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Navigating Hierarchies & Restructuring Units (EX)

Suite

Employee Experience

Product

Qualtrics

What's on this page

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

How to Read Your Hierarchy

Once you generate your hierarchy, it is important to understand how to read your hierarchy in the Org Hierarchies section. On the left-hand side will be the navigation sidebar that contains the breakdown of your hierarchy. You can click the arrows next to each unit to either collapse or expand the units. By default, the numbers to the right of each unit in the navigation sidebar specify the number of participants in and below that unit.

the org hierarchy tab. click on a unit to view the unit

Qtip: If you are using a Parent-Child hierarchy, the unit name often matches the manager’s name. If you are using a Level-Based hierarchy, the unit name often matches the functional breakout of your hierarchy – usually a department name.

If you click on a unit in the navigation sidebar, the participants who make up the unit will display to the right of the sidebar.

Any delegates added to the hierarchy unit will be displayed here as well.

in the org hierarchy view, a delegate is visible

If you click on a single participant in the navigation sidebar and not a unit, it will display the participant’s unit on the right and highlight the participant you selected.

clicking a participant name to pull up the unit

If you click on a participant’s name on the right, it will bring you to the participant information window where you can make edits to the selected participant only.

Expected Count

If using an Anonymous Link, an Expected Count box will appear in your hierarchy under the unit’s name so you can set the expected number of people in a unit. These expected values can be edited/added manually by selecting a unit, and then entering the value in the box that appears between the unit name and unit managers. These values are used in the Response Rates widget to calculate the assessment’s Invited Counts. You can also use a participant metadata field to set the expected number of people in a unit.

The Expected Count should be set to the total number of participants you expect to be in that unit. So if you are combining anonymous and invited responses, it is important to make sure this number adds up to the total number of invited participants + the number of expected anonymous responses.

Example: I am using an Org Hierarchy question to build my org hierarchy and using anonymous links completely. I expect 10 people to choose that hierarchy, so I would set Expected Count to 10.

Example: I am building an org hierarchy, but also expect some anonymous responses. We need to set the Expected Count to be how many anonymous responses are expected in that unit, plus how many direct reports we added to the unit when building the hierarchy.

Qtip: Need to set the expected count, but have a lot of units? You can speed up the editing process by uploading a CSV with all of your expected counts into your hierarchy. Note that this method works best if you have not made manual edits to your hierarchy.

Searching Your Hierarchy

You can easily and quickly search your hierarchy by using the Search bar. You will be able to search by the participant name, participant email, or unit name.

Qtip: If you are searching a Parent-Child hierarchy, the unit name often matches the manager’s name. If you are searching a Level-Based hierarchy, the unit name often matches the functional breakout of your hierarchy – usually a department name.

the search at the top of the org hierarchy tab to search for units

Hierarchy Settings

Settings button menu expanded to 4 options

View Org Hierarchy Configuration: Will display the configuration settings shown when the hierarchy was generated. For all hierarchy types, you can rename the hierarchy here. For only Parent-Child hierarchies, if you meant to create a Skeleton hierarchy instead of a regular Parent-Child hierarchy, you can do that by selecting No under the Populate With Direct Reports dropdown menu. For more information on creating Skeleton hierarchies, visit the Skeleton Hierarchy support page.

Hide Direct Reports in Navigation Sidebar: Direct reports will not be displayed in the navigation sidebar. Only units will display.

Show Direct Report Count for Units: The numbers to the right of each unit in the navigation sidebar will specify the number of direct reports for the unit instead of showing the number of participants in or below that unit.

Highlight Units that Don’t Meet Anonymity Threshold: Highlights units that do not have enough direct reports assigned to them to ever meet the anonymity threshold for the dashboard. Be aware that dashboard users with access to any of those units will never be able to isolate the data for the unit, so you should consider combining those units into their parent units in order to ensure the anonymity threshold is met.

Warning: This will only function correctly if the project has one dashboard.

Navigating Between Hierarchies

You can add multiple hierarchies to a single project. To navigate to a different hierarchy in your project, click the hierarchy selection dropdown menu and choose the hierarchy you would like to view.

