Hierarchy

Hierarchies are used to create hierarchal classification trees with employees, customers, and projects. A employee, project, and customer can only belong to one node at any particular moment within a hierarchy, but can belong to multiple hierarchies at one time if multiple hierarchies exist for a record. A employee project, and customer can also be moved between nodes with a hierarchy.

Hierarchies are used for subtotaling and filtering within Summary reports. For example, you may create a customer hierarchy based on geographical location that associates each customer with an office location such as a city. You could also create a two level hierarchy: city and state. Each level may have multiple nodes. The state level can have Texas, Georgia, and Washington. Or, at the city level you could have Seattle, Austin, Dallas, and Atlanta. Each city level node has a parent node such as a state. By assigning customers to a city, they are automatically also associated with the state.

To create Hierarchies:

1. Go to Administration > Global Settings > Organization > Hierarchies. Select New Hierarchy from the Create Button.

2. Enter the Hierarchy name and select the Type. Associate the hierarchy with either Employee, Project, or Customer.

3. Add Notes about this hierarchy, if desired.

4. The Active box is checked by default.

5. Check the Show this Hierarchy when editing objects of this type to make the field visible on the entity form.

6. Check the Require a hierarchy selection when editing objects of this type to make this field required.

7. You can duplicate levels and nodes of another hierarchy if this feature has been enable for your account. However, the nodes will be empty.

8. Save the form. The Enable this hierarchy as a column in entity lists box becomes available. Check this box to add the hierarchy to customized lists of data.

After you create a Hierarchy, then you create corresponding Levels and Nodes. When the hierarchy form has been saved, links to the Levels, Nodes and Entity (Customers, Projects or Employees) display on the Edit hierarchy form.

To create Levels:

1. Click on Levels link. Select New > Level.

2. Enter the Hierarchy level name. If this level is the topmost level, then no Parent is required. For all other levels below the topmost level, a parent is required.

   Note:

   There can be only one topmost level for each hierarchy. If you do not select a parent for a level, OpenAir automatically places it as the topmost level and it becomes the parent of the previously topmost level.

3. Add Notes about this hierarchy, if desired.

4. Click Save.

You create Nodes in a similar manner to Levels, as described above. You cannot create Nodes until you have created Levels.

To create Nodes:

1. Click on Nodes link. Select New > Node.

2. Enter the Hierarchy node name and select the Parent the level to which it belongs.

   Note:

   There can be multiple Nodes at each level. When you create your Nodes, you can assign customers, projects, and employees to the nodes.

3. Click Save.

You are able to see a list of entities associated with the hierarchy. If a Project hierarchy is created:

• On the Edit hierarchy form, check the Use to determine filter set access for projects box if you want to use it in filter sets. This feature lets an employee have project access based on placement within a project hierarchy. See Filter Set Access Control.

• On the Edit project form, specify the node of the hierarchy in which the project belongs.

• On the Employee Demographic form, select which group of projects the employee has the right to use by picking the appropriate node or level of the hierarchy.

Note: Customers, projects, or employees can only belong to one node in each hierarchy. Therefore, it is useful to assign them to the most specific node. When you run reports, the employee, customer, or project are automatically rolled-up into the higher level parent nodes.