Departments and positions
Keep your departments with their heads, parents and cost centres, and on Growth and above the positions inside them, filled or vacant.
Agoo is in early access. This page describes the feature as it ships to early-access organisations; screens are illustrative.
Departments are on every plan; positions are on Growth, Pro and Enterprise. Both live in Console → People, under Departments and Positions. Owners, Admins and HR keep them for the whole organisation; HR or an Admin limited to some sites sees them but can't change them, because a department or a position usually spans more than one site.
Departments
A department has:
| Detail | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name | Up to 120 characters, one of each name (ignoring capitals) among the departments in use |
| Code | Optional, up to 20 letters, digits and simple separators, such as FIN or OPS-2 |
| Sits under | Optional: the department it belongs to, such as Treasury under Finance |
| Head | Optional: the person who heads it |
| Cost centre | Optional, for your accounts and payroll |
Each department shows how many active people are in it and, on Growth and above, how many positions.
Made from what you already have
When People and HR arrived, Agoo made a department for each department name your people already had, spelt the way most of them spelt it, and put everyone in theirs. Nothing about their directory entry changed.
From then on:
- Choosing a department for someone in People picks one from the list. Whoever keeps people can also give a new name, in People, a CSV import or the API, and the department is made; someone editing only their own profile chooses one that exists.
- Renaming a department renames it on everyone in it, and in the API and exports.
- Moving someone to another department is a job change: it's kept in their job history with its date.
- A department can't sit under itself, or under one of its own departments: Agoo says which choice makes the loop.
Archiving a department
Archive a department once nobody active is in it, no department sits under it, and its positions are closed or moved. It disappears from the pickers; its history, and the history of everyone who was in it, stays. Bring it back at any time.
Positions
Growth and above. A position is a post your organisation has, whether or not anyone holds it now: "Senior Accountant, Finance, Ridge HQ, reporting to the Finance Manager". Positions are optional: if you don't use them, nothing else changes.
| Detail | Notes |
|---|---|
| Title | Up to 120 characters |
| Department | One that isn't archived |
| Site | Where the post is based |
| Reports to | Another position. Agoo refuses a chain that loops back on itself |
| Grade | Your own grade, such as G7 or Senior |
| Hours | Full time, or a part, from 0.1 to 1 (0.5 is half time) |
| Status | Filled (someone holds it), Vacant (nobody does, and it may be filled), Frozen (nobody is to be hired now) or Closed (it no longer exists, kept for history) |
| Budgeted | Whether it's in your budget |
Filling a position
Open the position, choose the person who holds it and the date they start in it. A position has one holder at a time, and a person holds one position at a time: putting someone in a new position ends their time in the old one on the same day. End their time in it leaves the position vacant. Each move is a line in the person's job history, and the position shows who held it and since when.
You can also fill a position as part of a job change from a future date, such as a promotion from 1 November.
If you move to a plan without positions
Positions you made stay, with their holders and history, and show on records as before. You can't make new ones or fill them until you're back on Growth or above. Departments stay on every plan.
In the audit trail
Every change is recorded: Made a department, Changed a department, Archived a department, Brought back a department, Made a position, Changed a position, Put someone in a position and Ended someone's time in a position.
For developers
Departments and positions are in the public API (Pro and above): read with people:read, made and changed with hr:write. Webhooks
department.created, department.updated, position.created and position.updated tell your systems (Growth and above). A person's department
stays a plain name, as before. See the API reference.
HR records
What an HR record keeps about each person, who can see it, and how Ghana Card, SSNIT and other statutory numbers are kept encrypted and seen only with a reason.
Job changes and history
Change someone's job from the date it takes effect, have line managers propose changes for HR to approve, and keep every change in a job history that's never rewritten.