Reading the org chart

The View button

Everything about how the org is drawn sits behind View, top right of the chart: the layout, the diagram, and the lens. Export sits beside it.

Four ways to draw it

• Chart is the classic boxes-and-lines view. Pan, zoom, expand and collapse branches. Nothing on it moves until an admin chooses Edit.
• Quilt, Icicle, and Sunburst are whole-org views that show hierarchy by containment instead of lines, so the entire company fits on one screen no matter the headcount. Read-only, built for “see everyone at once.”
• Layout, on the Chart only: Comfortable stacks a manager’s reports into columns so the whole org fits the screen. Flat lays every report out in one row. The choice is remembered for you.

Four lenses

The lens redraws the same people through a different pivot: Reporting (who reports to whom), Department, Location, and Projects, which groups people by the teams they're on, so someone on two teams appears in both groups. The interactive Chart drawing applies to the Reporting lens; the other lenses use the whole-org views.

Searching the canvas

The chart has its own search: matches stay lit with a ring while everyone else dims, so you can spot a person (or light up a whole department by searching its name) without losing the shape of the org around them. Click any person to open their profile.

Editing the chart

Admins: Choose Edit, top right of the chart, and the chart switches to edit mode: a drafting grid behind the cards, a panel on the right, and Add person, Add report, Undo, Redo, ?, Discard and Save where View and Export were. The first time, a short walkthrough shows you around, and ? replays it.

• Add people. Add person puts someone new on the chart. Choose a card, then Add report to put someone under it. From the keyboard, with a card chosen, Tab adds a report and Enter adds a peer. A name is all a person needs.
• Edit a person. Choose a card to edit that person in the panel: name, job title, department, and who they report to. Each says whether its value comes from your directory or was set in Sprooster, and a value set in Sprooster can be handed back to the directory.
• Move people. To change who someone reports to, drag their card onto their new manager’s card. Their team comes with them. While you drag, the card you’re holding shrinks, the cards you can’t drop on grey out, and the card under your pointer lights up with what letting go will do.
• Promote someone into their manager’s role. Drag the manager onto one of their direct reports (the label reads Swap places), or use Hand this role to in the manager’s panel. The report takes the manager’s place and team, the manager reports to them, and an Undo appears.
• Move a team without its manager. Drag the small circle under a manager’s card (it reads +39 when the branch is closed and − when it’s open) onto another card. Everyone below that manager moves under the new one, next to their existing team, and the manager stays where they are. This is how a VP takes on a second branch. In the panel, Move their team to does the same.
• Move several people at once. Shift-click cards to choose them, then drag any one of them, or pick their manager in the panel. Each keeps whoever reports to them.
• People not on the chart. Someone with no manager isn’t drawn on the chart or in its exports, so nobody unplaced stands next to your CEO in a board deck. They stay on the People page. Admins see a small amber ! at the bottom right, above the zoom buttons, with a count of what they might want to review. It opens edit mode on Needs attention, where you can drag a name onto their manager’s card (anyone who reports to them comes too), or click it to edit them in the panel. Not everyone without a manager is missing one. Tick them, or click a name, and choose Keep at the top for someone who belongs beside your CEO, like a co-founder or a board chair, or Leave off the chart for someone outside the structure, like a contractor or an advisor. Neither is counted after that. The people you leave off are listed at the bottom of Needs attention, where Put back undoes it.
• Needs attention lists people at the top level who need a manager, with a likely manager for each, and a way to assign several at once. It also lists anyone whose manager your directory has changed since you set one.

When your directory and Sprooster disagree about a manager, a change in the directory wins and a blank in the directory never does. A manager you set holds until the directory names somebody new. Then the directory’s is shown, and Needs attention offers yours back.

Nothing you change is saved until you choose Save, which saves everything at once, and then everyone sees it. Until then, every card you’ve changed carries an Edited tab, or New for someone you added, so you can see what Save will send. Undo (⌘Z) and Redo (⇧⌘Z) step back and forward one change at a time. Discard throws away everything since you chose Edit. If you try to leave the page with unsaved changes, your browser asks first.