Send a task to a department: when you don't know who should do it

You need something from another department, but you don't know who there should do it. Send the task to the department. Its manager (or whoever stands in for them today) gives it to one of their people. You stay the task's manager, so the finished work is yours to check or grade.

The example: Sales needs Technical

Lerato works in Sales. A customer's inverter keeps tripping and she needs a technician to look at the site logs. She has no idea who in Technical Services is free, or who knows that inverter.

Lerato presses New Task, types the title Check the site logs for the Montagu inverter, and under Assign to chooses A team, then Dept: Technical Services.
She presses Create draft, writes what she needs on the task page, and presses Publish.
Technical Services' manager gets one message with a link: "… Lerato sent this to Dept: Technical Services. Assign it to one of your people, or claim it". The department's supervisors, and today's stand-in if there is one, get the same message. The rest of the department gets nothing: a request from outside goes to the people who hand out the work.
The manager opens the task, presses Assign, chooses Sipho and presses Assign again.
Sipho now has the task, is told about it, and works it like any other: Start, record output, Finish.
When Sipho presses Finish, the task closes and Lerato can grade it. If she ticked Check it before it closes when she created it, it goes to In review for her instead, and she rates it.

The manager of Technical Services handed the task out and is done with it. They are not its manager, not its assignee and not following its chat, so they get none of its messages afterwards.

Before: assigning it to the director

Without this, the usual way was to give the task to the Technical director so they could pass it on. That made the director part of the work: delegating it made them the manager and reviewer of the new task and put them in its chat, and sharing it with them added them to the chat too. Sending it to the department gets the same result, a person in Technical doing the work, without that.

Who can send a task to a department

Anyone who can create tasks for other people (the Create tasks permission, which the Task - User role gives). Under A team you see every department, not only your own. The ones you manage come first. App groups (pools that cut across departments) still need Assign to anyone.

The same works when you delegate or add a sub-task: choose the department as the team.

Without Create tasks you can only create tasks for yourself, so you cannot send one to anybody.

Tasks sent to your department (for managers)

When someone outside your department sends it a task, you get a message with a link to it. On the task page you have an Assign button.

Assign opens Assign from Dept: …. Under Give it to you can choose anyone in your department, or in a department or team under it. The window reminds you who stays the task's manager: "Lerato stays its manager and reviews it. You are not added to the task."
The person you choose must be able to take another task. If they already have as many open tasks as they are allowed, you are told so and can choose someone else.
A member of your department can also claim it themselves, the same way as any team task. Once someone has it, Assign disappears.
The task must be published. Nobody in your department can see it while it is still a draft.
It is not work for your department? Write why in the task's chat. Lerato follows the task, so she sees it at once and can send it to the right department from the task's right-hand panel.

You can also find these tasks on your task list: My department shows your department's tasks, and a task waiting in your department's pool shows the department's name instead of a person.

Who can press Assign

Person	Can assign?
The department's manager	Yes
Today's stand-in, while the manager is away	Yes
The department has no manager	The manager of the nearest department above it
A supervisor of the department	No. Supervisors are told, so they can claim it or nudge it along, but they don't hand out the work
The manager of a department higher up, while this one has its own manager	No
Someone with the Manage tasks permission	Yes

When the manager is on leave

Every morning, myWork looks for managers who are on leave that day and makes the first available manager above them today's stand-in for their department (HR can also set the stand-in on the org chart). On that day the stand-in is told about requests sent to the department and can press Assign, just like the manager. The manager can still assign as well. The next day the stand-in is gone, unless the manager is still away.

If nobody picks it up

If a task sent to a department has still not been assigned or claimed a day after it was created, the Task Orchestrator:

sends the department's manager (or today's stand-in) a reminder with the link: "… Please assign it to one of your people";
writes in the task's chat that it is waiting for the department's manager to assign it, so Lerato can see why nothing has happened.

It does not repeat this every hour: it reminds again only after something has changed on the task. See The Task Orchestrator: keep work moving while you are away.

Quick answers

I sent a task to Technical. Who checks the work? You do. Sending it to a department never changes the task's manager, so you check it before it closes (if you asked for that) or grade it afterwards.

Will the manager of Technical see everything that happens on the task? No. They hand it out and are not added to it. If you want them involved, tag them in the task's chat.

I'm in Technical. Why didn't I get the message about the new request? Requests from outside go to the department's manager, supervisors and today's stand-in. A task that your own manager puts in your department's pool still goes to everyone in it.

Can my manager give it to someone in another department? No. A task from a department's pool goes to one of that department's own people, or to someone in a department or team under it.

I sent it to the wrong department. You are its manager, so change the team on the task's right-hand panel. The new department's leaders are told.