Employee Directory
Community Edition Documentation

Employees are staff members working for your organization.

To create employee records in the admin area:

1. Log in to your Administration Panel.
2. Click the 'Employees' tab.
3. Click the 'Add New' sub-tab or the “Add New” button in the employee list page.
4. Start filling in your employee fields. You must fill all required fields. All required fields have red star after their labels.
5. As needed, set employee taxonomies and relationships. All required relationships or taxonomies must be set.
6. When you are ready, click Publish. If you do not have publish privileges, the "Submit for Review" button is displayed.
7. After the submission is completed, the employee status changes to "Published" or "Pending Review". Users must have "publish" right to publish employees. Users who do not have "publish" right can still create employees; however, these employees must be reviewed and approved by a user with employee "publish" right. Check Roles and Responsibilities section of this document to see which access groups have employee "publish" right.

Employees can be modified by clicking on the "Edit" link under the employee title in the employee list page in the admin area. Make any necessary changes and then click Publish.

In Employee Directory, users are only allowed to search employees they have access to. Users who have access to employees can search using the filter system in the employee admin areaor search forms in the frontend

To schedule Employees for publication on a future time or date in the admin area:

1. Log in to your Administration Panel.
2. Click the 'Employees' tab.
3. Click the 'Add New' sub-tab or the “Add New” button in the employee list page.
4. Start filling in your employee fields. You must fill all required fields. All required fields have red star after their labels.
5. As needed, set employee taxonomies and relationships. All required relationships or taxonomies must be set.
6. When you are ready, click "Edit" in the Publish area next to the words "Publish immediately". You can also change the publish date to a date in the past to back-date Employees. Change the settings to the desired time and date. You must also hit the "Publish" button when you have completed the employee to publish at the desired time and date.
7. After the submission is completed, the employee status changes to "Published".

To create a password protected employee in the admin area:

1. Log in to your Administration Panel.
2. Click the 'Employees' tab.
3. Click the 'Add New' sub-tab or the “Add New” button in the employee list page.
4. Start filling in your employee fields. You must fill all required fields. All required fields have red star after their labels.
5. As needed, set employee taxonomies and relationships. All required relationships or taxonomies must be set.
6. Click the "Edit" link next to Visibility in the publish box and select "Password protected".
7. Enter a password that will be required to view that employee in the text field. The password is limited to 20 characters.
8. When you are ready, click the "Publish" button (or "Update" if the employee is already published.)
9. After the submission is completed, the employee status changes to "Published".

Only an Administrator and users with "publish" right can change the password set for your employee or modify visibility setting by clicking the "Visibility: Edit" link again.

When employee content is password protected, employee title displays the text "Protected: " before the employee Title and the content prints a password form with this text: "This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:".

If multiple employees have the same password, one will only have to enter the required password once. Only one password is tracked at a time so if you visit two different employees with two different password, you must re-enter the employee password to access content. WordPress saves passwords for maximum 10 days. After this period expires, one must reenter the password again to view the protected content.

Employees can be privately published to remove them from employee lists and feeds.

To create a private employee in the admin area:

1. Log in to your Administration Panel.
2. Click the 'Employees' tab.
3. Click the 'Add New' sub-tab or the “Add New” button in the employee list page.
4. Start filling in your employee fields. You must fill all required fields. All required fields have red star after their labels.
5. As needed, set employee taxonomies and relationships. All required relationships or taxonomies must be set.
6. Click the "Edit" link next to Visibility in the publish box and select "Private".
7. Once you change the visibility to private, the employee status changes to "Privately Published".
8. When you are ready, click the "UPDATE" button.

Only an Administrator and users with "publish" right for the employee can change visibility setting by clicking the "Visibility: Edit" link again.

To preview employee content press the "Preview" button - a button directly above the “publish” button - in the publish box before officially publishing or sending for review.

