Employee Spotlight
Professional Edition Documentation

Author: eMarket Design
Last Updated: 2017-08-02

Introduction

Employee Spotlight Pro showcases your organization in 10 unique, responsive layouts including individual pages for each employee

Concepts

The following is the definition(s) of the concept(s) covered in the context of Employee Spotlight app:

Last Updated: 2015-04-19

Employees

Employees are human resources that work for your organization. Employees can be identified as staff, team members, founders, or contractors.

Last Updated: 2015-12-15

Content Access

Employee Spotlight provides access to content based on a user's role in your organization. A role defines a set of tasks a user is allowed to perform and is assigned to a user when he or she registers into the system. Please check the Roles and Responsibilities section of this document to see the available access roles and the functionality they have access to.

Working with Employees

Using Employee Spotlight, you can create, modify, delete, and search employee records, associated taxonomies, or relationships.

Last Updated: 2016-12-28

Creating Employees

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.
Last Updated: 2015-06-04

Modifying Employees

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.

Last Updated: 2015-06-04

Searching Employees

In Employee Spotlight, 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 area.

Last Updated: 2015-06-04

Scheduling Employees

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".
Last Updated: 2015-06-04

Password Protected Employees

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.

Last Updated: 2015-06-04

Private Employees

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.

Who can publish and see private employees?

Only users with "publish employees", "edit private employees", "read private employees", and "delete private employees" authorization permission levels can create and see private employees. Users who have the same access level with the author but have a relationship-limited access of a private employee can not view the content even if they have access rights to the content. User who have access to the content but not limited by a relationship can still see and modify private employees.

Check Roles and Responsibilities section of this document to see which user roles can privately publish employees.

Last Updated: 2015-04-19

Previewing Employees

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.

Last Updated: 2015-04-19

Draft Employees

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".
Last Updated: 2015-08-11

Employee Author

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.

Last Updated: 2016-05-21

Creating Custom Fields

Employee Spotlight Professional 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 Spotlight 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.

Last Updated: 2016-10-26

Setting Employee Tags

Employee Tag can be set by typing the desired option in the empty text field and clicking "Add" button in "Employee Tags" box and updating/saving the employee. Setting a value for Employee Tag is optional. Employee Tag is also not organized hierarchically meaning there's no relationship from one Employee Tag value to another.

Employee Tags do not have preset values.

Last Updated: 2015-04-19

Setting Groups

Group can be set by typing the desired option in the empty text field and clicking "Add" button in "Groups" box and updating/saving the employee. Setting a value for Group is optional. Group is also not organized hierarchically meaning there's no relationship from one Group value to another.

Groups do not have preset values.

Last Updated: 2015-04-19

Setting Locations

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

Locations do not have preset values.

Last Updated: 2015-04-19

Displaying Employees

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.
Last Updated: 2015-06-04

Locking Employees

In Employee Spotlight, 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.

Widgets

Widgets provide a simple and easy-to-use way of displaying content and features on your sidebars or dashboard.

Sidebar widgets can be added, removed, and rearranged on the WordPress Administration Appearance > Widgets panel. Dashboard widgets can be enabled or disabled using Screen Options tab in your app dashboard page. All widgets have drag-and-drop functionality.

The following sections list the Employee Spotlight widgets:

Last Updated: 2015-04-19

Featured Employees sidebar widget

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

Last Updated: 2015-04-19

Recent Members sidebar widget

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

Last Updated: 2016-02-09

This Week\'s Birthdays sidebar widget

This Week\'s Birthdays is an entity sidebar widget. It shows latest -1 published employee records without any page navigation links.

Standards

Standard views display a single type of content in a custom format and can be used in place of archive views. Administrators can display standard views using their shortcodes by choosing the name of the view you want to display from the WPAS component list after clicking on the WPAS toolbar button on any page.

The following sections list the Employee Spotlight standard views available:

Last Updated: 2017-03-29

Employee Animated Circle Grid

Creates an animated grid of employees."Employee Animated Circle Grid" is a standard view which displays -1 Employee records per page with a post status of publish in ascending order by menu_order. Page navigation is enabled. If you choose to install setup pages during plugin activation, a WordPress page is created with a title of "Employee Animated Circle Grid". You can visit this page to access the view. To display it in another page or post, use [employee_animated_circle_grid] shortcode or select the view name from the WPAS component list after clicking on the WPAS toolbar button.

