Knowledge Base

Departments and groups determine where data lives, who owns it, and who can share it. While user roles define what a user can do, departments and groups define what a user can see — forming the organizational model behind access control, licensing, and GDPR/HIPAA-compliant data handling.

• Departments determine visibility and ownership of scenarios and sessions
• Groups determine who can be invited to view or review sessions within a department

This page applies to every user: understanding your department and group membership tells you exactly what scenarios and sessions you can see and share.

Important note: Setting up departments and groups is optional. In a small organization, or with a limited number of users, it can be simpler to skip this altogether. It becomes valuable once an observation lab has multiple rooms and is shared by different user groups — for example, one group observing counseling sessions and another doing UX testing.

Prerequisites

• At least one Administrator (Level 1) account must exist.
• User roles must already be assigned — see User Accounts and Roles.
• If departments and groups are used, at least one department must exist before users, scenarios, or groups can be assigned to it. An Administrator can add and assign departments and groups in User management.

Users

Each person has one individual account with exactly one role, and that account belongs to exactly one department. Only users whose role allows recording can invite others to view sessions. A role determines what a user can do; a department determines where they can do it.

Important note: A user account can only belong to one department. If someone needs to work in more than one department, the workaround is to create a separate account for them per department — each account needs its own, different email address.

Departments

The primary organizational boundary. A department is a group of users who work together using the same scenarios for recording.

• Each scenario belongs to exactly one department
• Users only see scenarios and sessions belonging to their own department
• Users in different departments cannot see, interact with, or share sessions with each other by default

Groups

Used to grant identical session access to multiple users at once.

• A group belongs to a single department and only contains users from that department
• Groups can be private (visible only to the creator) or public (usable by other users in the department)
• Commonly used to invite multiple users to view a live session, or to grant review access to a recorded one
• Creating and editing groups is limited to Administrator and Researcher/Trainer roles
• Groups never override department boundaries — they're an access convenience, not an ownership level

Important note: Setting up departments and groups carefully is the responsibility of Administrators and Researchers/Trainers, since it directly determines data visibility and access. Technicians are not involved in this and don't need to define departments or groups.

Scenarios and sessions

A scenario exists within a single department and is accessible to users or groups within that department. A session is created under a scenario, and inherits both the department's ownership and the scenario's group-based access scope. Session access is always evaluated against department ownership, group membership, and the user's role.

How it all relates

Links

• User Accounts and Roles
• System requirements
• Installation
• Getting started