To create a draft employee in the admin area:

1. Log in to your Administration Panel.
2. Click the 'Employees' tab.
3. Click the 'Add New' sub-tab or the “Add New” button in the employee list page.
4. Start filling in your employee fields. You must fill all required fields. All required fields have red star after their labels.
5. As needed, set employee taxonomies and relationships. All required relationships or taxonomies must be set.
6. When you are ready, click "Save Draft" button in the publish box.
7. After the submission is completed, the employee status stays at "Draft".

Once the employee is published the user who created the employee is assigned as the employee author. Employee authors can view and edit the employee. One can change the employee author from the author box. The author box drop down is limited to the users who have employee "publish" right.

Employee Directory Community supports creating of custom fields. Creating of custom fields provides a quick way to allow you to extend the content with key/value pairs also known as meta data. Custom fields store arbitrary extra information about employees.

To create a custom fields for your employees

1. Edit any employee or create a new one in the admin area. You will see the Custom Fields metabox. if you do not see it, enable it from Screen options.
2. Creating a custom field requires a key and a value. The key is constant, but the value can change for each employee. Click on Enter New link or select a key from the dropdown list.
3. Enter a value and click Add Custom Field button
4. Repeat the steps above for creating more fields

You can create as many custom fields as you need. If your custom field key may have multiple values, create a new field and use the same key with different values. You can use HTML code in the value box. Employee Directory concatenates each value separated with a space character. By default, WordPress shows 30 custom fields in the dropdown list.

Once you create employee custom fields, they are displayed in the frontend. The custom fields are available to be for your forms too. You can enable or disable them in the form layouts from EDirectory menu > Settings page > Forms tab . By default all custom fields are disabled.

Department can be set by clicking on the desired option in "Departments" box and updating/saving the employee. Setting a value for Department is optional. Department is also not organized hierarchically meaning there's no relationship from one Department value to another.

Departments do not have preset values.

Employment Type can be set by clicking on the desired option in "Employment Types" box and updating/saving the employee. Setting a value for Employment Type is optional. Employment Type is also not organized hierarchically meaning there's no relationship from one Employment Type value to another.

Employee Directory comes with a preset Employment Types defined in detail in Glossary section of this document. Administrators can always add/remove/modify the list based on your organizational needs. Some widgets created upon installation are based on predefined Employment Types.

Gender can be set by clicking on the desired option in "Genders" box and updating/saving the employee. Setting a value for Gender is optional. Gender is also not organized hierarchically meaning there's no relationship from one Gender value to another.

Employee Directory comes with a preset Genders defined in detail in Glossary section of this document. Administrators can always add/remove/modify the list based on your organizational needs. Some widgets created upon installation are based on predefined Genders.

Job Title can be set by clicking on the desired option in "Job Titles" box and updating/saving the employee. Setting a value for Job Title is optional. Job Title is also not organized hierarchically meaning there's no relationship from one Job Title value to another.

Employee Directory comes with a preset Job Titles defined in detail in Glossary section of this document. Administrators can always add/remove/modify the list based on your organizational needs. Some widgets created upon installation are based on predefined Job Titles.

Marital Status can be set by clicking on the desired option in "Marital Statuses" box and updating/saving the employee. Setting a value for Marital Status is optional. Marital Status is also not organized hierarchically meaning there's no relationship from one Marital Status value to another.

Employee Directory comes with a preset Marital Statuses defined in detail in Glossary section of this document. Administrators can always add/remove/modify the list based on your organizational needs. Some widgets created upon installation are based on predefined Marital Statuses.

Displaying Employee archives can be done by creating a link in the Appearance Menus Screen in the admin area.

Alternatively, if you'd like to display a specific Employee, you can select the link from Employee metabox and add it to your menu. If you don't see Employee metabox, check the Screen Options to ensure it is set to display.

To create a custom link for Employee archives:

1. Goto Appearance in the admin menu and click on Menus link
2. On the right hand side, pick the menu you’d like to include from Select a menu to edit dropdown
3. Under Links menu navigation item, type in /employees to the URL field
4. Type in Employees or another label describing the custom link URL in the Link Text field
5. Click “Add to menu” button to add the item to the menu
6. Pick “primary location” under “Menu Settings” below the menu
7. Save your menu
8. Go to the frontend and click on the link you created to access Employees. Employee archive page content is only displayed to the authorized users who have access permissions.