Hierarchy selection dropdown menu opened to reveal other hierarchies that can be selected

Deleting Hierarchies

To delete a hierarchy, select the Org Hierarchy dropdown menu, hover over the hierarchy you would like to delete, click the X next to the hierarchy’s name, and confirm the deletion.

Warning: Make absolutely sure that you want to delete your hierarchy. Once you delete a hierarchy, it is irreversible and you will have to create it again from scratch if you decide you need it again.

In Hierarchy selection dropdown menu, X button next to name of hierarchy

Qtip: When a hierarchy is deleted, metadata used to configure the hierarchy will return to person metadata and can be used to create a new hierarchy.

Attention: If you delete a hierarchy that is used in dashboard data permissions or roles, then you must either update the permission to use a new hierarchy or remove the restriction entirely.

Manually Adjusting & Locking Units

You can manually adjust your hierarchy by dragging and dropping units or direct reports in the navigation sidebar. This manual approach is discouraged, however, because the hierarchy in the Org Hierarchies section and the hierarchy constructed when you imported your participants will be different. If you were to later import your participant list again to update metadata or for some other reason, this could potentially revert the hierarchy to what it was before you made any manual changes. Your hierarchy will regenerate any time you reimport participants that contain hierarchy metadata, even if you’re importing only one participant. The import must contain all of the metadata fields used to generate the original hierarchy (e.g., EmployeeID, ManagerID, Unit Name, etc.) in order to trigger a hierarchy update. Therefore, Qualtrics recommends that if you need to edit your hierarchy, you should re-import it instead of manually adjusting it. You can find instructions on how to do that in the Adding Participants support page.

In order to make sure you don’t unintentionally adjust a unit’s settings, you can lock a unit by selecting the lock icon to the left of the unit’s name. When you lock a unit, all units below the unit will also be locked. You will be unable to make changes to a unit until you unlock the unit by selecting the lock icon again.

Qtip: Want to lock your entire hierarchy? Select the very top lock icon on the left to lock all of the hierarchy’s units.

Editing Individuals Within a Unit

Dropdown menu next to unit member reveals 5 options

Make Direct Report or Make Manager: Will make the participant either a direct report or manager of your selected unit. Make Direct Report will only be an option for managers and Make Manager will only be an option for direct reports.

Qtip: You can add multiple managers to the same unit. To learn more, see Multiple Managers in a unit.

Remove From Unit: Removes the participant from the unit. The participant will still be included in the total counts for the hierarchy, however, they will not be associated with any unit unless you reassign them.

Move Person: Allows you to move the participant to another location in the hierarchy. This option will not be available for managers since moving them would break the hierarchy relationships with their direct reports.

Remove From Assessment: Completely removes the participant from the assessment. When you select this option, you will have to confirm the removal and choose if you would also like to delete the participant’s responses by either checking or not checking the Also remove evaluations given by the person checkbox.

Remove From Org Hierarchy: Removes the participant from the chosen hierarchy. The participant will still be included in the participant list and any other hierarchies they have been added to (if you have more than one), however, they will not be associated with the chosen hierarchy unless you add them again.

If you click on a participant’s name on the right, it will bring you to the participant information window where you can make various edits. For more information, visit the Participant Information Window support page.

Multiple Managers in a Unit

You can make more than one person the manager of the same unit. When this happens, the unit is assigned a primary manager and a secondary manager.

one manager selected within an org hierarchy

The primary manager is the person who all the direct reports have listed under their manager metadata. Other than this, the secondary manager still has all the same privileges as the primary manager, and will see the same dashboard data depending on roles or filters you have set.

You can add multiple secondary managers in the same unit.

All org hierarchy types allow you to add multiple managers to a unit, but Parent-Child is the only hierarchy type that will specify a primary or secondary manager. This is to determine who can view data restricted by roles and filters.

Changing the primary manager of a unit

Qtip: These steps are recommended if you want to make one or two small changes to a hierarchy. To make many changes, we recommend importing participants with updated information.

To follow these steps, use the options explained in the Editing Individuals Within a Unit section.

