Adding Assistants To A SharePoint Organisation Chart
Personal or team assistants are often represented within org charts directly below the person to whom they report to but not at the same level as the other direct reports of that manager. This signifies that while they report to the same manager they usually have less authority than the managers other direct reports.
This walkthrough builds upon the tutorial Creating an Organisation Chart From A SharePoint List.
Showing one or more people as assistants is a two step process with the SharePoint Org Chart.
- Stage one is to modify ( or create ) a list
- Stage two is configuring the Org Chart Web part to display the assistants
Add a new field to the organisation structure list
The first step in the process is to add a new field to the list containing the organisation structure. In this example the column is named Assistant.
The type of information that the column should be set to is Yes/No to indicate that a person is either an assistant or not.
The default value can be either Yes or No but it is sensible to set this to No.
NOTE: Organisation charts using the User Profile Service will automatically use the assistant field from the User Profile which is synchronised with Active Directory.
Add an assistant
The second step is to add person to the list who is an assistant.
In the example Joe Doe has been added with a job title of Personal Assistant and reports to John Bull.
Please refer to Creating an Organisation Chart From A SharePoint List for full details on how to create the initial list.
Modify to display Assistants
Next the SharePoint Org Chart needs to be modified to display the assistants.
In the web part Tool Pane locate the Assistants properties and then enter the column name Assistant into the Assistant Field box.
In this example the default background colour has been set to Yellow.
Apply changes
Pressing the Apply or Ok button will make the changes to the organisation chart and the assistants will now be shown.