In Employee Directory, Employees are locked during editing, preventing other users from accessing and modifying the Employee.

If a user clicks to edit one of the Employee records that's currently locked they are presented with three options in a pop-up dialog:

1. Go Back - Return to the Employees listing.
2. Preview - Preview the current state of the Employee that's being edited.
3. Take Over - Lock out the current editor of the Employees and begin editing. (The other user will receive a notification)

The user that has been locked out receives the following dialog, and is no longer able to edit the Employee. It can take up to 15 seconds for the current Employee editor to be notified that another user has taken over.

Featured Employees is an entity sidebar widget. It shows latest 10 published employee records without any page navigation links.

Recent Employees is an entity sidebar widget. It shows latest 5 published employee records without any page navigation links.

"Search employees" form is used for searching employee records from the frontend. You can use [search_employees] shortcode to display it in a page or post of your choise as well.

The following are the fields used in the form:

• Employee No (text)
• Full Name (text)
• Email (text)
• Departments (select-only single selection allowed)
• Job Titles (select-only single selection allowed)
• Genders (select-only single selection allowed)
• Marital Statuses (select-only single selection allowed)
• Employment Types (select-only single selection allowed)

To install your Employee Directory Plugin using the built-in plugin installer:

1. Download Employee Directory Plugin to your desktop.
2. Go to Plugins "Add New".
3. Under Upload, click "Browse".
4. Find the employee-directory-community-VERSION.zip file.
5. Click Install Now to install the Employee Directory Plugin.
6. A popup window will ask you to confirm your wish to install the Plugin.
7. Click Proceed to continue with the installation. The resulting installation screen will list the installation as successful or note any problems during the install.
8. If successful, click Activate Plugin to activate it, or Return to Plugin Installer for further actions.

Replace VERSION in instructions with the version number of Employee Directory you want to install. After the activation, the Employee Directory plugin setup may display notification asking if you if you'd like to install setup pages or skip setup page installation, click the appropriate button.

To uninstall your Employee Directory Plugin using the built-in plugin installer:

1. Go to Plugins screen.
2. Find the Employee Directory Plugin you wish to deactivate and uninstall.
3. Click Deactivate.

WordPress auto-update system displays notification in the Admin Bar and also on the plugins page when new version of the Employee Directory is available.

To install the new version, simply hit the "Update automatically" button. WordPress will automatically download the new package, extract it and replace the old files. No FTP, removing old files, and uploading is required.

Upgrading your plugin

We offer different plugin editions to better match your needs. If you purchased a different edition of Employee Directory, follow the steps below to upgrade your plugin:

1. Go WordPress plugins page and deactivate and optionally delete the current Employee Directory Community edition.
2. Install the new edition based on the instructions in WordPress Codex
3. Activate the new edition
4. Go to Plugin Settings page and save settings

Upgrading Employee Directory Community edition does not have any impact on your existing data but it is always a good idea to back up your WordPress database as a rule of thumb before any changes.

Using Plugin Extensions

Employee Directory Community edition is configured to work with many plugin extensions. Most plugin extensions work regardless of the edition unless specified specifically in the plugin page.

if you purchased a plugin extension, follow the instructions in WordPress Codex to install and activate your plugin extension like any other WordPress plugin.

If your extension comes with a license key, you must save and activate your license key to get software updates and support.

Administrators can show, hide, and resize form elements by clicking on the Settings page under EDirectory menu. In addition, form captcha element can be set to "Visitors Only","Always Show", or "Never Show".

Required fields can not be disabled however you can change the column size. The optional fields can be enabled, disabled, or modified to occupy more or less space in the form layout.

Make sure to save your changes after any modification otherwise your changes will not take effect.

Administrators can set global options available for Employee Directory. After logging in as administrator, click Settings page under EDirectory menu. Modify the ones you want to be changed and click Save button to make changes active. The following lists the available options:

Image Border Color

Sets the color of image border. If you put in "none" (without quotes), it will not display border.

