Create and use roles for your team

Roles enable you to assign your team members to roles, then use those role assignments to dynamically assign team members to tasks based on various logic.

In this article, learn how to:

• Define roles for your company and assign team members to them.
• Set role assignments on steps in a process template
• Select role assignees at the client level
• Select role assignees at the project and board level
• Use the "random" and "all people" options on task assignments by role

Define roles for your company and assign team members to them.

Before you can start using the roles feature, you must define roles for your company!

Go to "People" > "Roles", then create your company's roles.  Think of roles like jobs that could be filled in your organization.  It's best to name each role using the singular tense.  For example, "Writer", "Editor", "Manager", etc.

Note:  Roles are different from permissions.  Every team member has a permission level which defines what they're able to see and do in ProcessKit.  More on permissions here.  Roles are used for the purpose of task assignments.

Assigning team members to roles

Once you've created a few roles, you can begin assigning team members to them.  You can assign multiple team members to a role and a team member can be assigned to multiple roles.

The group of team members assigned to each role defines the list of team members who are available to be assigned to roles at the client, board, and project levels.  More on these below.

Set role assignments on steps in a process template

When you're building your process template, you can set the "Assignment" on each step in the process.  When it comes to assigning team members to steps in at the process level, you have two ways to do this:

• Select specific team member(s) to always be assigned to this step every time (i.e. don't make use of roles).
• Use your roles to dynamically assign different team members from each role when this process turns into tasks on projects.

When you assign a step to a "Role", you have a few settings to configure:

1. Select which role to assign to this step.
2. Select which "Assign by" rule, which determines the logic by which ProcessKit will use to assign this task to a person.

As of this writing, there are 4 different "Assign by" rules to choose from:

• By project: When person(s) are selected for this role at the project level, then that will determine the people assigned to this task. A project's role assignments can be set at the individual project level as well as at the board level.
• By client: When person(s) are selected for this role at the client level, then the project's client association will determine the people assigned to this task.
• Random from this role: One of the people assigned to this role will be randomly selected to be assigned to this task.
• All people in this role: All of the people assigned to this role will be assigned to this task.

Once steps in your processes are assigned to a role, each with their own "Assign by" rule, then by assigning team members to roles at the client level, or the board and project levels, will determine who gets assigned to each task...

Select role assignees at the client level

When you view any client in your Clients list, you'll find a "Roles" tab.  This page lists all of the roles in your organization.  For each, you can select which individual team member(s) should be assigned to those roles for this client.

For example, let's say you have a "Writer" and an "Editor" role.  You have 3 writers and 3 editors on your team.  For your client, "Dunder Mifflin", you can specify that Jon is the writer, and Jane is the editor, for all projects for Dunder Mifflin.

Once a project is associated with this client, then any tasks that are to be assigned "By client" will be assigned to those people you've selected on roles on this client.  

The client association can happen either when a new project is created (when creating the project, click "More settings" to select which client this project is for).  Then once created, the tasks will be assigned accordingly.  Or, you can add a client to a project after creating the project.  In this case, once you've added the client association, those tasks will be assigned to people at that point.

Note:  Removing a client association from a project will not unassign anyone from tasks.  But adding a client to a project may add new task assignments within this project.

Select role assignees at the project and board level

You can also assign people to roles at the individual project level.  Any tasks in the project that are to be assigned "By project" will be assigned to the people you've placed in those roles on this project.  If you add people to those roles on this project, they will then be assigned to those tasks.  

Note:  Removing someone from a role on a project will not unassign them from any tasks.  But adding someone to a project's roles may assign them to tasks within this project.

You can also set role assignments at the Board level.  Once you set role assignments at the board level, all new projects created within this board will have those role assignments set by default (which also results in assigning people to tasks that are set to assign "By project").  

Note:  Removing people from roles at the board level does not remove them from roles on existing projects.

Use the "random" and "all people" options on task assignments by role

Lastly, you have the option to select "random" or "all people" as the "Assign by" rule for tasks.

When "Random" is selected, then one of the people assigned to this role (in People > Roles) will be randomly selected to be assigned to this task.

When "All people" is selected, then all of the people assigned to this role (in People > Roles) will be assigned to this task.