Last Updated: 2017-03-29

Employee Animated Grid

Creates an animated grid of employees."Employee Animated Grid" is a standard view which displays -1 Employee records per page with a post status of publish in ascending order by menu_order. Page navigation is enabled. If you choose to install setup pages during plugin activation, a WordPress page is created with a title of "Employee Animated Grid". You can visit this page to access the view. To display it in another page or post, use [employee_animated_grid] shortcode or select the view name from the WPAS component list after clicking on the WPAS toolbar button.

Last Updated: 2016-12-28

Employee Cards

"Employee Cards" is a standard view which displays -1 Employee records per page with a post status of publish in ascending order by menu_order. Page navigation is disabled. If you choose to install setup pages during plugin activation, a WordPress page is created with a title of "Employee Cards". You can visit this page to access the view. To display it in another page or post, use [standard_employees] shortcode or select the view name from the WPAS component list after clicking on the WPAS toolbar button.

Last Updated: 2015-08-11

Employee Caurosel

"Employee Caurosel" is a standard view which displays -1 Employee records per page with a post status of publish in ascending order by menu_order. Page navigation is disabled. If you choose to install setup pages during plugin activation, a WordPress page is created with a title of "Employee Caurosel". You can visit this page to access the view. To display it in another page or post, use [employee_carousel] shortcode or select the view name from the WPAS component list after clicking on the WPAS toolbar button.

Last Updated: 2017-03-29

Employee Circle Grid

Creates a grid of employees."Employee Circle Grid" is a standard view which displays -1 Employee records per page with a post status of publish in ascending order by menu_order. Page navigation is enabled. If you choose to install setup pages during plugin activation, a WordPress page is created with a title of "Employee Circle Grid". You can visit this page to access the view. To display it in another page or post, use [employee_circle_grid] shortcode or select the view name from the WPAS component list after clicking on the WPAS toolbar button.

Last Updated: 2017-03-29

Employee Circle Panel

"Employee Circle Panel" is a standard view which displays -1 Employee records per page with a post status of publish in ascending order by menu_order. Page navigation is enabled. If you choose to install setup pages during plugin activation, a WordPress page is created with a title of "Employee Circle Panel". You can visit this page to access the view. To display it in another page or post, use [employee_circle_panel] shortcode or select the view name from the WPAS component list after clicking on the WPAS toolbar button.

Last Updated: 2015-08-11

Employee Grid

"Employee Grid" is a standard view which displays 12 Employee records per page with a post status of publish in ascending order by menu_order. Page navigation is enabled. If you choose to install setup pages during plugin activation, a WordPress page is created with a title of "Employee Grid". You can visit this page to access the view. To display it in another page or post, use [employee_grid] shortcode or select the view name from the WPAS component list after clicking on the WPAS toolbar button.

Last Updated: 2017-03-29

Employee List

"Employee List" is a standard view which displays 20 Employee records per page with a post status of publish in ascending order by menu_order. Page navigation is disabled. If you choose to install setup pages during plugin activation, a WordPress page is created with a title of "Employee List". You can visit this page to access the view. To display it in another page or post, use [employee_list] shortcode or select the view name from the WPAS component list after clicking on the WPAS toolbar button.

Last Updated: 2017-03-29

Employee Panel

"Employee Panel" is a standard view which displays -1 Employee records per page with a post status of publish in ascending order by menu_order. Page navigation is enabled. If you choose to install setup pages during plugin activation, a WordPress page is created with a title of "Employee Panel". You can visit this page to access the view. To display it in another page or post, use [employee_panel] shortcode or select the view name from the WPAS component list after clicking on the WPAS toolbar button.

Last Updated: 2017-07-31

Roles and Capabilities

The following table shows the capabilities and the access roles available in Employee Spotlight app. "Red" color means the users who belong to the corresponding role do not have the capability. "Green" color means the users who belong to the corresponding role have the capability.