The default entity base slug can be changed within entity tab of settings page in EDirectory menu. After you update, make sure to refresh your site's Permalinks under Settings. You can only change base slug if post name based permalink structure is selected.

For the most part, Employee Directory templates will integrate nicely with most WordPress themes. However you may run into issues when the default Employee Directory content wrappers do not match your chosen theme or your theme's CSS rules overwrite Employee Directory CSS rules.

Theme related issues manifest themselves by;

• Breaking your layout on Employee Directory pages and shifting your sidebars into incorrect positions
• Some random text getting displayed in header or footer of your site
• Some sections in plugin pages not getting displayed as in the plugin's demo site.

Theme related issues can potentially affect all single, taxonomy, archive and shortcode pages because Employee Directory uses templates of its own to display these pages and it’s impossible for eMDPlugins to know exactly what markup or CSS rules your theme uses.

There are three methods to resolve theme related issues;

• Copying and modifying your theme's header.php and footer.php
• Copying and modifying your theme's page.php
• Adding custom CSS rules

Modifying header.php and footer.php

1. Go to your theme's folder -- wp-content/themes/YOURTHEME/
2. Copy header.php of your theme as header-emdplugins.php
3. Copy footer.php of your theme as footer-emplugins.php
4. Remove the conflicting code from header-emdplugins.php and/or footer-emplugins.php.
5. This will make Employee Directory use these newly created header and footer instead of your theme's default header and footer. Save the files. You’re done.

Copying and modifying your theme's page.php

If the issue can not be resolved through simply modifying the header and footer templates, you need to modify your theme's page.php.

To set up this template page:

1. Duplicate your theme’s page.php file, and name it empd-com.php. This file should be found like this: wp-content/themes/YOURTHEME/empd-com.php.
2. Open up your newly created empd-com.php in a text editor, or the editor of your choice.

3. Next you need to find the loop (see The_Loop). The loop usually starts with a:

   <?php if ( have_posts() ) :

   and usually ends with:

   <?php endif; ?>

   This varies between themes. Once you have found it, delete it. In its place, put:

   <?php empd_com_content(); ?>

4. This will make your theme use Employee Directory’s loop instead. Save the file. You’re done.

Adding CSS rules

You add custom CSS rules in the Custom CSS field of Tools tab under EDirectory menu, settings page to overwrite your theme's default CSS. The custom css rules added in the settings are not deleted when your plugin gets updated.

You can learn CSS language by completing the tutorials at w3schools.com

Employees are staff members working for your organization.

Photo

Photo of the employee. 250x250 is the preferred size. Photo does not have a default value.

Featured

Sets employee as featured which can be used to select employees in available views using Visual Shortcode Builder and Featured employee widget. Featured does not have a default value.

Employee No

The unique identifier for an employee Employee No is a required field. Being a unique identifier, it uniquely distinguishes each instance of Employee entity. Employee No is filterable in the admin area. Employee No does not have a default value.

Hire Date

Date the employee is hired Hire Date is filterable in the admin area. Hire Date does not have a default value.

Birthday

Birthday is filterable in the admin area. Birthday does not have a default value.

Mailing Address

Primary mailing address of an employee Mailing Address does not have a default value.

Phone

Phone is filterable in the admin area. Phone does not have a default value.

Extension

Extension is filterable in the admin area. Extension does not have a default value.

Mobile

Mobile is filterable in the admin area. Mobile does not have a default value.

Email

Email is filterable in the admin area. Email does not have a default value.

Facebook

Facebook does not have a default value.

Google+

Google+ does not have a default value.

Twitter

Twitter does not have a default value.

Linkedin

Linkedin does not have a default value.

Github

Github is filterable in the admin area. Github does not have a default value.

Bio

Bio does not have a default value.

Full Name

Full Name is a required field. Full Name is filterable in the admin area. Full Name does not have a default value.

Global attributes can be set in the Settings page, Global tab under EDirectory menu.

Image Border Color (text)

Sets the color of image border. If you put in "none" (without quotes), it will not display border.