Head of Department

A Head of Department (HoD) is an agent assigned to a department that automatically inherits access to every job in that department. Assign once, and the agent can invoke, manage, and report on all departmental workflows — including any new jobs added to the department in the future.

Why this matters

Without a Head of Department, managing access across many jobs is manual: each agent must be individually configured with the jobs it can access. As departments grow, this becomes a maintenance burden.

With a Head of Department:

One-time setup: Assign an agent to a department once. It immediately gains access to all current jobs.
Automatic inheritance: Any new job added to the department is automatically accessible to the HoD agent — no reconfiguration needed.
Conversational control: Combine with Agents calling Jobs so the HoD agent can invoke departmental jobs mid-conversation.

How it works

Department
├── Job A
├── Job B
├── Job C   ← all automatically accessible to HoD
└── Head of Department Agent
    └── Can invoke any job in this department

The HoD agent acts as the intelligent front door for the department. Users interact with the agent; the agent decides which job to run based on the request.

Assigning a Head of Department

Navigate to Library
Open the department you want to configure
Click Set Head of Department
Select or create the agent you want to assign as HoD
Click Confirm

The agent now appears as the Head of Department for that department and has access to all of its jobs.

Configuring the HoD agent

The HoD agent can start routing useful work as soon as it has a clear description and is assigned to a department — it infers which job to run from each request using the job descriptions.

You can improve reliability further by adding instructions that describe:

How to identify which job matches a given request (when there are several options)
What inputs to extract from the conversation to pass to each job
How to handle requests that don't match any available job
How to report job outcomes back to the user

Example instructions for an "HR Department" HoD agent:

You manage the HR department's automated workflows. When a user makes a request, identify the most appropriate job to invoke:

- Onboarding request → invoke "New Employee Onboarding" job
- Policy question → invoke "Policy Q&A" job
- Performance review → invoke "Performance Review Preparation" job

Extract any required inputs from the conversation (employee name, department, start date, etc.) before invoking a job. Once the job completes, summarize the output for the user.

If the request doesn't match any available job, respond helpfully and offer to connect the user with the HR team directly.