How to set roles, primary role, and job category in Jostle

Introduction

This section will help you understand Roles and how they relate to Job Category and Job Titles. Configuration tips are included. Here is where you can learn more about importing structure into Charts.

Table of contents

1. Roles
2. Primary Role
3. Job Category
4. Job Title

Roles

A Role is a specific job (position) that is part of a Team. Users often have multiple Roles. For example, a person might hold these three Roles:

• VP Manufacturing on the Executive Team
• Executive Sponsor on the United Way Fundraising Team
• Goalie on the Company Soccer Team

You can see all the Roles for a particular user by looking at the Roles Tab in their User Profile.

Roles are what defines an org structure—they form the nodes (cards) in a Chart. A Role can be vacant, or it can be filled by a user. When a User quits, their Role remains to be filled by their successor.

Note: Chart nodes can also be Team Cards (instead of a Role Card). This allows you to build up aspects of an organizational structure that are not positions filled by a person. For example, to create a self-managed team, all the people (Roles) on that team would report to a Team Card.

How to configure Roles

How to add a new Role to an existing Chart

To add a new Role, a Chart Admin should:

1. Click on Teams in the Main Nav Panel
2. Navigate to the Chart you want to adjust
3. Navigate to the Team in that Chart
4. Click Edit Chart at the top
5. Make your adjustments, as described here: Edit Teams
6. Click Exit Edit Mode at the top

Automatic update of the Main Org Chart when adding new Users

When a System Admin adds Users via a CSV import that includes the PrimarySupervisorUsername field, the platform will make a best-efforts attempt to place the new User in the Main Org Chart. This happens when:

• The User does not already have a Role in the Main Org Chart
• You specify the SupervisorUsername for the new User
• This specified supervisor has only a single solid-line Role in the Main Org Chart

When placing this new User into the existing Main Org Chart, if the CSV specifies a RoleName, the platform will:

• If the supervisor's Team has a vacant Role with a matching RoleName, the new User will fill that vacant Role.
• If a matching vacant Role does not exist, a new solid-line Role will be created with the specified RoleName.

Note: Best practice is to not update Charts via a User upload. Omit the PrimarySupervisorUsername field from the User update and update the Chart on its own, as described above.

Primary Role

Teams view allows you to assign multiple Roles to a User. Primary Role (PrimaryRoleName) designates the main Role for a particular User. If you don't have Teams view enabled, you will have Job Title in place of Primary Role.

Each User can have multiple Roles (different jobs they do for specific Teams). Primary Role designates the most important (or best referenced) Role that a particular User has. It is simply a “tag” applied to one of the Roles defined for that person. 

Primary Role is used throughout the platform to give context to a User. For example, in Card Layout of People it is the Primary Role that appears in association with each User. 

Unless otherwise defined, this Primary Role is set as the highest main-hierarchy Role defined in Teams view, but can be specified to be any defined Role. If a User's Primary Role is renamed, it will still remain as that user's Primary Role.

How to configure Primary Roles

To make Primary Role User-owned

A System Admin can go to Admin Settings > User Profiles > Configure User Profiles, then scroll down to Primary Role and check the circle next to User. Once "User-owned”, individuals can edit their User Profile to select which of their Roles is designated as their Primary Role.

To bulk rename Primary Roles

In a CSV file upload, a System Admin can rename Primary Roles via the parameter PrimaryRoleName. If that user already has a defined Primary Role its Role Name will be updated to match what is in the CSV. If that user does not have a defined Primary Role, one will not be created. This function only renames existing Primary Roles.

Job Category

Job Category is a field intended for broad job categories and not for specific roles or job titles.

If your company categorizes jobs into families, such as Engineer I, Engineer II, etc. then this is where that designation belongs. Someone with a Job Category "Engineer II" might have a Role as Project Engineer on the Beta Project Team.

Most often this field should not be used, at which point it will not appear in User Profiles.

Job Categories can be found via Search.

How to configure Job Categories

To set Job Category for a particular User, a System Admin should:

1.  Go to Admin Settings > User Accounts and Data > Edit, Invite, Disable Users
2. Search in the User and click Edit
3. Update the Job Category field, as required
4. Click Save Changes at the top

To bulk load Job Categories for Users, a System Admin should:

1. Create a CSV file with two columns (Username,JobCategory)
2. Fill the each row with the Username and Job Category for each User to be update
3. Go to Admin Settings > User Data to/from Other Systems > Extract/Manage All User Data (CSV) to upload the file.

To make Job Category User-owned, a System Admins should:

1. To to Admin Settings > User Profiles > Configure User Profiles
2. Scroll down to Job Category and select User
3. Click Save at the top

Once “User-owned”, individuals can define their own Job Category in the Info Tab of their User Profile. Making this parameter User-owned is normally not a good practice.

Job Title

The Job Title field replaces Primary Role for organizations that do not have Teams view (org charts) enabled. It appears in all the same places across the platform.