Entities

CAPABILITYAdministratorEditorAuthorContributorSubscriberEmployeeEmployee Manager
Edit Employees
Delete Employees
Edit Others Employees
Publish Employees
Read Private Employees
Delete Private Employees
Delete Published Employees
Delete Others Employees
Edit Private Employees
Edit Published Employees
Manage Operations Employees
Set Author Employees
Limit by Author Backend Employees

Taxonomies

CAPABILITYAdministratorEditorAuthorContributorSubscriberEmployeeEmployee Manager
Manage Employee Tags
Edit Employee Tags
Delete Employee Tags
Assign Employee Tags
Manage Locations
Edit Locations
Delete Locations
Assign Locations
Manage Groups
Edit Groups
Delete Groups
Assign Groups

Relationships

CAPABILITYAdministratorEditorAuthorContributorSubscriberEmployeeEmployee Manager
All Relationships are open to public.

Widgets

CAPABILITYAdministratorEditorAuthorContributorSubscriberEmployeeEmployee Manager
All Widgets are open to public.

Forms

CAPABILITYAdministratorEditorAuthorContributorSubscriberEmployeeEmployee Manager
All Forms are open to public.

Views

CAPABILITYAdministratorEditorAuthorContributorSubscriberEmployeeEmployee Manager
All Views are open to public.

Notifications

Notifications are email alerts Employee Spotlight sends when new modifications, additions or changes occur.

Notifications tab can be accessed from Settings > Employee Spotlight Settings page in the admin area. Using Notifications tab you can:

  • Enable or disable notifications
  • Choose where the notification will be triggered from
  • Customize email content or subject using tags
  • Include CC, BCC, Reply to
  • Choose who will receive notification either by changing Send to address or selecting appropriate relationship checkbox.

For notifications to work, you must be able to send emails from the server Employee Spotlight enabled. The following sections list the notifications available for Employee Spotlight:

Administration

Plugins are managed from the Plugins screen in the Administration Screens of your WordPress site. All Plugins listed on this screen are found in your wp-content/plugins directory. Each Plugin has a description in its header section of what it does, an author and website to refer to, and a version number. Find Employee Spotlight from the list.

Last Updated: 2016-10-26

Installation

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

  1. Download Employee Spotlight Plugin to your desktop.
  2. Go to Plugins "Add New".
  3. Under Upload, click "Browse".
  4. Find the employee-spotlight-professional-VERSION.zip file.
  5. Click Install Now to install the Employee Spotlight 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 Spotlight you want to install. After the activation, the Employee Spotlight 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.

Last Updated: 2015-06-04

Uninstallation

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

  1. Go to Plugins screen.
  2. Find the Employee Spotlight Plugin you wish to deactivate and uninstall.
  3. Click Deactivate.
Last Updated: 2016-07-28

Plugin Updates and Upgrades

WordPress auto-update system displays notification in the Admin Bar and also on the plugins page when new version of the Employee Spotlight 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 Spotlight, follow the steps below to upgrade your plugin:

  1. Go WordPress plugins page and deactivate and optionally delete the current Employee Spotlight Professional 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 Spotlight Professional 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 Spotlight Professional 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.

Maintaining your plugin

Keeping your plugin up-to-date is very important. At emdplugins.com, we regularly update our products to offer plugin or WordPress related bug fixes, product enhancements, patches for security vulnerabilities and more. Ability to receive these updates is critical to maintaining your software and site in working condition.

To be able to see the update notifications and receive updates, you must have a valid, activated license at all times. If your existing license is expired, you must renew it manually if you opted out of automatic renewals.

Please also note that you must have a valid license to get support for your plugin.

To activate your license:

  1. Go to Spotlight Pro > Licenses page
  2. Enter the license key you receive in your purchase receipt
  3. Click "Save Changes" button
  4. Now, you will see, "Activate License" button and "INACTIVE" right next to your license key
  5. Click "Activate License" button to activate your license
  6. If you see "VALID" message in place of "INACTIVE", you should be able to get your plugin updates.

If you followed the steps above and still are not able to get the plugin updates, there could be additional configuration needed for your site.

Last Updated: 2016-07-28

Import/Export/Reset Content

Administrators can import/export from/to CSV files or reset Employee Spotlight entities, taxonomies and relationships by clicking on Operations button in entity list pages. You must be able to get a backup of your content and files before starting importing/exporting or resetting. Operations page is divided into Import, Export, and Reset tabs.

