What you'll find here:

This article covers how to add and use placeholder employees in Parallax.

What are Placeholder Employees?

A placeholder employee is very similar to a regular employee in Parallax, but they do not have a timesheet or email attached to them. This is helpful when you are hiring for a new role and can use a placeholder employee to estimate upcoming projects and fill in gaps in your resource plans. 

Adding Placeholders

You can create a placeholder employee from the employee settings page in Parallax.

1. Click on "Add Employee"
2. Select the Placeholder radio button
3. Add a "last name" for this placeholder. By default the "first name" is set to "Placeholder" and we recommend using the role name for the last name field. For example: Placeholder Designer 1  

Editing Placeholder Details

You can edit a placeholder employee just how you would a regular employee in Parallax. For more information one what each of the employee attributes mean, check out this article: Managing Employees in Parallax

Using Placeholders

Placeholders can be found anywhere in Parallax where you find a regular employee. They appear in searches, people listings, and anywhere you would add allocations.

In insights, placeholder employees will be included in the department/primary role counts if the primary role was set in settings.

Placeholders can be included/excluded throughout the app via the employee type filter. 

It is important for placeholders to be staffed to an actual employee before a project starts for accurate project data. We have included an alert as a reminder to convert the placeholder on an in-progress project to an actual employee or to reassign the work.

Converting Placeholders to a Full-time Employee or Contractor

If you are hiring for a new role and are ready to update your placeholder with the new employee details, the switch to full-time employee or contractor is easy. Doing so will reassign any allocations assigned to the placeholder to your new employee.

To convert to a FTE or Contractor:

1. Click on the "Convert to FTE or Contractor" button from the employee edit in settings
2. The convert modal appears and the new employee’s first name, last name, and email must be input to continue
3. You have the option to create an employee in your timesheet tool
4. Hit "Confirm" to reallocate all placeholder allocations to this new employee

Archiving Placeholders

If a placeholder employee is no longer needed, you are able to archive by clicking the "archive employee" button from the employee details screen. Doing so will allow you to set a termination date, but this is not a requirement to archive a placeholder employee. Setting an accurate termination date allows Parallax to adjust your teams' capacity based on when employees leave the company. 

Just like a regular archived employee, archived placeholders can be recovered by selecting "Archived" from the Employee Status filter at the top of the Employees listing page. Clicking into a placeholder and selecting "Unarchive Employees" will change their status to "active" in the employees list.