Inside: A Brief History | How To Edit Departments | Caveats & Tips | What’s Next
A Brief Background
On Catalyst, assessments are assigned to an organization and a department can be chosen after completing the assessment.
Initially, departments were simply entered by the users with no control over the entered text. Later, the departments in use could be found in a list, and new departments could be added on the fly. But there was no way to manage these departments.
What has Changed
With Catalyst, it’a always been possible to add and edit Catalyst organizations in EPIC. But departments were not even displayed, so naturally they couldn’t be edited either.
What changed was that in late October 2021, the ability to add and edit departments was added to EPIC.
Why Departments Matter
Departments are used as a filter in the “Your colleagues” section of Catalyst. As the number of colleagues on the platform increases, it can become difficult to find the person you are looking for. Knowing their department narrows the search.
If your organization is small, maybe this doesn’t matter today and perhaps it never will. But if you expect the organization to grow, set this up now to help new additions choose the correct department from the start.
How to Edit Departments
To edit departments, go to the Manage Your Account menu and choose Manage My Organizations. You will see a list of the organizations that were created under your account.
From there, click the “+” to expand the organization and that will show the departments that have been created.
From here you can:
- Add new departments
- Edit the name of existing departments
- Delete departments have have no one in them
- Transfer learner records between departments
Some Caveats…
EPIC does not yet have the ability to change the department that is assigned to a learner. Departments can still only be set by the individual, themselves.
You can only edit organizations and departments of organizations that you created or for which you have records in your EPIC Account. In the rare case where you have an organization and its records in a sub account under your account, you would need log into that sub account in order to edit the organization.
The department is not a required field, so many colleagues will not have a department assigned.
Useful Tips
If you want to change someone’s department, change their organization, temporarily (and if you need to create a temporary organization to put them in, that’s fine). If you move a record into a different organization, save it, and then immediately move it back, that will cause the deparment to be cleard out for that record. If you want to reset a lot of records, use the Catalyst: Edit Organization function found under the Manage Reports menu in EPIC.
When the department is reset the system will serve up the personal information screen the next time the person logs in. But remember: because the field is not required, they may not choose a department. Let them know ahead of time that you need them to select a department before you reset theirs.
What’s Next?
Support for Catalyst administration functions are still rolling out, so expect more to be added over time. Watch this space or subscribe to our Catalyst News and Update email list to get the latest updates in your inbox.