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Generating a Parent-Child Hierarchy (EE)

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Qtip: This page describes functionality available to Engagement projects, but not Lifecycle or Ad Hoc Employee Research projects. For more details on each, see Types of Employee Experience Projects.

About Parent-Child Hierarchies

Parent-Child hierarchies are the most commonly used kind of hierarchy. They are the best option if your HR data is formatted so you have a list of employees’ IDs and the managers each employee reports up to.

Qtip: Not sure what type of hierarchy fits your HR data best? Check out a basic comparison of your options on the Hierarchies Basic Overview page.

Generating a Parent-Child Hierarchy

Warning: You may have up to 10 hierarchies in a project. Once you reach 7 hierarchies, you will receive a warning that you’re approaching the hierarchy limit. If you have 10 hierarchies, you will not be able to create another without deleting a hierarchy.
  1. Prepare a file of participants for a Parent-Child hierarchy by following the directions on the linked support page.
  2. Import your participants file by following the steps on the linked support page.
  3. Navigate to the Participants tab.
    navigating to the org hierarchy tab and clicking create a hierarchy
  4. Navigate to the Org Hierarchies section.
  5. Click Create Org Hierarchy.
  6. Type a Name for your hierarchy.
    Create New Hierarchy window
  7. Under Type, select Parent-Child.
  8. Under Populate With Direct Reports, select Yes.
    Qtip: If you don’t know or don’t want to include the identity of your direct reports, select No and head over to our Generating a Skeleton Hierarchy section.
  9. Under Employee ID Field, type out or select the name of your Employee ID metadata name.
    Qtip: Employee ID Field, Manager ID Field, and any other field where you are entering metadata must match the original participant file you uploaded. This means spelling, spacing, and capitalization must be exactly the same!
  10. Under Manager ID Field, type out or select the name of your Manager ID metadata name.
  11. If desired, enter your Org Unit ID here.
  12. If you’d like, select Advanced Options. See the section below for more details.
  13. Click Create.

Advanced Options

If you click Advanced Options, you will have several additional options when building your Parent-Child hierarchy.

Expanded options on the Create New Hierarchy window

  1. Org Unit Description Field: If you have chosen to Populate With Direct Reports, enter your Org Unit Description here.
  2. Unit Name Format: If you have loaded the Org Unit Description, you can include this in your unit names.
  3. Limit People Included: If you would like to limit the people included in the hierarchy based off of a metadata value, turn this option On. In the example above, only participants from a certain hiring date are being included in the hierarchy.
  4. Additional Metadata: If there are any other metadata that are unit-specific, add them here. You can add multiple fields at a time by clicking the plus (+) sign to the right of the field.
    Qtip: You cannot select fields that are already being used for org hierarchy generation (e.g., ManagerID, EmployeeID). You also cannot select fields that are already being used to configure other org hierarchies in your project. Any fields already being used as additional metadata for another hierarchy in your project will not show up in the field dropdown.

Generating a Skeleton Hierarchy

Skeleton hierarchies are different from other hierarchies because they are built around the managers in your company, not their direct reports. In this design, you know exactly who your managers are, but do not know or necessarily want to include the identities of all of their direct reports. For this reason, skeleton hierarchies are often paired with engagement surveys distributed via anonymous link.

Any engagement survey paired with a skeleton hierarchy should use the Org Hierarchy question type, so employees can identify the manager they belong to. When the time comes to view data in the dashboards, managers can then view their teams’ data because the question has helped link the correct direct reports to the units of the organization to which they belong.

  1. Prepare a file of participants for a Skeleton hierarchy by following the directions on the linked support page.
  2. Import your participants file by following the steps on the linked support page.
  3. Navigate to the Participants tab.
    navigating to the org hierarchy tab and clicking create a hierarchy
  4. Navigate to the Org Hierarchies section.
  5. Click Create Org Hierarchy.
  6. Type a Name for your hierarchy.
    Create New Hierarchy window
  7. Under Type, select Parent-Child.
  8. Under Populate With Direct Reports, select No.
  9. Under Org Unit ID Field, type out or select the name of your Org Unit ID metadata name.
    Qtip: Org Unit ID Field, Parent Org Unit ID Field, and any other field where you are entering metadata must match the original participant file you uploaded. This means spelling, spacing, and capitalization must be exactly the same!
  10. Under Parent Org Unit ID Field, type out or select the name of your Parent Org Unit ID metadata name.
  11. If you’d like, select Advanced Options. See the section above for more details.
    Qtip: This is where you add your Org Description metadata so your units will come out by name instead of by Unit ID number.
  12. Click Create.

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