Browse organizational units

Browse Organizational Units

The Organizational Units screen is your central catalogue of every department, team, business unit, and regional office defined inside DPMS for your company. DPOs, compliance managers, and IT administrators use it to check which internal divisions already exist before assigning them to records, tasks, or processing activities — and to add new ones when the structure changes. Because organizational units are referenced across almost every other module in DPMS, keeping this list accurate and complete directly affects how useful your compliance reports, task filters, and ROPA assignments will be.

How to open it

Navigate to General Settings in the left-hand sidebar, then select Organizational Units from the Compliance Settings navigation panel. The list loads immediately — no additional tab or button click is needed.

The screen is available to users who hold either the standard read permission for Compliance Settings organizational units, or the partial read permission that grants access to a limited subset of units (typically the ones they are responsible for). Users without either permission will not see the menu item at all.

What you see

The page is split into two areas. On the left sits the Compliance Settings navigation panel — a vertical menu listing every item in the Compliance Settings section, including General, Applicable Laws, Attributes, Status, Departments, Organizational Units, IGDTA Configuration, Standards, Control Sets, Risk Scenarios, Maturity Model, Deadlines and Urgency, and Questionnaires. The Organizational Units item is highlighted to show your current location.

The rest of the screen is occupied by the main content card. At the very top is a breadcrumb strip showing your position (General Settings > Organizational Units) along with small forward and back chevrons that let you jump to the adjacent items in the Compliance Settings menu without returning to the sidebar. Below the breadcrumb is a data table listing every organizational unit for your company, with a search bar above it and a Create button in the upper-right corner. Each row in the table displays the name of one organizational unit.

Working with this screen

Verifying which units already exist

Before assigning an organizational unit anywhere in DPMS — for example, when creating a ROPA entry or editing a task — it is good practice to confirm that the unit you need is already defined.

• Open the Organizational Units screen using the steps above.
• Scan the table. If your list is short, you can scroll through it directly.
• If the list is long, type a keyword into the search bar at the top of the table. The list filters automatically as results come back from the server — for example, typing Legal will show only units whose names contain "Legal." Clearing the search box restores the full list.
• Once you spot the unit you need, you can confirm its exact name or, if you have edit permission, click the row to open its detail view.

Heads up: The list loads in batches as you scroll down. If you cannot find a unit by scrolling, always try the search bar before assuming the unit does not exist — there may be more records below the visible portion of the table.

Navigating into a unit's detail view

Clicking a row in the table takes you to the detail and edit view for that specific organizational unit. From there you can review its full configuration, including any parent–child hierarchy relationships and Active Directory group linkages. This is the only way to see those details — the list screen shows only names.

Row clicks are only active if you hold edit permission for organizational units. If you have read-only access, the rows will not respond to clicks and the cursor will not change when you hover over them. In that case, use the list purely as a reference.

Adding a new organizational unit

When a department or team needs to be added to DPMS — for example, a newly formed Cybersecurity team that should appear as a selection option in tasks and ROPA entries — you create it here.

• On the Organizational Units screen, click the Create button in the upper-right corner of the content card.
• A small dropdown appears. Select Create Organization Unit Type.
• You are taken to the organizational unit creation form. Fill in the unit's name (in one or more languages if your organization uses multi-language support), optionally assign a parent unit to place it in the hierarchy, and link any relevant Active Directory group.
• Save the form. You are returned to the Organizational Units list, where the new unit now appears.

Once the unit is saved, it becomes available for selection in every module that references organizational units — including Records of Processing Activities, Tasks, Projects, Assets, Assessments, and DPIAs.

Tip: Creating a unit requires a separate create permission (distinct from the read permission that lets you view the list). If you see the list but the Create button is missing or the dropdown is empty, contact your DPMS administrator to review your permission level.

Navigating between adjacent Compliance Settings screens

If you are auditing multiple areas of Compliance Settings in sequence, you do not need to keep clicking the sidebar. The breadcrumb strip at the top of the content area contains chevron arrows (< and >) that jump you directly to the previous or next item in the Compliance Settings menu. For example, clicking the right chevron from the Organizational Units screen takes you straight to IGDTA Configuration; clicking the left chevron takes you to Departments.

This is useful when you want to cross-reference the organizational units list with the departments list, for example, to check that every department also has a corresponding organizational unit defined.

Field reference

The list screen itself shows only the Name column for each unit. Names support multiple languages — the name shown to you will be in your current interface language if a translation is available, falling back to the default language. If no name is configured at all for a unit, a placeholder dash is displayed.

All other configuration for a unit — including description, status, parent unit, responsible persons, Active Directory group, and attributes — is only visible and editable in the detail view, which you reach by clicking a row.

How this connects to the rest of DPMS

Organizational units are a foundational configuration object. They are not a standalone feature — they are a shared reference layer that other modules depend on.

What depends on this screen:

• Records of Processing Activities (ROPA) — every ROPA entry can be linked to an organizational unit to indicate which part of the business is responsible for or affected by that processing activity.
• Tasks — tasks can be assigned to an organizational unit as well as to individual people.
• Projects — projects reference organizational units for accountability and reporting.
• Assets — assets can be linked to the organizational unit that owns or manages them.
• Assessments and DPIAs — these can be scoped to specific organizational units.
• Data Collection Points — organizational unit linkage shows which team collects a particular type of data.
• Reporting and filtering — throughout DPMS, most list views can be filtered by organizational unit. The completeness of your catalogue directly determines how meaningful those filters are.

If an organizational unit is not defined on this screen, it cannot be selected anywhere else in DPMS. This is the most important downstream consequence of keeping the list incomplete.

After finishing this screen:

Once you have verified or updated the organizational unit catalogue, the natural next steps are to return to whichever module prompted you to check — for example, editing a ROPA entry or creating a task — and proceed with confidence that the unit you need is available for selection.

Tips & common pitfalls

Heads up: Users with only partial read access may see a smaller list than expected. If a colleague reports that the list looks incomplete, their permission level may be limiting which units are visible to them. Ask your DPMS administrator to check their access rights.

• Read-only users cannot click rows. If you hold only the read permission and not the edit permission for organizational units, row clicks are disabled. You can still see and search the list, but you cannot navigate into any unit's detail view.
• The Create button requires a separate permission. Viewing the list and creating new units are controlled by different permissions. A user who can see the list may still find that the Create button is hidden or that the dropdown appears empty if they lack the create permission for tag-type objects (which organizational units fall under in DPMS).
• Active Directory group linkages are not visible here. The list only shows unit names. If you need to check or configure the AD group associated with a unit, you must open the unit's detail view by clicking its row.
• Search is server-side. The search bar does not filter an already-loaded list — it sends a request to the backend. On slower connections, there may be a brief moment between typing and seeing results. This is normal behaviour.
• Infinite scroll means the first visible rows are not the whole list. DPMS loads records in batches as you scroll. Always use the search bar to look for a specific unit rather than assuming the list is complete based on what you see at first glance.

Tip: The breadcrumb chevrons are a quick way to move between Compliance Settings screens without touching the sidebar. Use them when auditing multiple configuration areas in sequence.