Position Code User Reporting Hierarchy


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INTRODUCTION: LMS REPORTING STRUCTURES

To grant a user administrative or managerial oversight, Portal Administrators can choose between two different types of reporting relationships between LMS users: a Position Code hierarchy or a direct Person-to-Person structure.

In Position Code reporting, position codes are created to establish Superior/Subordinate relationships that determine user oversight. These relationships enable users with superior positions (managers) to view training, approve course enrollment requests, and set and manage training goals for subordinate users (students) within their organization. This reporting style is best used when the reporting structure designates subordinates to report to a specific superior position consistently throughout the organization.

Person-to-Person reporting enables Portal Administrators to set up reporting relationships based on Username, rather than Position codes. With Person-to-Person reporting, a user may have zero, one, or multiple managers, similar to the way many organizations are structured today. These relationships also enable managers to view training, approve course enrollments, and enroll others in courses in the same way they can with for Position Code Reporting. Managerial assignments in P2P reporting are established at the profile level, so it is possible to have different managers across multiple user profiles.

LatitudeLearning® uses Position Hierarchy as the default reporting structure for new portals. Even Portal Administrators who select Person-to-Person for user and training management must still rely on a sound LMS Position Hierarchy structure to generate Training Progress Reports, assign Certifications and Curriculums (via Position Groups), and approve Self Registrations.

Whether you're considering implementing Person-to-Person in your new LMS or transitioning an existing LMS to this new reporting structure, please consider contacting Latitude Support for consultation services.

Considerations for Establishing Positions and the Hierarchy

It is helpful to understand how you want your organization to oversee training and report on training activities prior to setting up your positions or building a position hierarchy. The position hierarchy’s primary purpose is to provide managerial oversight of training for users in subordinate positions and to ensure that managers have visibility of those users in reports and on their My Team or Employees Tab pages. It also drives Certification and Curriculum goals and eligibility-based on a user's primary profile assignments.

IMPORTANT! When relying on Positions for managerial oversight, it is critical that the hierarchy of superior/subordinate relationships has NO gaps. The top position in the hierarchy, which should have no superiors, is the position that should be assigned to anyone acting as a portal administrator, who needs to see every active/inactive user. All other positions should be assigned at least one superior position and they must all eventually be connected, indirectly or directly to the top position. The TRA - Training Administrator position is the default top provided in the LMS. It is acceptable to create a different top level position, but care is required to ensure it is properly linked to other positions and is assigned to all portal administrators under their highest profile.

This report helps identify positions and associated users who are orphaned by gaps in the hierarchy: Reports > Classic Reports > Users > Orphaned Users by Company.

When building Position Relationships, keep in mind:
  • The positions can, but are not required to represent the job titles of your organization.
  • Not all managerial relationships are concerned with employee training management. When users have a number of direct and dotted-line managers, consider building the hierarchy in the LMS that pertains to just those superiors who are relevant to the training aspect of employee management. Consider which superior position would be the one to:
    • approve a subordinate position’s enrollments, if necessary
    • assign training to the employee
    • get notified of subordinates’ training activities
    • view employee training history via LMS reporting
  • Having a position hierarchy that is too complex with extensive numbers of superiors and/or subordinates per position can have an adverse impact on system performance. It is okay to have more than one superior position, but it should be restricted to those relationships that make sense from the perspective of employee training oversight.

How Positions Support Managerial Users

The LMS uses Position in conjunction with Organization and Role information to support managerial users in several key ways. This section assumes that Position-to-Position reporting is enabled, not Person-to-Person.

  • My Team/Employees: Users who are assigned a position with subordinates gain access to the My Team tool, or the "Employees" tab on the Classic Home page. Managers have a number of tools available to them from this one page, including a list of their employees across all organizational profiles, user details and drill down, and even tabs that navigate between team training views.


  • Approvals: There are three types of Approvals -- Enrollment, Course Interest, and Self Registration. The Approvals tab automatically appears on a user’s Home page if their position is superior to one or more other positions. A manager can view pending approvals by selecting the appropriate approval type link, then approve or reject as needed.


