Documentation Kenii Essentials How it works
People, roles, groups, departments and sections
Five words that sound similar, what each one actually is, and when to reach for it
People, roles, groups, departments and sections
Essentials has five ideas that sound alike. They do genuinely different jobs, and
picking the wrong one is the easiest mistake to make here.
The one-line version:
- Department is where a person works.
- Section is a band in the directory, usually leadership versus everyone else.
- Role is a job one person holds, with its own phone and email that stay put
when the person changes. - Group is a committee that votes together. It never appears on your website.
- Person is the human being, described once and reused everywhere.
The rest of this page is the same thing with the reasoning.
Person
A human being. One record per person, whether or not they ever sign in.
This is the point of Essentials: your college names the same people in a dozen
places, and they should be described once. A person has a name, a job title,
contact details, a photo, and two independent switches:
- Show in the public directory. Controls whether the outside world sees them.
- Login. Optional, and separate on purpose. Most people in a college
directory will never have an account, and an industry advisory member may have
an account and no business being in the public directory.
Role
A position, not a person. “Title IX Coordinator”. “Registrar”.
A role has its own phone and email, and points at the person who currently holds
it. That is the whole value: the position outlives the person in it, so when the
coordinator changes you update one record instead of hunting the pages that name
them.
Reach for a role whenever a page says “contact the …”. Use
[kenii_role slug="..."] and the page keeps working through a staff change.
A role can sit vacant, and its own phone and email keep working while it is.
Group
A set of people who decide something together. A curriculum committee, a
review panel.
This one is not a directory idea at all, and it does not appear on your public
site. A group exists so a Curriculum workflow step can be assigned to it:
“this proposal goes to the Curriculum Committee”. Membership can include people
with no login, because an advisory member can sit on a committee without ever
signing in, though only members with a login can actually vote.
If you are not using the Curriculum module, you do not need groups.
Department
Where a person works. “Nursing”. “Financial Aid”.
One per person. This is the everyday grouping, and the one most directories are
organized by.
Section
A band in the directory, above department. “President’s Leadership Team”.
“Faculty and Staff”.
Optional, and it exists because colleges usually want the leadership team shown
as its own block at the top of the directory rather than mixed alphabetically
into everyone else. Some colleges use divisions or schools here instead.
Picking between them
| You want to | Use |
|---|---|
| List everyone, or a slice of everyone | Department or section, with [kenii_staff_directory] |
| Name a contact that survives a staff change | Role |
| Name a specific individual | Person, with [kenii_person] |
| Route a curriculum proposal to a committee | Group |
The one that catches people out
Roles and groups are not two versions of the same thing.
A role is one position held by one person and is about contact. A group is many
people acting together and is about approval. A department chair might be a
role on your Nursing page and a member of the Curriculum Committee group at the
same time, and those two facts have nothing to do with each other.