Importing

Import tab is used to visually import existing records into an entity, its taxonomies and relationships. Each fields to be imported must be mapped to the app design.If you have custom fields in your CSV files, these fields can be imported as well. By default, custom fields are not mapped and they do not have a mapped label. You need to specify custom field's label in the corresponding textbox to import it correctly. The imported custom fields are created for every record with the corresponding value specified in the CSV file.

In you import large files with a lot of images or files attached, your server may be temporarily unavailable and return a white screen. This is due to the extended time needed by WordPress to process and create image thumbnails. If you get a white screen, open up a browser screen and monitor the activity in Media library. If you see images getting created, wait until all activity stops. After image or file addition stops, check if all your records are imported correctly. As a sanity check, you can do the import again but this time checking the Update existing data based on unique field(s) option.

Updating and syncing with external systems

Update option checks the existing records against the CSV file and see if there is a change. If there is a change, it finds the difference and updates the record. For example, if an image is added, the new image is added. If the incoming record does not include an existing image, the existing image which is not included in the incoming record gets deleted. All deletions are permanent. If the incoming record is not there, new record is created. You can use the update option to sync your existing records with external systems.

Exporting

Export tab is used to export the content of an entity as a CSV file. If an entity has relationships, they must be exported separately from the main entity. You will see additional export buttons if this is the case. When you export records, all custom fields are exported as well.

Resetting

Reset tab is used to permanently delete the content of an entity including all the attached images and files. You can also choose to delete all entity content, relationships, or taxonomies. Make sure you have a backup of your content, attached images and/or files before any reset action.

You can take a backup of your content to CSV using export tab. However, you need to take a backup of your attached files manually. In addition, if you need to re-import after the reset using the exported CSV, you must modify the URLs of your attached images to the new or backup location to import them back correctly.

Last Updated: 2016-12-28

Setting Global Options

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

Remove Last Modified By
Removes Last Modified By text from employee pages when checked.
Animated Circle Grid Effect
Sets the default effect on animated circle grid view. You can use different effects than the one selected here by setting this field to a different value using Visual Shortcode Builder.
Animated Grid Effect
Sets the default effect on animated grid view. You can use different effects than the one selected here by setting this field to a different value using Visual Shortcode Builder.
Last Updated: 2016-07-28

Changing Entity Base Slug

The default entity base slug can be changed within entity tab of settings page in Spotlight Pro 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.

Last Updated: 2016-12-29

Resolving theme related conflicts

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

Theme related issues manifest themselves by;

  • Breaking your layout on Employee Spotlight 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 Spotlight 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.

The following is a Developer level documentation. If you’re unfamiliar with code/templates and resolving potential conflicts, we strongly suggest to hire us or a developer to complete the project for you. Please also note that our complimentary support team is unable to assist with customization per our Support Policy.

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 Spotlight 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.

Please note that this approach eliminates Your ability:

  • To set page templates for single, archive and taxonomy pages
  • To remove page navigation from archive and taxonomy pages.

from Spotlight Pro, settings page.

To set up this template page:

  1. Duplicate your theme’s page.php file, and name it empslight-pro.php. This file should be found like this: wp-content/themes/YOURTHEME/empslight-pro.php.
  2. Open up your newly created empslight-pro.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 empslight_pro_content(); ?>
  4. This will make your theme use Employee Spotlight’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 Spotlight Pro 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

Last Updated: 2016-07-28

Localization(l10n)

Employee Spotlight can be translated into any language by editing empslight-pro-emd-plugins.pot and empslight-pro.pot files.

  • empslight-pro-emd-plugins.pot file is for the components used in Employee Spotlight.
  • empslight-pro.pot file is for the Employee Spotlight specific strings that need to be translated.

