What you'll find here:

This article covers how to add and use Placeholders for People in Parallax.

What are Placeholder People?

A placeholder is very similar to a regular worker 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 to estimate upcoming projects and fill in gaps in your resource plans. 

Adding Placeholders

You can create a placeholder from the People Settings page in Parallax.

1. Click on "Add Person"
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 just how you would a regular worker type in Parallax. For more information one what each of the attributes mean, check out this article: Managing People in Parallax

Using Placeholders

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

In insights, placeholders 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 worker type filter. 

It is important for placeholders to be staffed to an actual Employee or Contractor 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 Contractor or to reassign the work.

Converting Placeholders to a Employees or Contractor

If you are hiring for a new role and are ready to update your placeholder with the new worker's details, the switch to Employee or Contractor is easy. Doing so will reassign any allocations assigned to the placeholder to your new Person.

To convert to a FTE or Contractor:

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

Archiving Placeholders

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

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