Tagging employees

Departments and locations describe the shape of most companies, but not every group inside them. The contractors. The first-aiders. The remote staff. Each of those cuts across your departments and locations, and none of them has a box of its own.

Tags are labels an administrator defines themselves — a short name and a colour — and applies to whichever employees belong. An employee can carry several at once.

Once a tag exists it does two jobs. It shows on the employee’s record and in the Employees list as a coloured chip, so the grouping is visible where people already look. And it can be used to decide who a policy covers — which leave types a Leave Access policy grants, and who is in a Restrict leave overlap group — so the same grouping drives what those people may book, and how many of them may be away at once.

Name the group once, and the same tag does both jobs — instead of the same list of people kept by hand in two places.

Who can set them up and apply them

Defining tags and applying them are both administrators only. Administrators define tags on the Tags page under Settings; administrators apply them on an employee’s record. No other role can create, rename, recolour, redescribe, re-scope or delete a tag, and no other role can add one to an employee or take one away — not even roles that can otherwise edit that employee’s record.

Where to find them

Open Settings and select the Tags tile, under Company setup. A page you have pinned to the menu leaves its group and comes first, under Pinned.

The page has a tile for each tag you have defined, in alphabetical order. A tile leads with the tag’s colour and carries its name, with its description underneath. Beside the tiles, Manage tags describes tags as cross-cutting groups of employees — contractors, first-aiders, remote staff — that can also be used to scope policies, and says that an administrator tags an employee from the employee’s details.

Add new, above the tiles, creates a tag. Once the list is long, a search box sits beside it, with a count under them. The search finds a tag by its name or its description. The count tells you how many tags you have defined against the number your company may have; when you reach that number, Add new is switched off and explains why when you hover over it.

Before you have added any tag, the page says No tags yet. Add one to start tagging employees.

Selecting a tile opens the tag’s details beside the tiles, which move into a narrower list. All tags, above that list, closes the details. The details come in three sections:

• What it is called: the tag’s Name and Colour, and its Description, which reads None when the tag has none.
• Who sees it: Who can see this tag, explained below.
• Where it is used: Employees, how many people carry the tag, and Policies, each policy that uses the tag, by name, or None. Select a policy to open it.

The ⋯ menu at the top right of the details, More actions, offers Edit tag and Delete tag. See Rename, recolour and delete below.

Create a tag

Select Add new. A new tag’s details open as a form, and ask for four things:

• Name — what the tag is called everywhere it appears.
• Colour — chosen from a fixed palette, the same one your employees’ avatars already use.
• Description (optional) — a note for whoever looks after these settings. The form states the rule underneath it: “Shown on this page only — never on the employee’s record.”
• Who can see this tag — one choice from four, explained below.

Save changes creates the tag, says Tag saved and opens its details, and its tile takes its place in the alphabetical list. Cancel takes you back to the tiles. A name another tag already has is refused, and the form says so under Name.

A new tag starts on nobody. Creating it does not apply it to anyone — an administrator applies it employee by employee afterwards.

Who can see this tag

Each tag carries its own answer to this question, chosen when you create it and changeable at any time. The four options run from narrowest to widest, and each wider one includes everybody the narrower ones include — which is why the third reads as a continuation of the second:

• Administrators only.
• Administrators and the employee’s supervisors.
• … and the employee themselves — that is, administrators, the employee’s supervisors, and the employee. In practice this widens what is shown on a record the employee can already open — because they supervise a department they also belong to, for example, or because their role lets them view everyone. There is no separate page where an employee sees their own tags.
• Everyone — anybody who can see that employee’s record at all.

This setting governs the chip — whether the coloured tag and its name are shown to somebody. It does not govern who a Leave Access policy applies to. See Good to know below.

Apply a tag to an employee

Open the employee from Employees. Their tags sit in the name row at the top of the record, after their status, with a small tag icon after them.

Select that icon. A panel opens showing the tags the employee already carries as chips, an Add a tag… box beside them, and the full list of your tags underneath.

• To add a tag, choose it from the list or start typing its name.
• To take one away, select the ✕ on its chip.

Changes are saved as you make them. There is no Save changes step for tags, unlike the rest of the employee’s details.

Only an administrator sees that control. Everybody else sees the tags on that record their own visibility allows, as plain chips, and nothing at all where none apply.

For the rest of the employee record, read Adding, editing, deleting users.

Where tags appear

On an employee’s record, as chips in the name row at the top, in the colours you gave them.

On the Employees list, under each employee’s name and number — showing the tags visible to whoever is looking at the list.

Select a tag on the Employees list and the list filters down to the employees carrying it — a quick way to answer “who are our contractors?” without building a report.

Wherever they are shown, tags are listed alphabetically.

Use a tag to scope a Leave Access policy

A Leave Access policy decides which leave types a group of employees may book. Its Scope section is where you say who that group is, and alongside Employees, Departments and Locations it now carries Tags.

Add a tag to the scope and the policy covers everybody carrying it. Add more than one and it covers everybody carrying any of them.

An employee is inside the policy for as long as they carry the tag, and drops out of it the moment the tag is taken away. That is the whole of what is new — everything else about setting up and reading a Leave Access policy works exactly as it did.

A Restrict leave overlap group is scoped the same way: its Scope block carries a Tags row alongside Employees, Departments and Locations, so a tag can also decide who counts towards a limit on how many people may be away at once. Read more: Restrict leave overlap

Read more: Employee policies — Leave access

Rename, recolour and delete

Select a tag’s tile to open its details. Everything you can do to the tag is in the ⋯ menu at the top right of the details.

Edit tag turns the details into a form, in place, so you can change the tag’s name, its colour, its description and who can see it, then select Save changes, which says Tag saved, or Cancel. Renaming or recolouring keeps everything else about the tag: the employees carrying it go on carrying it, and any policy scoped by it is untouched.

Where it is used names every policy that uses the tag, and selecting one opens that policy. While any policy uses the tag, Delete tag is switched off, and hovering over it says why. Take the tag out of those policies first, then come back and delete it.

Once no policy is using a tag, it can be deleted — and that is permanent. Delete tag asks Delete tag?, and Delete removes the tag from every employee who was carrying it and from the Tags page. There is no way to get it back. The confirmation says so; read it before you confirm.

Good to know

A new tag starts on nobody. Creating it does not apply it to anyone. It stays unused until an administrator adds it to employees, one record at a time.

Only administrators manage tags, and only administrators apply them. Nobody else can create, rename, recolour, redescribe, re-scope or delete a tag, or add one to an employee — even roles that can otherwise edit that employee’s record.

Renaming or recolouring a tag keeps everything. Who carries it and which policies use it are both unaffected.

A tag a policy is using cannot be deleted. The policies that use it are listed under Where it is used on its details, and Delete tag stays switched off until none does.

Deleting an unused tag is permanent. It disappears from every employee who carried it and from the Tags page. There is no undo.

Who can see a tag governs the chip, not the policy. An employee whose visibility for a tag is set to administrators only can still have the leave types they may book narrowed by a Leave Access policy scoped to that same tag. The policy applies to them; they simply never see the tag that is the reason for it.

Tags are listed alphabetically wherever they are shown. There is no manual ordering to set.

Changes are recorded in the Audit trail. Creating, editing and deleting a tag all appear there, and so does a change to the tags an employee carries. Read more: Audit trail.