Best practice forum (Archived)

Indirect Managers Allocating Spaces

 
John Wiles
Indirect Managers Allocating Spaces
by John Wiles - Wednesday, 13 February 2019, 5:35 AM
 

Is it possible to allow an indirect manager to allocate spaces for people below them in the hierarchy without making them a temporary manager of the users?  If not, is this in the works for a future release?  If it isn't, can it be?

I'm thinking this would need to work only from the job assignment hierarchy with no inclusion of organizational hierarchy.

Craig Eves
Re: Indirect Managers Allocating Spaces
by Craig Eves (Totara Support) - Wednesday, 13 February 2019, 6:02 PM
Group Totara

Hi John

There is some documentation on different ways of assigning users to allocate spaces in seminars.

I think the most suitable way would be Assigning all staff managers access to selected courses - 

Alternatively you could use the manager and administrative approval setting and add the indirect managers as administrators so they can approve the seminar.

regards


John Wiles
Re: Indirect Managers Allocating Spaces
by John Wiles - Thursday, 14 February 2019, 5:48 AM
 

In our scenario we would like for anyone who has reports of any kind to be able to allocate space for anyone in their hierarchy, assigned through the job assignments. For example, I am Joe Manager's manager, and Joe is the manager of Jane. I need the ability to allocate space in a class for Jane, but not for anyone else in the system who is outside my own hierarchy.

In my reading of the linked documentation it appears that it can only be done with two scenarios, direct reports or all users. It would be beneficial if the allocation of spaces process took into account the hierarchies that are already in place in the system deeper than one level.

Daniel Bond
Re: Indirect Managers Allocating Spaces
by Daniel Bond - Thursday, 14 February 2019, 6:32 AM
Group Most helpful contributor 2023

Would definitely agree with this.

More generally, Totara should extend this concept of "staff within my hierarchy" for permissions rather than just people directly assigned. There are a lot of situations where you need to perform an action (book them onto a seminar, view their Record of Learning, etc. rather than just running reports with their data in (which you can already do with report content restrictions).

Craig Eves
Re: Indirect Managers Allocating Spaces
by Craig Eves (Totara Support) - Sunday, 17 February 2019, 2:34 PM
Group Totara

Hi Dan

You are right there are areas where it would be good to include actions for indirect reports.

We do have some requests around this - audience rules https://totara.community/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=22113 which would help most actions 

ROL https://totara.community/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=18453

Are there any other areas you can think of where indirect reports would be beneficial to action?

regards


Daniel Bond
Re: Indirect Managers Allocating Spaces
by Daniel Bond - Monday, 18 February 2019, 12:35 AM
Group Most helpful contributor 2023

I think, rather than specific contexts, it would be worth considering the impact of handling indirect staff in a similar way to direct staff (auto-assigning a role in the User context). This would allow administrators complete control over what indirect managers can and can't do with their staff based on local need.

Appreciate it might not be practical, it's a lot of roles to assign and unassign, but it seems like the most sensible and sustainable solution.