Employees
The central employee directory — add, view, and manage all staff records across a 5-tab profile: General, Work & Position, Skills & Tags, Payroll, Assets, and Documents.
Overview
Employees is the foundation of the HR module. Every other HR screen — Leave Management, Expense Management, Overtime, KPI, and the standalone Asset Manager and Documents screens — references the employees you define here. Start here before using any other HR feature.
This screen's reach goes beyond HR itself. Every employee added here becomes part of the combined assignee pool used across the whole platform — Preventive Maintenance, Field Service, Project Management, Quality Management, and every other module with an assignment picker draws from this same list. See Employees & Assignees for how that combined pool works.
The screen presents a full employee table with real-time search, multiple filter options, and both list-table and card-grid view modes. All data is server-backed and persists across page refreshes.
Add Employees First
Submitting a leave request, expense claim, or overtime entry requires selecting an employee from this list. If no employees exist, those forms will have empty dropdowns. Always populate Employees before using the other HR modules.
The Add / Edit Modal — 5 Tabs
Clicking Add Employee or any row opens a modal with five tabs. The modal keeps a fixed height across every tab, so switching tabs never shifts the header or footer position.
| Tab | Fields |
|---|---|
| General | Full Name (required), Email (editable unless the record was imported from a tenant member — those stay auto-synced and read-only), Phone, Gender, Marital Status (Single / Married / Divorced / Widowed / Unspecified), Archived checkbox |
| Work & Position | Title (dropdown, sourced from the Titles defined in Organization), Department (dropdown, sourced from Organization), Branch (dropdown, sourced from Organization), Manager (dropdown of your Employees), Capabilities (multi-select — see below), Status (Not Specified / At Work / On Time Off / Remote), Work Location, Start Date, Next Appraisal Date, Contract Type (Not Specified / Permanent / Freelance / Internship), Working Hours (Not Specified / Fixed / Flexible) |
| Skills & Tags | Skills (chip picker backed by the shared skills bank, with a "+ Other" option to add a brand-new skill), Tags (free text) |
| Payroll | Salary Amount, Currency (TRY / USD / EUR / GBP), IBAN |
| Assets | Assigned Assets — see "Assets Tab" below. Disabled with a "save this employee first" note until the record has been saved at least once |
| Documents | Upload and manage personnel files for this employee — see "Documents Tab" below. Same "save first" gating as Assets |
Panel Mode for Faster Entry
If you need to add many employees in a row, switch Add Record Mode to "Panel" in Settings. The form slides in from the right and stays open after each save, letting you move quickly from one record to the next without reopening the modal each time.
Title, Department and Branch Come From Organization
The Title, Department, and Branch dropdowns on the Work & Position tab are populated from the lists you manage on the Organization screen — not a hardcoded list. Add or rename a Title, Department, or Branch there and it immediately becomes available here. Nothing on this tab is pre-selected for a new employee: every field starts as "Not Specified" until you choose a value, so a saved record never carries an assumed department or status you didn't actually pick.
Capabilities — System Roles vs. Job Title
Capabilities are a deliberately separate concept from Title (the business label on an employee's card, e.g. "Senior Mechanical Specialist", chosen from the Titles defined on the Organization screen). Capabilities are a closed set of technical role tags that assignee dropdowns across the app filter on — an employee can hold several at once.
Not Everyone Who Can Be Assigned a Task Is an Employee Here
Assignee dropdowns across TotalApp draw from the combined pool of Workspace Members and HR Employees, not from this Employees screen alone — a contractor invited to the workspace shows up correctly without ever needing an HR record. Capabilities, however, only exist on HR Employee records, so they only narrow that combined list down for people who have one. See Employees & Assignees for the full explanation of how the two pools work together.
| Capability | Used by |
|---|---|
| Technician | Field Service, Preventive Maintenance, Work Orders |
| Dispatcher | Dispatch Board, Job Management |
| Operator | Manufacturing / MOM, WIP Tracking |
| Inspector | Quality Ops, NCR, Inspection Plans |
| Picker | Pick & Pack, Material Staging |
| Driver | Fleet Manager, Route Optimization |
| Owner | CRM leads / deals / accounts |
| Account Manager | Sales Orders, Quotations |
| POS Cashier | Point of Sale, Purchase |
| Agent | Call Center, Service Desk, SLA |
| Instructor | LMS — Course Builder, Learning Path |
| Approver | Approval Workflow, Budget, Purchase |
| Reviewer | HR document review |
| Auditor | QHSE Safety Inspections, Compliance, Audit Agent |
| AI Agent | AI Orchestration, Automation, Agentic workflows |
Why Capabilities Are Separate From Title
Title is whatever the tenant calls the role — it can say anything and is never parsed by the system. Capabilities are the technical flags an assignment picker checks to decide whether someone should appear in a given dropdown. An employee with the Title "Mechanical Maintenance & Production Lead" and both the Technician and Operator capabilities shows up correctly in both the Preventive Maintenance technician picker and the Manufacturing operator picker — the mismatched wording in Title never breaks the filter.
Payroll Tab
Salary Amount and Currency feed the employee's base compensation record. IBAN is stored for payroll/bank transfer reference. None of these fields are required to save the employee.
