purchase Request Workflow:

The workflow looks like: Employee submits → Finance Verification → Manager Approval

• Need group: The "Finance Verification" node can be handled by anyone on the finance team — create a "Finance Team" group (add Alice and Bob), and assign the node to that group.
• Need department: The "Manager Approval" node uses the "manager" assignment method. The system automatically finds the manager based on whoever handled the previous node. For example, if Alice handled "Finance Verification," the manager approval goes to Sarah.

Result

• Finance Department (department) = reflects the org chart, records that Alice and Bob's manager is Sarah
• Finance Team (group) = the pool of people who handle finance-related tasks

The membership can overlap, but the concepts and functions are entirely different.

What do I actually need?

Your need	Need Group	Need Department
Assign tasks to a pool of people (anyone can handle)	✅	❌
Escalate approvals up the management chain	❌	✅
Both of the above	✅	✅

Recommended setup order

1. First ask: does my workflow need manager-level approvals?
   • Yes → build the department tree first, then create groups
   • No → only groups are needed
2. Create groups and add the right members
3. Use SuperAdmin Agent to describe your workflow requirements

They don't need to match one-to-one

Departments and groups don't need to mirror each other. For example, you can have a "Cross-dept Audit Team" group with members from both Finance and Legal — that's perfectly fine.