General - Departments
Departments allow you to segment properties into groups based on the type of property or type of transaction. By default we include support for three departments; sales, lettings and commercial, though other departments can also be added.
Departments are key in Property Hive as the fields and functionality related to each can differ. For example, the fields shown for a commercial property will differ from the fields shown for a standard lettings property.
Some examples of where departments come into effect include:
- Property edit screen
- Property search forms on the frontend
- Sorting and filtering of properties
- Matching applicants to properties if using email alerts
- Property imports and exports
Managing departments
Departments can be managed under 'Property Hive > Settings > General':
If you don't see the 'Settings' submenu option available it could mean your user role doesn't have the right permissions as this is only available to administrators.
Residential Sales and Residential Lettings will be ticked by default, but Commercial is also available to select.
Adding additional departments
If you wish to add an additional department you can do so by clicking the '+ Add Department' link. You'll then be able to enter the department name, and also which existing department to base it off:
Some examples of additional departments that you might want to add are Student Accommodation, Farms and Auction Properties.
Note that on the frontend it's not possible to show properties belonging to multiple departments merged into one search (i.e. in the above example you couldn't show both student and lettings properties in the same set of results). If you wish to do this it would be worth not using departments, but instead using another field such as property type or marketing flags.
Setting the primary department
The next option is the ability to set a primary department:
The primary department is used in a number of places throughout Property Hive including:
- The department ticked by default when entering a property
- The department ticked by default in property search forms