Follow the steps below to fully translate Employee Spotlight into the desired language:

  1. Copy empslight-pro-emd-plugins.pot as language specific .po file such as empslight-pro-emd-plugins-tr_TR.po.
  2. Copy empslight-pro.pot as language specific .po file such as empslight-pro-tr_TR.po.
  3. Use your favorite PO file editor and complete translation strings in the .po files you created.
  4. When translations are completed, create .mo file of each .po file.
  5. Create wp-content/languages/empslight-pro directory
  6. Put translated .mo files and .po files in the directory above to protect them from getting deleted during plugin updates.
  7. Change the language to the translated language from Settings > General > Site Language.
  8. Repeat the process until you get all strings translated
    9. .
Last Updated: 2015-04-19

Screen Options

Screen Options is displayed as a hanging tab under the toolbar. Click on the Screen Options tab to expand the options available for a particular Screen, check (or uncheck) the desired options, then click the Screen Options hanging tab to collapse the Screen Options. Each screen may have a different set of Screen Options.

Edit page screen options allow the user to decide the edit boxes ,such as taxonomies, relationships or specific boxes such as authors, are presented in the edit area. You can turn on and off the ones that are not needed for a particular edit session.

List page screen options allow users to set the number of records displayed in the list table.

Creating Shortcodes

Shortcodes are small blocks of reusable code that can be inserted in a page to generate dynamic and often complex functionality. There is no limit in number of shortcodes that can be created and used. Multiple shortcodes can be used in the same page.

Examples

The following shortcode creates a Employee Grid page with employees of Employee Tags category.

[employee_grid filter="tax::employee_tags::is::YOUR TAXONOMY VALUE;"]

The following shortcode creates a Employee Grid page with employees of Employee Tags category.

[employee_grid filter="attr::emd_employee_featured::is::YOUR ATTRIBUTE VALUE;"]

The following shortcode creates a Employee Grid page with employees of Employee Tags category where Featured is emd_employee_featured .

[employee_grid filter="attr::emd_employee_featured::is::YOUR ATTRIBUTE VALUE;tax::employee_tags::is::YOUR TAXONOMY VALUE;"]

The following shortcode creates a Employee Grid page with the published employees of Employee Tags category where Featured is emd_employee_featured in descending order by comment count, displaying 15 employees with no pagination.

[employee_grid filter="attr::emd_employee_featured::is::YOUR ATTRIBUTE VALUE;tax::employee_tags::is::YOUR TAXONOMY VALUE;misc::post_status::is::publish;misc::order::is::DESC;misc::posts_per_page::is::15;misc::has_pages::is::false;misc::orderby::is::comment_count;"]

Note: Replace YOUR ATTRIBUTE VALUE with the value stored for that attribute and YOUR TAXONOMY VALUE with the slug of the corresponding taxonomy value.

Last Updated: 2016-05-21

Using Visual Shortcode Builder

Employee Spotlight Professional comes with Visual Shortcode Builder(VSB) module which allows creating advanced custom shortcodes without manually writing code. To use Visual Shortcode Builder:

  1. Create a new page
  2. Click on WPAS button right next to Add Media button
  3. Find and select the view or form you'd like to use a base from the drowdown list
  4. Modify the shortcode by adding filters from taxonomy, attribute, relationship or misc categories
    • Don't forget to click + icon every time you add a filter
    • You can create as many filters as you need in the same shortcode
  5. When you finished, click Insert Shortcode button. The shortcode will be inserted to the page
  6. Update or publish the page to see the shortcode result
  7. Repeat the same process for all your shortcodes
Last Updated: 2017-03-29

Customizations

Employee Spotlight offers extensive customization options from plugin settings, settings page. The following customizations can be done without changing your theme's template files:

  • Enable or disable all fields, taxonomies and relationships from backend and/or frontend
  • Set any entity and/or archive base slug
  • Set the page template of any entity, taxonomy and/or archive page to sidebar on left, sidebar on right or no sidebar (full width)
  • Hide the previous and next post links on the frontend for single posts
  • Hide the page navigation links on the frontend for archive posts
  • Display or hide any custom field
  • Display any side bar widget on plugin pages using EMD Widget Area
  • Set custom CSS rules for all plugin pages including plugin shortcodes

If your customization requirements are more complex and can not be resolved through the list of options provided above, you need to implement advanced customization techniques.

Advanced Customizations

Note:The following is a Developer level documentation. If you’re unfamiliar with code/templates/localization and resolving potential conflicts, we strongly suggest to hire us or a developer to complete the project for you. Please also note that our complimentary support team is unable to assist with customization per our Support Policy.

