Roles

Purpose: Define the jobs people hold, what skill levels each job expects, and who holds or is growing into each one.
Who is this for: Everyone, admins to define roles
Prerequisites: Skills in the catalogue.
Permissions: View access to Skills and to the Role record to read a role's expected levels. Manage access to Skills to change a role's expected levels.

A role is a job someone can hold, such as Developer, Project Manager or QA. Roles say what skill level a job expects and label the part someone plays on a project. Your workspace may use a different name for Role.

How it works

A role is a record, like a project or a skill. It has a name, a description and any custom fields your admin adds. Each role also carries an expected level for each skill (the level the job asks for), using the same 0 to 5 scale as people's skill levels. An expected level of 0, or no level, means the role asks nothing of that skill.

Roles are used in three places:

Skills: compare a person's levels against the expected levels of the role they hold.
Staff: each staff record has a Current role and a Target role, one role each.
Allocation: you can book someone on a project as a given role.

Find roles

Roles have no menu item of their own.

Open Skills in the left menu.
Click the All roles tab.

The tab is a standard table with search, Filter, Customise and Download. See Customise your table view. The tab cannot be renamed or deleted.

Create a role

Open Skills in the left menu.
Click the All roles tab.
Click Add Role. The Add dialog opens.
Enter a Name.
Optional: fill in Category, Description, Responsibilities and Requirements.
Click Add. The role appears in the table.

Set expectations

Open the role from the All roles tab.
Open its Skills tab. Skills are grouped by category, collapsed to start with.
Click a skill's level and pick the level this role needs. It saves straight away.

Click Assign skill to find a skill by search instead of expanding categories. The Chart view shows the expected profile as a radar.

Category rows show a calculated score and cannot be edited. If you only have view access, the tab is read-only.

Give someone a role

From the staff record

Open a staff record.
Go to the Skills tab. Current role and Target role sit in a row at the top.
Set Current role, the job they hold now.
Optional: set Target role, the job they are growing into.

Each field takes one role. If the record has no Skills tab, the two fields are in its details instead.

From the role

Open the role and go to its Staff tab, which has two tables:

Table	Who it lists
Currently in this role	Staff whose Current role is this role.
Targeting this role	Staff whose Target role is this role.

Each table shows name, job title and, if your workspace has a Department field, department. Click a row to open that person. A search box above the tables, with the placeholder Search…, filters both tables at once.

To add someone:

Above the tables, click Assign Staff. One button serves both tables.
In the Staff list, choose the person. Each name shows the role they hold now, or Already in this role.
In Assign as, choose Currently in this role or Targeting this role.
Click Assign Staff. A message reads "(name) assigned." and the person is listed in the matching table.
If the person already holds another role in that slot, a Replace their role? message appears first. Click Replace.

To remove someone, open Row actions on their row and click Unassign. A message reads "(name) unassigned." Only the slot for that table is cleared.

Everyone sees Assign Staff and Unassign. The change saves only if you can edit that person's Staff record. If you cannot, Gembaa refuses it and shows a message.

Compare person and role

Open a staff record and go to the Skills tab.
Switch to Table view.

The table shows Skill and Level, then Current role and Target role. A column appears only when the person holds that role.

Each role cell reads like 2 (+0.5). The first number is the level the role expects.

The number in brackets is the gap, which is the person's level minus the expected level. A skill the role does not ask for shows no gap.

Colour	Meaning
Amber	The person is below the expected level.
Green	The person meets or exceeds it.

Hover over a role cell to see three lines:

(first name)'s level, or Not filled when the person has no level for the skill.
Current role (or Target role), the expected level.
Gap, on the same amber or green as the cell.

The footer shows Avg for each column, summarising the rows currently shown.

In Chart view, the radar draws up to three lines when both roles are set: the person's own line (for example "Sarah's skills"), Current role and Target role. Use Customise to show or hide each line. See Skills.

Use roles in allocation

When you add or edit an allocation, pick a Role, or leave (no role). In Allocation you can group or filter by role. Renaming a role updates its name everywhere without splitting groups. See Allocation.

Delete a role

Open Row actions on the role's row, or Record actions in the role's panel, and choose Delete.
Confirm in the dialog. The role is removed.

Staff who pointed at it keep their records, with the role cleared. Allocations that used it stay, with no role.

Good to know

Roles are not access roles. What a person can see and change is set in Access control.
An admin can switch Skills off. Roles are then hidden, staff no longer show Current role and Target role, and Allocation hides its role column. No data is deleted. See Turn features on or off.
Each of Current role and Target role holds one role only. A person who splits two jobs is recorded under the main one.
Importing allocations from a CSV matches the Role column by name. An unknown name is reported as an error on that row, and no role is created.
You only see expected levels for roles you can view. A role you have no view access to returns none.
On a role's Skills tab in table view, a level for a skill you cannot read shows as a locked row named Restricted, under a Restricted category. The chart leaves it out, and the gap columns ignore it.