Staff
- Purpose
- Find, add and edit the people in your workspace, and see how a staff record relates to a sign-in.
- Who is this for
- Everyone
- Prerequisites
- View access to the Staff module.
- Permissions
- Edit access to change staff details. Deactivate and delete need Full Access on the Staff record.
Staff is the list of people your organisation plans work around. Every allocation, task assignee, project manager and skill rating points at a staff record. Your workspace may use a different name for Staff (an admin can change it under Terminology).
How it works
A staff record and a sign-in are two separate things.
- A staff record describes a person: name, email, job title, department, team, skills and so on.
- A sign-in (a member) lets that person open Gembaa. Members are provisioned from your organisation's corporate directory through single sign-on. Nobody signs up by themselves.
When a member is provisioned, Gembaa matches them to a staff record by email address. If there is a record with that email, they are linked to it. If not, a new record is created. A record you added by hand is adopted, not duplicated.
Every staff record has a record ID, a short key shown in the ID column, including the records the directory creates.
A staff record can exist without a sign-in. Examples are a future hire, a contractor who never signs in, or someone you want to plan work for before they join. Staff records with no linked member show a small G. badge (a pale chip with a dark G) beside the name in tables, the record panel, pickers and relation chips.
Staff records are either:
| Kind | Where details come from |
|---|---|
| Directory-owned | Created and kept up to date by your corporate directory. Name, email, job title, phone numbers, location and employee ID are read-only in Gembaa. |
| Gembaa-created | Added by someone in Gembaa. You edit every field here. |
On a directory-owned record, a locked field shows a padlock and the note Synchronised from the corporate directory. Change it in the directory and the new value arrives on the next sync.
Open the Staff list
Click Staff in the left menu. The page is a standard table: tabs, quick search, Filter, Customise and Download work as on every other module. See Customise your table view and Filter, sort and group.
Two things are specific to Staff:
- The Skills matrix is available as a view of the Staff list. See Skills.
- The Filter dialog has a Skills tab, so you can ask "who is at React 4 or better?" and combine it with other rules such as department.
Add a staff member
- Open Staff in the left menu.
- Click Add Staff in the upper right corner. The Add dialog opens.
- Fill in the name and any other fields you need. Fields marked required must be filled before you can save.
- Click Add. The new person appears in the Staff list.
If the person will sign in, make sure the email matches their directory email. They are then linked to this record the first time they are provisioned.
Edit staff details
Click a name to open the record panel. Change a field in place, then press Enter or Tab to save it. Clicking away discards the edit. The panel has these tabs, among others:
| Tab | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Overview and Details | The person's fields, grouped in sections. |
| Allocation | Where the person is booked, as a chart and a list. Admins also turn allocation on and off here. See Allocation. |
| Skills | Their skill levels, as radar charts or a table, with Current role and Target role at the top. See Skills. |
Two more windows open from the panel's Record actions menu rather than as tabs:
| Menu item | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Finance | Working hours per weekday and hourly cost, over time. These set the person's capacity. |
| Activity log | Who changed what, and when. |
See The record panel for how panels work in general. Your admin may add custom fields to Staff, and fields can be hidden by access rules.
The panel header also has a Comments icon for discussing the person's record with colleagues. It is on by default. See Comment on a record.
Set team and roles
- Team on a staff record is read from the team they belong to. Changing it moves the person to the new team. See Teams.
- Current role and Target role each point at one job role. You edit them at the top of the Skills tab, not in the details. They drive the gap columns on that tab. See Roles.
Check capacity in Finance
You can also open Finance from the Row actions menu on the person's row.
Allocation compares what someone is booked for with what they can work. Their capacity is the working hours on their Finance entry for that week. If no entry covers a period, the workspace default hours apply, and Allocation flags the period with No finance entry. To add an entry:
- In the panel, open the Record actions menu.
- Click Finance. The Finance window opens.
- Click Add entry.
- Enter a Start date, the Hourly cost and the working hours.
- Optional: set an End date.
- Click Add. The entry appears in the list.
See Finance for the full window.
Turn allocation off
Turn allocation off for someone who should stay in Staff but should not be planned, such as a person on long leave. Only admins see the menu in these steps.
- Open the person's record and go to the Allocation tab.
- Click the More allocation actions button beside Add.
- Choose Disable allocation.
- In the Disable allocation for (name)? dialog, confirm. A message reads "Allocation disabled for (name)". The change is recorded in the activity log.
To turn it back on, open the same menu, choose Enable allocation and confirm.
Gembaa refuses while the person has a current or future allocation in any scenario. The Allocation can't be disabled dialog gives the count. Click View allocations, remove those bookings, then try again. Past allocations do not block it.
While allocation is off for someone:
- Their record header shows an Allocation disabled badge, and the Allocation tab shows a banner: "Allocation is disabled for (name). They can't be allocated."
- Add stays enabled, but explains instead of opening the dialog.
- On the Allocation page their row stays, with the badge. They have no capacity and no (Unallocated) row, and they are never flagged as over-allocated.
- Their past allocations stay. You can delete them but not change them.
Only admins can manage the whole list in one place. The Allocation disabled card on the Allocation tab of Entity & fields lists everyone with allocation off, plus every deactivated person automatically.
- Open Administration → Entity & fields.
- Click the Allocation tab.
- In the Allocation disabled card, click Disable allocation.
- Pick a person under Staff and confirm.
See Allocation settings.
Deactivate or activate staff
Deactivating takes someone out of new planning without deleting their history.
It is offered only on staff records created in Gembaa. A record your corporate directory owns is activated and deactivated there.
- Open Row actions on the person's row, or Record actions in the panel.
- Click Deactivate. The person now shows an Inactive badge. On an inactive record the same item reads Activate.
An inactive person cannot be given new allocations. The Add allocation dialog still lists them, greyed out and tagged Deactivated. Their past allocations and activity stay.
Inactive staff only show in the Staff list for admins and for people whose role has the Inactive Records permission (see Access control).
Those people can use the Account status filter (Active or Inactive) to show or hide them. Everyone else does not see inactive records in the list.
Delete a staff member
- Open Row actions on the person's row, or Record actions in the panel.
- Click Delete.
- In the dialog, click Delete. The record is removed.
Deleting removes the record together with its allocations, finance entries and Knowledge entries. It also clears the person from team membership and assignee fields.
You cannot delete an active directory-owned person: they must be deactivated in the directory first. Prefer deactivating if you may need the history.
Good to know
- You cannot change your own email. Contact an admin.
- You always see your own staff record. Your display name comes from the directory and cannot be edited in your user settings, but you can change your photo there. See Your settings.
- Deactivate does not appear on a directory-owned record. Your corporate directory decides whether that person is active, and the change arrives on the next sync. Deactivating and activating need the same permission as deleting.
- A deactivated person cannot be allocated, the same as someone with allocation turned off.
- Virtual or placeholder staff are not available. To plan for a role you have not hired yet, create a Gembaa-created staff record and mark it clearly in its name.