Creating organizational units

Compliance officers, DPOs, and IT administrators use the Organizational Units screen to map their company's real-world structure — departments, divisions, teams — into DPMS, making it possible to filter reports, assign responsibilities, and meet GDPR Article 30 controller-mapping requirements by organisational area.

Before you can slice your compliance data by department or assign ownership to a business unit, DPMS needs to know how your organisation is structured. The Organizational Units screen is where you build that internal hierarchy — creating named nodes such as "Finance Division", "Legal Department", or "EMEA Region" that every other part of DPMS (assets, RoPA entries, vendors, TOMs, and more) can reference. Think of it as drawing your org chart inside the system so that reports, access controls, and responsibility assignments all follow the same structure.

How to open it

Navigate using the left-side settings menu:

General Settings → Organizational Units

The item appears as the sixth entry in the compliance settings menu, after Departments. You need at least read access to Compliance Settings – Organisational Units to see it. If the item is missing from your menu, ask your system administrator to check your permission profile. Users with only observer-level access can view the list and detail screens but cannot create, edit, or delete units.

What you see

The screen is divided into two columns. The narrow left column contains the persistent compliance settings menu, with "Organizational Units" highlighted as the active page. The wide right column is your working area.

At the very top of the working area you'll see the breadcrumb path General Settings › Organizational Units, which also serves as a navigation link back to the list when you're inside a unit's detail view. In the top-right corner sits the Create button — your starting point whenever you want to add a new unit.

Below that is the data table. Each row represents one organisational unit and shows its name, the name of its parent unit (blank for root-level units), a count of how many DPMS objects are currently linked to it, and its lifecycle status. Status filter tabs above the table let you narrow the view to, for example, only Active or only Draft units. Hovering over any row reveals a three-dot ellipsis icon on the right edge — your quick-access menu for editing or deleting that unit without opening its full detail view.

Working with this screen

Building your organisational hierarchy for the first time

If you are setting DPMS up from scratch, start with the topmost unit in your company's structure — your corporate group, holding company, or equivalent root — and work downward.

Click Create in the top-right corner. A small dropdown appears with the option Create Organizational Unit. Click it.
The creation form opens. In the Name field, type the name of your top-level unit — for example, "Acme Group". Because this is your root node, leave the Parent Unit dropdown blank.
Optionally, add a Description to record what this unit covers. This is particularly useful for units whose names might be ambiguous to new colleagues.
Click Save. DPMS creates the unit and returns you to the list, where your new root unit now appears.
Repeat the process for each child unit. This time, open the Parent Unit dropdown and select the unit directly above it in your hierarchy. For example, when creating "Finance Division", select "Acme Group" as the parent. When creating "Accounts Payable", select "Finance Division".

As you add units, a visual hierarchy indicator in the form confirms where the new unit will sit in the tree — check it before saving to avoid placing a unit at the wrong level.

Build your complete hierarchy before you start creating assets, processing activities, or other compliance objects. Objects created without an organisational unit cannot be filtered or grouped by structure later.

Editing a unit after a reorganisation

Organisations change. When a department moves under a different division, or a team is renamed, you need to update its unit record in DPMS so that all linked objects automatically reflect the new structure.

Find the unit you want to change. If your list is long, use the search bar at the top of the table to type part of the unit's name — the list filters as you type.
Hover over the unit's row to reveal the three-dot ellipsis icon, then click it.
Select Edit from the dropdown menu.

On the edit form, change the Parent Unit to reflect the new reporting line, update the Name if the unit has been renamed, or revise the Description. You can also update the status using the status dropdown in the detail header — for example, promoting a unit from Draft to Active once it has been formally approved.
Click Save. DPMS updates the record immediately. Every asset, RoPA entry, or other object that references this unit will now show its updated details automatically — you do not need to update each linked object individually.

Reviewing a unit's change history

Whether you are preparing for an audit or investigating when a particular unit was created or restructured, the activity log gives you a full, timestamped record of every change.

Click any unit row in the list to open its detail view. The breadcrumb updates to show General Settings › Organizational Units › [Unit Name].
In the top-right corner of the detail pane, click the clock icon (Activity Log).
The Activity Log drawer slides in from the right and lists every recorded change: creation date, status transitions, parent-unit edits, and the name of the person who made each change.

