Org Structure
Draw how the organization is really arranged, then use the drawing to correct the real thing.
Org Structure is a drawing board for how your organization is put together, and a way to make the workspace agree with it. It is an extension: install it from Org settings → Extensions, or have it ticked for you by the Healthcare Administration, Government & Public Sector or Education industry.
Two screens share a word, so it is worth separating them once. Org settings → Structure is the live configuration: the divisions and teams that actually exist, and what is scoped to them. Org Structure is the drawing - a chart you compose, keep as a draft, publish and share. The drawing changes nothing by itself. The only thing that moves live configuration is a sync you confirm, described further down.
Drawing one
Open Org Structure from the app launcher and start from a blank canvas or from one of six starting points - a small team, a single team, a growing company, one department, a multi-division organization, or regional operations. Boxes come in five kinds - company, division, team, role and note - and each carries a title, a subtitle, what that box is responsible for, and the people in it. The inspector tells you what a sync would make of each box while you are still editing it, rather than at the end.
- Drag to move a box, drag the dot underneath it to draw a line, hold space or right-drag to pan, and use the wheel to zoom.
- Tidy up lays the whole tree out for you.
- People are matched to real members by name and email address. A name typed in with no email is still drawn - and the chart itself says a sync will not be able to match it.
- A box can open another structure, so a company chart, a division's own and a team's own stay navigable instead of becoming one unreadable sheet.
- Undo and redo throughout, saved automatically a moment after you stop.
- Export the chart as a picture when somebody wants it as one.
On a narrow window you can pinch, zoom and tap a box to read it, but not edit it. That is a decision rather than an omission: a drag-and-connect canvas under a thumb produces accidental edits, and this is the chart of who works where.
Drafts, publishing, and putting one in a conversation
A structure stays a draft - visible to you and to people who can edit the organization - until you publish it. A published structure appears on the Organization tab, can be attached to a project, and can be dropped into a chat with #, where it unfurls into a small card carrying its division, team and people counts. That card is resolved for each viewer separately, so referencing one is never a way to find out that a reorganization nobody has announced exists. Publishing changes nobody's team, division or role.
Making the workspace match the drawing
Update and sync is the half that writes. It compares the drawing against the live configuration and shows you the whole difference first - which divisions and teams would be created, who would move onto which team, and which titles would change. Nothing is written until you confirm that difference. The preview and the apply are one function run twice, and the server re-derives the plan from the database on both, so what you approved cannot differ from what runs. Syncing is on the Business plan and above; drawing, publishing and reading a chart are not.
- 1Open the structure and press Update and sync to system.
- 2Choose what it may do: create missing teams, create missing divisions, set workspace roles from the drawing, and remove people from teams this drawing does not name. The last two are off unless you switch them on.
- 3Read the difference. Anything risky is called out, and has to be ticked before you can continue.
- 4Press Apply these changes. It all lands together, and every applied change is written to the organization's activity log.
It cannot remove your last owner. A plan that would leave nobody able to transfer ownership, change billing or delete the workspace is refused outright, and no tick clears it. It never touches a project squad - a team attached to a project is not part of the org chart, and a plan that reaches one is stopped with nothing changed at all. And it never makes anybody an owner, whoever runs it: ownership is transferred deliberately, from Members.
A box reading Head of Engineering is a job title, and Noots keeps that apart from what somebody is allowed to do. Setting workspace roles from a drawing is a separate switch, off unless you turn it on, and even then every grant is capped at the rank of the person running the sync - nobody can promote somebody above themselves by drawing it.
Asking Hoot for a first draft
Hoot will rough out a chart from the people you already have, what their titles say and how many of them there are, and hands it back as an editable draft on the canvas that saves nothing by itself. It is a starting point to correct, never something applied. No name and no email address leaves the product to do it: each person travels as an anonymous reference and is put back afterwards. Drafting with Hoot is on the Team plan and above.
If you already have a chart
You can upload one instead of drawing it. An uploaded chart is publishable, referenceable and attachable - but it is a document rather than a drawing, so there is nothing in it for a sync to read, and the panel says exactly that instead of offering a button that would do nothing. To move real teams from it, draw it on the canvas. Separately, Org settings → Structure accepts a spreadsheet of people by email address, which is the route for a reorganization that already exists in a file.