Departments and Editor Access

Promptless WP decides access on three separate axes: the person’s WordPress role, their Promptless WP access level, and their departments. The role and access level decide what kind of work someone can do. Departments decide which pages they can do it on. No new WordPress role is created; a department editor is an ordinary Editor or Author with one or more departments ticked on their profile.

When to use it

• Several teams share one site and each team should edit only its own pages, for example Parks, Finance and Planning.
• You want an editor to use the Promptless WP editor but not Global Settings or the AI features. Use the access level for that; departments are not needed.
• Everyone may edit every page. Leave departments empty; nothing changes.

Who can use Promptless WP

Each user profile has a Promptless WP Settings heading with a Promptless WP Access Level field. Only administrators see and change it.

Access level	What the person can do
No Access	Cannot use the Promptless WP editor.
Client (Content Editing Only)	Edits sections. No Global Settings and no AI features.
Developer (Full Access)	Everything, including Global Settings, the AI features and the connector’s site-wide tools.

When no level has been chosen for a person, it follows their WordPress capabilities: a user who can manage options (an Administrator) gets Developer, a user who can edit posts or pages gets Client, and anyone else gets No Access.

The access level works on top of WordPress, not instead of it. To open the Promptless WP editor on a page, the person also needs the core capability to edit pages and permission to edit that specific page. The Promptless WP admin screens need the promptless_manage_settings capability, which the Administrator role receives when the plugin is activated or upgraded.

How to set up departments

1. Go to Pages → Departments and create one department per team with Add New Department. The same list also appears under Posts.
2. Open each page and tick its department in the Departments box in the page sidebar. You can also set it from Quick Edit in the pages list, where a Departments column shows each page’s department.
3. Go to Users, open a person’s profile, and under Promptless WP Settings tick one or more Departments. Save the profile.

A person with at least one department ticked is scoped to those departments. Untick every department to remove the restriction.

Note

Only users with the promptless_manage_settings capability (administrators by default) can create departments or change which department a page belongs to. A scoped editor sees their page’s department but cannot change it, so they cannot move a page into their own department.

What a department editor can and cannot do

A scoped editor keeps everything their WordPress role allows (editing, publishing, deleting) but only on pages they can reach.

The page is…	Can the scoped editor edit, publish or delete it?
In one of their departments	Yes. One shared department is enough when a page or a person has several.
Only in departments they do not belong to	No, even if they wrote it.
In no department	Only if they are its author.
Being created by them	Yes. It is placed in their departments as soon as it is created.

In practice:

• Pages lists only pages in their departments. Other pages are left out of the list rather than shown and refused.
• Opening an out-of-scope page by its address, in the Promptless WP editor, or through revision history is refused.
• Reading is never narrowed. Published pages stay public, and the editor can view any of them on the site like any visitor.
• A person with no departments is not scoped and works exactly as before, as does every administrator without departments.

Departments apply to pages and posts. Forms, workflows and media are not scoped.

Through the AI connector

The connector signs in as a WordPress user with an application password, so it gets that user’s departments. For a scoped user, the connector reads, updates, deploys to and deletes only pages that user can reach, and its page lists show only those pages. The connector cannot set a page’s department; do that in WordPress.

Limits and common problems

• An editor can still edit a page from another team. They have no departments ticked, so they are not scoped. Tick at least one on their profile.
• An editor cannot open a page they wrote. The page is in a department they do not belong to. Authorship does not override a department; add them to that department or move the page.
• The Departments field on a profile says no departments exist yet. Create them first under Pages → Departments.
• An editor cannot open the Promptless WP editor at all. Check their Promptless WP Access Level is not No Access, and that their role can edit pages.

For the plugin’s settings screens, see Plugin settings.

Available since Promptless WP 1.8.1.

Related pages

• Plugin Settings — Every Promptless WP screen in wp-admin, what each option changes, and where the settings that are not in wp-admin live.