Can I deactivate a departments that own documents?

Yes, a department can be deactivated when documents are currently owned by that department. No document changes are required immediately; however, the next time the document is revised, the Owning Department must be updated to an active department. 

Optionally, you can perform an administrative update to change the owning department instead of waiting for the next document revision. This update is available from Document Control → Manage Documents → Administrative Update for Document Field Values. FAQ article How do I perform administrative updates for field values? provides details on performing these types of updates.

It should be noted that other references to departments must be removed before a department can be deactivated. For example:

• A department cannot be an Approving, Observing, or Affected department for any Document Type (Configure Document Control > Configure Document Types)

• A department cannot be a member of a Review Board

• A department cannot have active users

If there are additional references to be removed, the system will display an error when trying to deactivate a department.

Open

Example Errors When Deactivating a Referenced Department