The institutional hierarchy

Your organization's own structure as a tree, with people assigned to units and collections mapped to them, so access follows the structure instead of being granted one person at a time.

Why it exists beside collections and folders

Collections and folders organize documents: what they are about. The hierarchy organizes people: which unit each person belongs to, in the shape your organization actually has (divisions, departments, offices, campuses, any named element). Once both exist, one mapping connects them: a collection is mapped to the unit whose material it is, with a right (See, Ask, or Download), and everyone assigned to that unit, or to any unit above it, holds that right on the collection. The people in a team get their team's material, and the people who oversee the team are covered for it too, with no grant per person. Forty-five seconds, in the product's own shapes:

The three things most people do

Build the tree. Open Hierarchy from the workspace page. Add a node with a name and its parent. Use your own names; the product has no opinion about them. Three levels is usual; more is fine. Each row carries a mark for its level, the same marks the demonstration uses: a building for the organization at the top, three linked boxes for a division directly under it, two linked boxes for a unit inside a division, and one box on a stem for anything nested deeper. The legend above the tree names them.

Assign people. Select a node and assign a member to it with a role inside that node (viewer, editor, or admin). The role there overrides the member's workspace role for everything mapped to that node and the nodes beneath it, so a person can be a viewer everywhere and an editor in their own department. Moving a person to another unit is a reassignment: their rights change to the new unit's at once.

Map collections. Select a node and map a collection to it with a right: See (knows it exists), Ask rights (the assistant may answer them from it), or Download (Ask plus the file). Everyone assigned to the node, or to any node above it, holds that right on the collection, on top of the collection's ordinary grants. A new person placed in a unit holds, from their first day, the rights mapped to that unit and to every unit beneath it.

How it shows up elsewhere

Explain access says, in words, when a hierarchy mapping is the reason someone can reach a document, and which unit it came through. Document details can name the unit a document applies to, so the assistant can say which unit's version it is quoting. Units themselves cannot be moved in this version; to restructure, delete a leaf unit and create it again where it belongs, then map and assign again.

The one mistake to avoid

Mapping too high. A collection mapped to Finance reaches the people assigned to Finance and to the units above it, not the people assigned in Accounts payable beneath it. Map a collection at the unit whose own people need it; everyone above that unit is covered automatically.