Assets Tab — Assign / Unassign Equipment
The Assets tab inside an employee's profile lets you assign or unassign equipment without leaving the Personnel modal:
- Click Assign Asset, pick an available (unassigned) item from the dropdown, and confirm — the item's card appears below showing name, serial number, and assignment date.
- Click Unassign next to any assigned item's card to return it to the available pool.
This reads and writes the same records as the standalone Asset Manager screen (Human Resources sidebar group) — assigning from either place is reflected immediately in the other.
Optional IT Stock Link
If your company enables "Sync HR hardware with IT Asset stock" in Settings > Company, a laptop/phone/tablet/monitor assigned here can be linked to an existing item already tracked in the IT/Facilities Asset & Equipment module — see the Asset Manager documentation for details.
Documents Tab
Upload personnel files (contracts, ID copies, certificates, health reports, payslips, and more) directly from an employee's profile. This reads and writes to the exact same storage as the dedicated Document Entry screen — files uploaded from either place appear in both. See the Document Entry documentation for the full document type and reason taxonomy.
Search & Filtering
The filter bar below the page title provides several ways to narrow down the employee list:
- Search input — real-time text search across employee name, title, and email. Results update as you type with no submit button required.
- Status filters — At Work, On Time Off, Remote, plus Upcoming Appraisals, Newly Hired, Fixed/Flexible Hours, and Archived.
- Group by — Manager, Presence, Department, Work Location, Job, Skills, Start Date, Next Appraisal, or Tags.
- View mode toggle — switch between List, Card grid, and Hierarchy (org-chart-style) view. Your choice persists across sessions.
Combining Filters
Filters and search work together simultaneously — you can search a name, apply a status filter, and group the result, all at once.
Editing & Deleting
Editing a Record
Click any row in the employee table (or any card in grid mode) to open the edit form on the General tab. Edit mode always uses the modal, regardless of your Add Record Mode setting. Click Save to apply changes — the table row updates in place without a page reload.
Changing Employment Status
The Status field on the Work & Position tab lets you move an employee between At Work, On Time Off, and Remote — it starts as Not Specified for a new employee until you choose one. Use the Archived checkbox on the General tab to retire a record without deleting it — archived employees are excluded from most assignee dropdowns but remain visible under the Archived filter.
Deleting a Record
Open the edit form for an employee, then click the Delete button. An inline confirmation appears — this prevents accidental deletion without adding an extra popup dialog.
Deletion is Permanent
Deleting an employee removes their record entirely, including their Payroll, Assets, and Documents history. Any leave requests, expense claims, or overtime records that reference this employee will still exist in those modules but will show a missing employee name. Consider archiving instead of deleting to preserve history.
Employee Profile & Contact Actions
Every row and card in Employees has an Eye icon that opens a compact Employee Profile card — separate from the Add/Edit modal — with a quick overview of the employee's details and direct contact actions.
Opening the Profile Card
- List view — click the Eye icon in the action column at the far right of the row (it appears before the Pencil / Edit icon).
- Card view — hover over an employee card; the Eye icon appears in the top-right corner of the card.
Profile Card Contents
The card shows a read-only snapshot of the employee's core information:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Avatar | Colour-coded initials circle (same colour used throughout the app for this employee). |
| Full Name | Employee's first and last name. |
| Job Title | Role / position as entered on the Work & Position tab. |
| Status Badge | Real-time status — AT WORK, ON TIME OFF, or REMOTE. |
| Department | Department the employee belongs to. |
| Work email address. | |
| Skills | Up to five skill chips, if any are set. |
Contact Buttons
Below the profile info, three icon-only buttons let you reach the employee instantly:
- Message — opens a direct-message thread with the employee in the Collaboration screen.
- Audio Call — routes to the Collaboration screen and automatically initiates a voice call.
- Video Call — routes to the Collaboration screen and automatically initiates a video call.
After clicking any contact button the profile card closes and the app navigates directly to the Collaboration screen with the correct conversation or call already started.
Who Can Be Contacted?
Audio and video calls are available only for employees who are also workspace members (i.e. they have a TotalApp account and are members of the same workspace). Manually-added employee records that are not linked to a workspace account will display the contact buttons but calls will only connect if the other person is online in the app.
View Modes & Export
List, Card, and Hierarchy Views
- List view — a dense table with all fields visible; best for comparing many employees or scanning specific data columns.
- Card grid view — a visual grid of employee cards showing name, photo initial, department, and status badge; best for quick identification and a people-focused overview.
- Hierarchy view — an org-chart-style tree based on each employee's Manager field on the Work & Position tab.
Export
Click the Export button in the top-right header to download the currently filtered employee list as Excel or CSV. The exported file respects any active search and filter settings.
Importing From Tenant Members
Settings > Company offers a one-way manual import that creates Employee records from your tenant's login members. If an imported member's email later matches an existing employee record (created manually or by a previous import), the import refreshes that record's identity fields (name, email) instead of creating a duplicate or skipping it — Work & Position, Payroll, Skills, Capabilities, and every other field you've entered stays untouched.