  • Other Impacts of Position
    • Announcements:  Portal administrators can use the embedded messaging system to communicate with a targeted set of users based on a wide range of filter options, including their Position assignment. This feature is available on the left navigation menu.
    • Prerequisites/Course Equivalencies: Use position membership as part of an equivalency or prerequisite rule to restrict course access to users in certain positions only.
    • Departments: This is one of two ways to group users by position in the LMS. You can find the Department functionality in the left navigation menu under Organizations. It is designed to mimic functional groups in your organization and can be used by the LMS for sending announcements to specific subsets of users.
    • Position Groups: These are part of the Certification/Curriculum Management feature. Individual Positions that require the same certifications may be organized into groups. Certifications and/or Curriculum requirements can then be assigned to one or more Position Groups, providing automatic assignment of certification/curriculum tracks to all users in a given Position Group.
    • Add Interest: Use position to find a subset of users to mass enroll in a particular course using the Mass Add Interest function. This is found on the left navigation menu under Interests > Add Interest.
    • General Search: Position assignment is often used throughout the LMS when searching and targeting specific users, for example, when using tools to batch enroll others, send announcements, and add interests.
    • Reports: Position, in combination with organization level, contributes to the scoping of report results for a particular user. Managers who can run reports will normally see results only for users in subordinate positions to their own and only at the organizational levels they to which they are assigned.

Add a New Position

Follow these steps to add new positions to your LMS and relate them to superior and/or subordinate positions as necessary.

  1. From the left navigation menu, select Organizations > Add Positions.
  2. On the Add Position page, make entries as described below. Asterisks [*] on the page indicate a required field.


    1. Language: Select the language in which the position is being created. The default is English.
    2. Code: Enter a unique code to represent the position.
    3. Name: Enter a name to identify the position. Because some LMS displays only show the position name, it is a good practice to make the name meaningful and unique from other position names.
    4. Effective Date: Enter the date on which the Position will become active.
    5. End Date: The date on which the Position becomes inactive. This is not normally added during Position creation unless the position has a known end date.
    6. Superior Positions: Click Select Superior Positions to search for and select one or more positions that are superior to this position. NOTE: Although this is not a required field, in order for portal administrators and others to manage the appropriate users, all positions should have a superior except for the top level position assigned to the portal administrators. The portal administrator must always have the top-level position.
    7. Subordinate Positions: Click Select Subordinate Positions to search for and select one or more positions that are subordinate to this position. Although this is not a required field, in order for portal administrators and others to manage the users throughout the hierarchy, all positions should have a subordinate unless users in the position have no managerial accountability and are truly the end of a particular branch in the position hierarchy.
    8. Position Group: If the position is going to be assigned Certification or Curriculum goals, click Select a Position Group to search for and select the group to which it belongs.
    9. Department: If you use departments and the position can be associated with one, click Select a Department to search for and select the one to which it belongs.
  3. Click Submit.

View/Edit Position

Follow these steps to view or edit a position.

  1. From the left navigation menu, select Organizations > Search Positions.
  2. On the Search Positions page, you can filter by Name or Code to find a position or leave the fields blank to view all. By default, only Active records are shown. To view inactive Positions, select Status = Inactive or Both.
  3. Click Search.
  4. From the Position search results, click on the specific Position Code link to view or edit that position record.


  5. The Position Details page breaks out the Position information in three tabs:
    1. Details: provides display-only information about the position.
    2. General Information: allows modification of the Code, Name, Effective Date, and End Date of the position.
    3. Relationships:  allows modification of the position’s Superior and Subordinate Position relationships, Position Group assignment, and Department assignment. This establishes the position hierarchy and drives managerial oversight of user training activities and reporting. Users may only view users with subordinate positions at locations for which they have a profile. If users have profiles at upper level organizations (e.g. company, business unit, division), they can see subordinate users in any level associated with that organizational unit, but will not be able to see peers or superiors.


  6. Click Submit on the General Information or Relationships tabs after making any changes.