Direct Reports

Direct Reports lets ActivityPulse know who reports to whom. The relationship is teammate-to-teammate, so it works whether or not those teammates have a linked ActivityPulse user account.

There are two pages, both under People in the sidebar:

  • My Direct Reports — visible to Managers (and higher). Edit your own reports.
  • Direct Reports — visible to Admins and Owners. Edit the reports of any teammate in the organization.

Both views share the same building blocks (an “Add a direct report” picker, an “Add all members of a team” picker, and a list with a remove button). The admin view adds a manager selector on top.

My Direct Reports (Manager view)

Open People → My Direct Reports.

If your account hasn’t been linked to a teammate yet, you’ll see a banner explaining that — ask an administrator to link your account on Settings → Users.

Once linked:

  • Add a direct report — pick a single teammate from the dropdown. Only teammates that aren’t already in your list (and aren’t yourself) appear here.
  • Add all members of a team — pick a team to add every member of that team in one go. Members you already report on, or that fall outside your team-access scope, are skipped.
  • Remove — the trash icon at the end of a row removes that report. The teammate stays in your organization; only the reporting link is dropped.

Managers with restricted team access (Settings → Users → Manage team access) only see teammates within their granted scope. Adding a team only adds members in scope; teammates that fell out of scope after the link was created are filtered out of the list view.

Direct Reports (Admin / Owner view)

Open People → Direct Reports.

The page starts with a teammate picker. Search by name or email and select the teammate you want to manage. The rest of the page mirrors the Manager view, but every action targets the selected teammate instead of you.

  • The selected teammate is shown in a small card above the list. Click Change to pick someone else.
  • The URL stores the selection (?manager=<teammate-id>) so refreshing the page keeps the same teammate selected and the URL can be shared.
  • Add a direct report offers all other teammates, with the selected manager themselves and their existing reports filtered out.
  • Add all members of a team bypasses any user_team_access restriction the selected teammate’s user account might have. Self-loops (adding the manager as their own report) are skipped.

Admins and Owners can manage reports for teammates that have no linked user account — useful for setting up the org structure before users sign in, or maintaining it for teammates whose ActivityPulse accounts have been removed.

Rearranging the org chart (drag-and-drop)

Open People → Org Chart. Admins and Owners can reshape the reporting lines directly on the chart by dragging.

  • Drag any card onto a manager to make that person report to the manager. Valid drop targets highlight as you drag over them. A manager is anyone shown in the chart’s manager structure — both people who already have reports and people with the Manager role (or higher) who have been set up but don’t have any reports assigned yet. Dropping onto an empty manager gives them their first report.
  • Moving keeps the subtree intact. Dragging a manager onto another manager moves that whole branch — the dragged person’s own reports come along.
  • It’s a move, not a copy. If the teammate was already reporting to the manager you dragged them out of, that link is replaced by the new one. Any other managers the teammate also reports to are left untouched — only the line you dragged from changes.
  • Unassigned teammates (the collapsible group at the bottom) can be dragged onto a manager too.
  • A confirmation appears after each move. Drops that would create a reporting loop (dropping a manager onto someone in their own reporting line), or onto the teammate’s current manager, are not allowed.

Only managers can be drop targets (by design)

You can drop a card onto any manager — including a manager who has no reports assigned yet. You cannot drop onto a teammate who isn’t a manager. That includes both:

  • Unassigned teammates — those in the Unassigned group, with no reporting relationship in either direction, and
  • Reports/leaf cards — teammates who report to someone but don’t have any reports of their own.

Neither kind highlights as you drag over it, and dropping onto one does nothing.

This is deliberate. Drag-and-drop is for rearranging an existing structure — it never promotes a non-manager into a manager. To make someone a manager, assign a report to them on the Direct Reports page above (or give them the Manager role with a teammate link). Once they have a report or that role, they appear in the chart’s manager structure and become a valid drop target.

Managers and Viewers see the org chart as read-only; only Admins and Owners can rearrange it.

Where direct reports are used

The reporting structure feeds team summaries, manager-oriented activity views, and the Viewer-demotion dialog (which can preserve or clear a Manager’s reports when their role changes). Keeping it accurate makes those features more useful.

Default view filter (Manager only)

Once a Manager has at least one direct report, the Dashboard, Activities, Summaries, and Teammates pages default to showing data for that report list on first load each session. This is a view filter, not a security boundary — Owners and Admins still see everything, and a Manager’s full team-scoped access (set under Settings → Users → Manage team access) is unchanged.

  • In the Teammates filter (page header) — open the dropdown to see a Presets section at the top with a My direct reports row. The toggle:
    • When active, the trigger button reads “My direct reports” and the data pages restrict to your reporting list.
    • Clicking it again clears the filter; you then see your full team-scoped roster (labelled “All teammates”).
    • When you have no direct reports yet, the row reads “My direct reports (none yet)” and is disabled. A small amber hint above the page nudges you to add reports.
  • On the Teammates list page — a separate two-button chip above the table (My direct reports / All in scope) toggles between the focused and full view.

Your explicit choice persists for the rest of the browser session per organisation. The next session re-opens to “My direct reports” by default, matching how a Manager normally starts their day. Owners, Admins, and Viewers don’t see the preset row or the chip — their views are unchanged.