How positions work

A position is a job somebody holds: a job title, a department, a location and a company, together, and the position it reports to. Most people hold exactly one. Positions exist for the people who hold two, and for organisations that want every job to come from one agreed list.

Everybody already has one

This is the part that surprises administrators. Positions are not something you start using; they are something you start seeing.

Every person in your account already holds at least one position, whether or not positions are switched on. With positions off, the dropdowns on a user record are the whole story and a generated position sits quietly behind them. Compliance and training targeting already run on positions either way.

Switching positions on is a choice about how strict your organisation wants to be. With positions on, every person’s job comes from your own list of positions, and nobody can give someone a combination that is not on it. That stops people being put in the wrong place by mistake, and it is why switching on is a short setup rather than a switch: every generated position has to be named or merged into another first. See Moving your account onto positions.

A position is shared, not personal

A position is a template, not a record about one person. Five assistants with the same job title, department, location and company share a single position between them, even if they have different managers.

This is worth knowing before you edit one. Renaming a position renames it for everybody holding it.

Positions opened for you are named after the job and where it is done, joined by a middle dot: Customer Services Manager · London. Positions you create yourself are named whatever you type, so a shift or a cover arrangement can have a name that means something locally.

Changing somebody’s job moves them, it does not edit their position

When you change a person’s department or job title, their position is not rewritten. They move to the position that matches their new combination, and that position is created if nobody held it before.

So a job change never affects anybody else, even though positions are shared. The colleagues left behind keep the position they were already on.

With positions on, a user record has no job title, department, location, company or manager lists to change. You change somebody’s job by giving them a different position from your list, and nothing can create a new combination from their record.

How a position reports to another position

A position reports to a position, not to a person. Bar Staff reports to Shift Supervisor; Shift Supervisor reports to General Manager. Whoever holds the position above manages the people in the position below.

This is what keeps reporting lines tidy when people come and go. When a supervisor leaves, you give their position to the new supervisor and everybody below follows, with no changes to the people who report to them.

A person’s manager is shown on their record, together with the position they are managed through: Jo Patel - via Shift Supervisor · Riverside. Reports, approvals and reviews still name a person.

When several people hold the position above

Shift work often means three supervisors share one position. All three can see and act for the people who report into it. One of them is the lead: approvals and reviews are sent to the lead, and the lead is the manager reports show.

The lead is whoever has held the position longest, unless you choose someone. You can change the lead from the position’s details, and hand it back to the longest-serving holder at any time. See Setting up positions.

When the lead changes, approvals that are already waiting stay with the person they were sent to, as long as that person still holds the position and has not been deactivated. If they have left the position or been deactivated, the approval moves to the new lead.

When the position above is vacant

Everyone who holds a position manages through it unless they have been deactivated. That includes people who have been imported or invited but have not logged in yet, so a team reports to its manager from the day both are added, not from the day the manager first signs in. A deactivated person still holds the position on paper, but the people below them report to the next person up.

If nobody holds the position above someone, their manager is found further up: the next position that somebody does hold. Approvals and alerts always reach a person, even while a job is empty.

The Positions list shows every vacant position that people report into, so an empty job never goes unnoticed. If every position above someone is vacant, they report to your escalation contact, set under Admin, then People and Settings. If you have not chosen one, it is your earliest-added active admin.

The position at the very top, such as Managing Director, reports to nothing and has no manager. That is expected.

Why a second job needed this

Before positions, training was targeted by a person’s department, location, job title, company and manager, and those values only ever described one of their jobs. Somebody covering a second role was never given that role’s training, because nothing recorded it.

Now a rule asks every position a person holds. Assign a course to a department and somebody whose second job sits in that department gets it, even though their main job does not.

One of a person’s positions is their primary, and that is the one their user record shows and the one that stamps records created because of them.

Switching them on, and off again

Positions are switched on under Admin, then People and Settings, by choosing Set up positions. Until you finish that setup, the Positions screen is not there to open.

Positions can only be switched off once everybody holds a single position. Switching off moves everyone back onto the job their dropdowns describe, keeps the manager they had, and keeps the positions you named, unused, for if you switch back on. When you do, every job that matches one of them exactly is merged into it for you, so you only check the setup rather than repeat it.

While positions are off, a company, department, location or job title that one of those kept positions names cannot be deleted, because you cannot change the position until you switch back on. Archive it instead.

To create and import positions, see Setting up positions.