Employee Spotlight advanced customization can be done on 3 different areas;

  • Look & Feel - changing layout and overall presentation of content
  • Functionality - adding, deleting or modifying existing plugin functionality
  • Strings - changing the field names

Plugin customization can be implemented by using 4 different methods:

Customizing functionality

If you'd like to modify the functionality, you need to modify the plugin design (sold separately) using WP App Studio ProDev API access (sold separately and monthly development plans are available).

Customizing look & feel

If you like to customize how HTML elements are to be displayed on screen, you can add custom CSS rules with higher specificity to your theme's style.css file.

If you'd like to customize layouts of Employee Spotlight, Please follow the steps below:

  1. Create "emd_templates" directory under your theme's directory.
  2. Copy the layout files that you want to customize into "emd_templates" directory which you created in step 1 from PLUGIN-ROOT/layouts directory
  3. Modify the file based on your needs

The layout files you added in the "emd_templates" has always precedence over the plugin's layout files. If the customized files get deleted, the layouts which came with your plugin are displayed. We recommend that you create a child theme if you'd like to minimize the risk of accidental deleting of the "emd_templates" directory because of theme updates.

The following layout file types can be customized:

  • Single view page
  • Archive view page
  • Taxonomy view page
  • Search form result page
  • Standard list page
  • Integration page
  • Org chart record and tooltip layout page

Customizing strings

Employee Spotlight labels and messages can be customized to better match your needs through language files. The customization is very similar to localization but recommended for US English users only. If your language is different than US English, you should localize instead of customize. The customization can be done for the strings included in empslight-pro-emd-plugins.pot and empslight-pro.pot files.

The following steps cover the string customization of labels and messages.

  • empslight-pro-emd-plugins.pot file is for the translatable strings of components used in Employee Spotlight.
  • empslight-pro.pot file is for the Employee Spotlight specific strings that need to be translated.

Follow the steps below to fully customize Employee Spotlight labels and messages:

  1. Copy empslight-pro-emd-plugins.pot as language specific .po file such as empslight-pro-emd-plugins-en_US.po.
  2. Copy empslight-pro.pot as language specific .po file such as empslight-pro-en_US.po.
  3. Use your favorite PO file editor or plugin and complete customization of strings in the .po files you created.
  4. When customization are completed, create .mo file of each .po file.
  5. Create wp-content/languages/empslight-pro directory.
  6. Put customized .mo files and .po files in the directory above to protect them from getting deleted during plugin updates.
  7. Repeat the process until you get all strings customized. If you do not need a string to be customizes, leave it as it is.

All customization can be done by yourself or emarketdesign.com. Open a support ticket, if you prefer us to do the customization for you.

Glossary

Below is the list of attribute and taxonomy definitions.

Last Updated: 2017-03-29

Employee

Employees are human resources that work for your organization. Employees can be identified as staff, team members, founders, or contractors.

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.
Status
Brief status on your current availability. For example, At a conference all day, checking emails. Status does not have a default value.
Photo
Photo of the employee. 250x250 is the preferred size. Photo does not have a default value.
Job Title
Job Title does not have a default value.
Birthday
Birthday is filterable in the admin area. Birthday does not have a default value.
Primary Address
Primary Address does not have a default value.
Phone
Phone does not have a default value.
Mobile
Mobile is filterable in the admin area. Mobile does not have a default value.
Fax
Fax is filterable in the admin area. Fax does not have a default value.
Email
Email is a required field. Being a unique identifier, it uniquely distinguishes each instance of Employee entity. Email does not have a default value.
Website
Enter the domain name only. For example, emdplugins.com Website is filterable in the admin area. Website 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.
Tag Background Color
Sets the background color of employee name tags; name and title. Tag Background Color does not have a default value.
Tag Color
Sets the color of employee name tags; name and title. Tag Color 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.
Excerpt
Excerpt does not have a default value.
Last Updated: 2016-12-28

Globals

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

Remove Last Modified By (checkbox)
Removes Last Modified By text from employee pages when checked.
Animated Circle Grid Effect (select)
Sets the default effect on animated circle grid view. You can use different effects than the one selected here by setting this field to a different value using Visual Shortcode Builder.
Animated Grid Effect (select)
Sets the default effect on animated grid view. You can use different effects than the one selected here by setting this field to a different value using Visual Shortcode Builder.