Make sure the person you want to make the new manager is added as a participant in this project and as a member of this hierarchy unit.

Example: I want Bill to be the new manager of Johnna’s team. If I’m working with a parent-child hierarchy, I add Bill and use metadata to indicate Johnna is his manager so they’re in the same unit. If I’m working with a level-based hierarchy, I use metadata to add him to the same level as Johnna, but I don’t mark him as a manager yet.

Make it so that the unit has no managers. You can remove existing managers from the unit or make them direct reports instead.

dropdown to make a manager a direct report

Qtip: To remove a participant from a project entirely, see Removing Participants.

Select the person you want to be the new primary manager and change them to a manager.

dropdown to make a direct report a manager

Once a new person becomes the primary manager, all the direct reports in the unit will be updated so their manager metadata reflects this new person.

FAQs

I've already uploaded my participant file and collected data, but I need to make a change to my hierarchy. How do I do this?

All hierarchy units are able to be dragged and dropped. This is one option for editing the hierarchy of your in-progress survey. However, we recommend making changes to your participant file and updating your participant list with that file, rather than manually moving units. Make sure that your participant file has all the columns of metadata used for your hierarchy - this doesn't just mean levels, unique identifiers, and manager IDs, but also fields like Org Unit ID and Org Unit Description, if you initially used them to generate your hierarchy.

I want to set up my Parent-Child hierarchy to use unit names rather than assigning manager names to hierarchy units. How do I do this?

When setting up your participant upload file, you should include a few additional Metadata fields. To upload a Parent-Child hierarchy, you should include the participant’s first name, last name, and email address, as well as columns listing the employee’s ID and the employee ID of his or her manager. For an example file, visit the Preparing for Your Employee Engagement Survey support page. To add in additional unit names, you will need to add an Org Unit Description column. This should list the unit name you would like to display in your hierarchy. However, to historically map the data over time and account for unit name changes, you will also need an Org Unit ID. See Preparing a Participant File for Import for more details.

I uploaded my participant list and generated a Parent-Child hierarchy. I received an error message that reads “Circular Dependencies.” Why did I receive this message and how do I fix this?

The error message “Circular Dependencies” indicates that you have participants reporting to someone who is listed beneath them in the hierarchy. To fix this, take a look at the Metadata values for your participants. In most cases, this error is caused by having the incorrect manager ID for a participant on the list of those with an error. Confirm that the employee IDs and manager IDs are correct for all participants in the list of those with the errors. Once you have identified the incorrect ID(s), enter the correct ID in your participant file and update your participant list with the updated file. To update the participant list, select the Add Participants button and select Import Participants. Once you have loaded your file, you can update the participants' responses with the new metadata using the option Update All Responses with Current Metadata under the Tools menu. In most cases, this will resolve the issue automatically with your hierarchy. Occasionally, however, you must generate a new hierarchy based on the updated values to resolve the error.

I uploaded my participant list and generated a Parent-Child hierarchy. Why do I see some units labeled “Unknown Manager” and how do I fix this?

The “Unknown Manager” unit indicates that you had some manager IDs that our tool was not able to associate with an employee. When generating the hierarchy, Qualtrics checks the manager ID listed for each participant and places the participant in the hierarchy unit that matches the manager ID listed. If the manager ID associated with an employee does not match a listed employee ID, the tool is unable to associate that unit with a participant and labels the unit as an unknown manager. To fix this, you should look at the employees listed under each unknown manager. Check your participants file to ensure that the correct manager ID is listed. Once you have corrected these errors in your file, re-import your participants file to the participants list. To re-import the participants file, navigate to the Participants tab and select the Add Participants button and select Import Participants. Your hierarchy will update with the new Metadata, associating the participants listed under “Unknown Manager” with their correct manager.

Can I automate changes to my Engagement org hierarchy?

You cannot automate changes to an individual Engagement project’s participant hierarchy. However, you can automate updates to your employee directory, which allows you to have the most up-to-date info ready for future Engagement projects.

To learn more about automating employee directory changes, see Load Users into EX Directory.

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