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Employee managementEmployee management description/claimsThe Patent Description & Claims data below is from USPTO Patent Application 20080091441, Employee management. Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims
BACKGROUND [0001]This description relates to employee management. [0002]A person who manages other people in a business, for example, is typically charged with a variety of human resource tasks. These may include performance reviews, goals setting, salary and bonus allocations, filling open positions, training assignments, and succession planning, for the people who are positioned below the manager in the organizational chart of the business. To perform one or more of these tasks, the manager may invoke software processes of a software application running on his workstation. The software application may also enable the manager to view the organizational chart in various display styles. SUMMARY [0003]In general, in an aspect, at least part of an organizational chart of an enterprise is displayed to a manager, the displayed organizational chart including employee positions and their relationships, and elements are displayed on the displayed organizational chart that can be invoked by the manager to perform actions with respect to the employee positions. [0004]Implementations may include one or more of the following features. Displaying at least part of an organizational chart includes displaying information about the status of at least one of the positions. The status includes displaying at least one of: planned but not authorized, authorized but not filled, and filled. The actions include viewing information about the position. The actions include at least one of planning a position, budgeting for a position, requisitioning a person for a position, and reviewing candidates for a position. Displaying at least part of an organizational chart includes displaying information about a particular person who occupies one of the positions. Displaying the elements that can be invoked includes displaying the elements visually in association with employee positions to which they relate. The displaying of at least part of an organizational chart and the displaying of elements are determined based on a role being played by the manager. The manager is enabled to control a style in which the organizational chart is displayed, including a chart style, and a tree style. A control element is displayed that enables the manager to toggle between displaying information about a position and information about actions that can be taken to change a status of the position. [0005]In general, in an aspect, a user interface paradigm includes a display to a manager of at least part of an organizational chart of an enterprise, the displayed organizational chart including employee positions and their relationships, and a display to the manager of elements on the displayed organizational chart that can be invoked by the manager to perform actions with respect to the employee positions. [0006]Other aspects of the invention may include other combinations of one or more of the aspects and features recited above and other aspects and features, expressed as methods, apparatus, systems, and program products, and in other ways, as will become apparent from the following description and from the claims. DESCRIPTION [0007]FIGS. 1 through 16 and 18 through 21 are screen shots. [0008]FIG. 17 is a block diagram. [0009]As shown in FIG. 1, a portal page 10 of a user interface to a software application for a manager offers manager navigation buttons 12 that are selected to enable him to see information and perform functions that relate to a role that he performs in the enterprise. In the example, shown in FIG. 1, the portal page is for the role of a hiring manager, Robert Alamar, the director of finance. The functions and views offered by the buttons include a dashboard 14, a view of the manager's team 16, a way to requisition new people 18, a view of information about candidates 20, and a general contacts function 22. The buttons (and hence the subsequent views that can be invoked by the manager) can be selected based on functions and tasks that are available from the underlying software application, on choices made by the manager to configure his interface, and in other ways. [0010]The dashboard view 24 provides panes that display to the manager information about (and enable him to perform) hiring tasks to be done 26, requisitions 28, candidates 30, and others 27. The requisitions and candidates panes display top level numerical status information 29 about the numbers of requisitions and candidates that have certain respective statuses, for example, of 146 candidates under consideration, 24 have evaluations pending, one has an interview pending, and six have offers pending. Each task pane 28, 30 includes a box 32 in which a query can be entered to locate requisitions or candidates and a link 34 to display recently viewed records. [0011]The particular panes that are displayed on the dashboard view will depend on the information needed and tasks to be done for the role played by the manager to whom they are presented, in this case the role of the manager being as a hiring manager. As will be seen later, Robert Alamar is the director of finance of the enterprise. In that position, he could have a variety of different roles. The particular role for which the dashboard view of FIG. 1 applies is as a person who hires people for his group. [0012]The particular panes that are displayed also depend on the available information and functions provided by the software application that underlies the dashboard view. In addition, among a larger set of available panes, the manager who uses the dashboard can control the selection of panes to be displayed, and their layout and style. [0013]When the team button 16 is invoked by the manager, a team window 40 is displayed as shown in FIG. 2. The team window displays to the manager information about a set of employee positions of the enterprise, in this case including the position (Director of Finance) of the manager himself 41 and of the positions of the people who are situated below him on the organizational chart of the finance department. [0014]In the team window, icons 42, 44, and 46 and associated radio buttons 48 enable the manager to choose the graphical organization of the view of his team, either as an organizational chart 50, a tree, or a table. [0015]As shown in FIG. 2, the organizational chart 50 is displayed as a hierarchically arranged set of panels 52, each panel related to one employee. In some examples (not shown), a panel would relate to a group of positions of people who work under a manager and that group panel could be toggled to roll down and roll up hidden parts of the organizational chart under that group panel. Connecting lines 54 on the organizational chart 50 indicate reporting relationships among employees in the typical way. [0016]The organizational chart represents the positions and their relationships in the enterprise hierarchy. The status of a position may change over time. The position may be, for example, planned but not yet budgeted, budgeted but not yet filled (open), or filled. When a position is filled, the panel 52 may show the name 53, title 55, and photograph 57 of the employee who occupies the existing position on the chart. [0017]In some cases, if the existing position is not filled, the panel 60 is displayed in a different color and indicated by an Open flag 56. An unfilled position panel shows the position title 61 and either a requisition 62 that has been opened or an indication 64 that no requisition has been authorized, but the position has been budgeted. Alternatively, for example, the position could be shown as planned but not yet opened. [0018]In general, the organizational charts of the kind described here are active charts that enable the manager to do more than merely look at different portions of an organizational structure to see the positions in the structure and who occupies the positions. The organizational charts described here also enable the manager to perform personnel management tasks associated with one or more of the positions or of people who occupy them by directly invoking links that are graphically associated with the people or positions. Invoking the links leads directly to activities or information useful in the manager's role or roles. [0019]Because the organizational chart is active, it can effectively serve as a user interface paradigm much as the Microsoft Windows desktop paradigm serves as a general interface to applications managed by the operating system. In the organizational chart paradigm, the manager can rely almost entirely on the window that displays the organizational chart as a mode of using the processes of the software application. The user is able to align his understanding of the structure of the organization that he manages directly with the functions that he may need to perform and the information that he may need to obtain with respect to positions in that organization, rather than needing to learn a set of interfaces that are directed to the functions while using the organizational chart only occasionally as a passive chart. [0020]For example, as shown in FIG. 2, the manager can take actions with respect to unfilled positions in the organizational structure. In addition to obtaining additional information by invoking a link 70 titled info and navigating to the list of tasks (similar to the list shown in pane 26 of FIG. 1) using the link labeled my tasks 72, the manager can click on the actions links 74 or 76. [0021]When an info link is invoked, a list 78 (as shown in FIG. 3) drops down to identify categories 80 of information available to the manager in the context of the role that is represented by the interface at the current time. Other examples of information that may be available include salary and performance information as shown in FIG. 21. The categories of information depend both on the manager's role for which the interface is configured and on the available information in the underlying database. If the manager invokes one of the categories on the list, that information is displayed on the screen. For example, if the View Requisition entry were invoked, the requisition associated with the position would be displayed as shown in FIG. 18. Continue reading about Employee management... 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