Scroll through the log to find the event you need. You can present this information directly to an auditor or regulator to demonstrate traceability without involving the DPO.

The activity log is read-only; entries cannot be edited or deleted.

Removing an outdated unit

When a department no longer exists, you can delete its unit from DPMS — but only once all linked objects have been reassigned.

Check the Linked Records column for the unit you want to remove. If the count is anything other than zero, you must first reassign those objects to a different unit. Attempting to delete a unit with active links will trigger a warning, and the deletion may be blocked until the links are resolved.
Once the linked record count is zero, hover over the row and click the three-dot ellipsis icon, then select Delete.
A confirmation dialog asks you to confirm. Click to proceed, and the unit is permanently removed from the list and from all dropdown menus across DPMS.

Heads up: Deletion is permanent. If you are unsure whether the unit might be needed again, consider changing its status to Inactive instead of deleting it. An inactive unit is hidden from active workflows but remains in the system for historical reporting.

Field reference

Name — The display name of the unit, shown throughout DPMS wherever the unit can be selected or referenced. Required. Should be clear and unique so colleagues can identify it unambiguously in dropdown menus.
Parent Unit — The unit directly above this one in the hierarchy. Leave blank to create a root-level unit. A unit cannot be set as its own parent, and circular parent chains (A → B → A) are blocked. Changing the parent after creation immediately repositions the unit — and all its children — in the hierarchy everywhere in DPMS.
Description — Free-text notes about the unit's purpose or scope. Optional, but recommended for units whose names alone may be unclear. Supports multi-line input.
AD Groups (only shown when Active Directory integration is configured) — Links one or more Microsoft Entra ID / Azure Active Directory groups to this unit. When the integration is active, users who belong to the linked AD group are automatically associated with this organisational unit in DPMS. Has no practical effect if AD integration is not configured in IT Settings.

How this connects to the rest of DPMS

Organisational units are a foundational building block. Once you have set up your hierarchy here, it becomes available as a filter or reference field in:

Asset Register — Assets can be assigned to an OU; the asset list can be filtered by unit to show only what a given division owns or processes.
RoPA / Processing Activities — Processing activities reference organisational units to indicate which division acts as controller or processor, supporting Article 30 record-keeping.
Vendors and TOMs — Vendor relationships and technical/organisational measures can be scoped to specific units.
Audiences and access control — Audiences (user groups) can be restricted to specific organisational units, determining who can read or edit which records.
Dashboards and reports — The OU hierarchy is the primary axis for grouping and filtering compliance dashboards.

After building your unit hierarchy, the natural next step is to go to the Asset Register or Processing Activities screen and begin assigning units to existing or new records. You may also want to visit Attributes (the next section in the compliance settings menu) to create OU-specific attribute tag types that can be attached to individual units.

Tips & common pitfalls

Tip: Build the complete hierarchy before importing or bulk-creating assets and processing activities. Retroactively assigning units to hundreds of existing objects is significantly more time-consuming than setting the structure up front.

Heads up: The observer-level access permission lets users view the list and open detail records, but all create, edit, and delete controls are hidden or disabled. If a colleague reports that their Create button or ellipsis menu is missing, check whether they hold full read/write access rather than observer access.

Naming consistency matters. Unit names appear in dropdown menus across the entire system. Use a naming convention (for example, always including the type: "Finance — Division", "Accounts Payable — Team") so users can identify the right unit at a glance when linking objects.
Check linked records before deleting. The "Linked Records" count in the table shows how many DPMS objects reference the unit. A non-zero count means deletion will break those links or be blocked. Reassign the objects first.
The left-side detail menu state is global. If you collapse the tab menu in a unit's detail view, that collapsed state is saved and will apply to every detail view you open in DPMS — across all modules — until you expand it again. This is a system-wide display preference, not a per-record setting.
Changing a parent unit is instant and system-wide. As soon as you save a parent-unit change, all dashboards, filters, and linked-record associations reflect the new position. There is no staging or preview step, so double-check the correct parent before saving in a live environment.