[Waiting for user feedback] How to properly organize a website structure

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[Rostislav Avtodiychuk]

How to properly organize a website with a complex structure. I have a structure with 5 locations, all of which are identical in structure, and two different types of departments. There can be multiple departments, for example, four of the first type and two of the second.
The first type has five people working in their respective positions (manager, secretary, designer, proofreader, courier).
The other type has five to six people (printer, cutter, 3D designer, operator, support worker).
Each employee has the same structure and their own data.
I want to make it so that on the main page, the person responsible for managing a location can see a list of all its departments (they shouldn't see other locations). When clicking on a department, a new page opens with a list of employees as follows: "job title in department - last name" and information about that department. If there is no last name next to the position, just a blank field next to the position. Clicking on a last name takes you to the employee's record.
I have experience with the Access toolset and creating sites with a similar structure, but they were a little simpler. And I can't figure out what tools to use to create separate blocks and how to link these blocks within one place. The places don't overlap, but the structure is the same. Only the name of the unit and different people change.
I would appreciate any information or documentation that would help me create a website with this structure. Thank you in advance. I've attached a screenshot just in case.

[Christopher Amirian]

Hi,

Welcome to Toolset support. It is hard to implement this without any custom coding. I will try my best but there is no guarantee.

Here is my thought process (most probably you will need the legacy views to have more control over the design):

- Locations (CPT)
- Departments (CPT) + Department Type (taxonomy or a Types field)
- Employees (CPT)

Relationships: Location → Department (1-to-many), Department → Employee (optional; you can also use “Post Reference” fields for fixed roles)

1- Create the content types

Create CPTs: Locations, Departments, Employees
Create a taxonomy (or a Types field) for Department Type (Type1 / Type2)

2- Create relationships

Create relationship Location (parent) → Department (child)

3- Model the “fixed positions”

Because each department has fixed job slots, use Post Reference fields on the Department post:

For Type1 department add these fields on Departments:

- manager (post reference → Employee)
- secretary (post reference → Employee)
- designer (post reference → Employee)
- proofreader (post reference → Employee)
- courier (post reference → Employee)

For Type2 department add these fields on Departments:

- printer (post reference → Employee)
- cutter (post reference → Employee)
- 3d-designer (post reference → Employee)
- operator (post reference → Employee)
- support-worker (post reference → Employee)
- (optional) auxiliary-worker (post reference → Employee)

This approach makes your “Job title – Last name (or blank)” output straightforward (if the field is empty, you show nothing after the dash).

Conditionals documentation:
https://toolset.com/documentation/programmer-reference/views/views-shortcodes/#wpv-conditional

4- Build the Department page (single) showing the employee list

- Create a Content Template for single Department
- Inside the template, output each line using conditional output, for example (role shown always, name only if set). Something like this:

Manager - [wpv-conditional if="[types field='manager']" evaluate="not_empty"] [types field='manager'][/wpv-conditional]

- Repeat for each role field.

5) Build the “Manager dashboard” page: list only departments of their location

Assign the Location post author = the manager user

- Set each Location post author to the manager user.
- Create a View that lists Departments, filtered by:
Related to Location
AND that Location is authored by the current user (using Views filters / current user)

Documentation: https://toolset.com/documentation/programmer-reference/views/views-shortcodes/#wpv-current-user

6- Restrict access (so they don’t see other locations)

Use Toolset Access to create a role (e.g. “Location Manager”) and limit editing/reading to what they should manage.

Docs: https://toolset.com/course-chapter/controlling-access-to-content-in-directory-sites/

Honestly, I did not implement such a model, so I am not sure how practical this will be. But I thought I would give what I have in mind.

Thanks.