Plan department Spaces and navigation trees
Use practical company structures without turning every initiative into a Space.
Use a Space for a stable department or area of responsibility. Use projects for the work the department runs. Folders are optional groupings inside a Space; views sit inside a project.
The examples below are suggested structures you can build manually. They are not built-in templates and do not create permissions automatically.
A small company with shared responsibilities
| Space | Folder, if needed | Projects | Useful views to add or keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer Success | Active onboardings | Northstar onboarding; Acorn onboarding | All Tasks, Overview, Notes, Files |
| Customer Success | None | Customer follow-ups | All Tasks, Board |
| Marketing | None | Website launch; Content operations | All Tasks, Canvas, Overview |
| Company Operations | None | Monthly reporting; Internal requests | All Tasks, Notes, Files |
The full path for a customer task is Company → Customer Success → Active onboardings → Northstar onboarding → All Tasks. The folder can be omitted when there are only a few projects.
A larger service company
| Space | Folder | Projects |
|---|---|---|
| Client Services | Active clients | Northstar delivery; Acorn delivery |
| Client Services | Internal improvement | Service handbook refresh |
| Sales | None | Sales follow-ups; Partner launch |
| Marketing | Campaigns | Autumn launch; Referral campaign |
| People | None | Hiring coordination; Employee onboarding |
| Finance | Reporting cycles | September close; October close |
| IT & Systems | None | Service requests; Access reviews; Website maintenance |
Choose project boundaries based on ownership and access. A single recurring workstream can stay in one BAU project. A delivery with its own brief, owner, and end can be a separate Project. Sensitive People or Finance work needs explicit access planning; its name or position in this tree is not a security control.
Build the tree
- Ask an Owner or Admin to create the department Spaces.
- Create only the folders that help people distinguish groups of projects.
- Configure Space access for the people who should work across that department.
- Configure primary departments and project-creation exceptions separately.
- Create the initial projects. The standard creation flow starts with All Tasks and Canvas; add other available views when they serve the work.
- Share individual projects with cross-department collaborators when they do not need the whole department.
Keep navigation predictable
Use a consistent pattern such as Customer — purpose or Initiative — outcome. Name tasks with a verb: “Confirm launch date,” “Review customer brief,” or “Approve supplier list.” Keep an ongoing process in a stable location so people do not need a new bookmark every week.
A custom overview can gather projects from several departments for a leadership review. It does not move those projects into a new Space. Personal unpublished projects also do not represent a department; publish them to the appropriate Space when they are ready for departmental work.
Check the result
Ask someone outside the setup group to find a project without instructions. If they need to know who created it to locate it, reconsider the naming or grouping. Then verify their actual access separately: a clean navigation tree alone does not prove that permissions are correct.