Job Descriptions App Overview

Job Descriptions

1. What it is

Job Descriptions keeps one current, structured document for every job title in your
organization. A description is a set of fields, not a page of prose: a position summary,
essential functions kept separate from other duties, qualifications, licenses, physical and
mental demands recorded with a frequency, work environment, FLSA status, EEO category, and a
reasonable-accommodation statement. Publishing freezes a version, asks the people who hold
the title to acknowledge it, and gives you a PDF or Word file to hand to anyone who asks.

• Enablement: the app requires a license and is off until an admin turns it on from Admin → Apps → All Apps.
  Turning it on is not the last step: until you click Publish to users on the app’s page (or publish it
  to specific groups), only admins and people given a role in the app can open it.
• Who does what inside the app: admins — business admins, super admins, and anyone granted App
  admin for Job Descriptions — author, publish, archive, import, run the Acknowledgments report and
  campaigns, and change Settings. A Contributor writes and edits descriptions, runs the compliance
  check, and submits a description for approval when a publication workflow is set up (with no
  workflow, they mark a draft Ready for an admin to publish, which tells the app admins), but cannot
  publish, archive, import, see the Acknowledgments report or change Settings.
• What it is not: it is not Job Board. Job Board runs postings and applicants; Job
  Descriptions holds the record for each title, and hands a copy to Job Board when you ask
  it to. It is also not where your job architecture lives — families, titles, levels, and
  pay grades are set in Admin → Job Titles & Families, and the description reads them.

2. Standing it up

1. Make sure your titles exist. Go to Admin → Job Titles & Families and confirm the
   active titles, their family, level, code, and pay grade. The Library lists one row per
   active title, so with no titles the app has nothing to show.
2. Publish the app to users. In Admin → Apps → All Apps, open Job Descriptions and click
   Publish to users (or publish it to specific groups). Until you do, only admins and people
   with a role in the app can open it, and the Library and Settings pages show admins a notice
   saying so. Do this before you publish descriptions: nobody who can’t open the app is asked to
   acknowledge, and publishing the app later does not go back and ask them.
3. Go to Apps → Job Descriptions → Settings and set the acknowledgment rules: whether
   publishing asks holders to sign, how many days they get, and whether new hires and
   transfers are asked. Edit the default reasonable-accommodation statement here once — it
   pre-fills every new description.
4. Write your first description. On Library, find a title showing No description and
   click Write description. You can start from a starter for a common role type, describe
   the job and let AI fill the form, or import what you already have (see §4).
5. Publish it. Publishing creates version 1, makes it the version employees see, and — if
   the acknowledgment setting is on and you leave the ask ticked in the Publish window — asks
   everyone holding that title who can open the app to sign it. The confirmation says how many
   holders were asked when that is fewer than hold the title.
6. Confirm it worked. The Library row should read Published with a version and date. The
   people holding the title can now read the description on My Job Description, on
   desktop and on their phone. If they were asked to acknowledge it, a banner there asks them to.
   If the app was not yet published to users when you published the description, nobody was
   asked: publish the app to users, then start a re-acknowledgment campaign (§4) to ask them.

Things that silently do nothing until a second thing is also set:

• Publication approval needs an approval workflow created in Admin → Approval
  Workflows for Job Descriptions, using the Job description publication trigger. The
  workflow must be enabled and have at least one approval level. A workflow with no levels
  is ignored, and publishing stays direct. The Settings page shows Active or Not
  configured, so you can tell which state you are in.
• Acknowledgment only reaches people who actually hold the title and can open the app. If
  nobody is assigned the title in their profile, or the app is not yet published to them,
  publishing asks nobody. Service and AI accounts are never asked.
• Create posting in Job Board appears only for a published description that is not
  archived, only when Job Board is enabled for your workspace, and only for an admin who can
  also create postings in Job Board — a business admin, an HR admin, or a Job Board app admin.
• Competencies and pay range are never typed into the description — they render from the
  job title. If a description shows no competencies, add them on the title. If no pay range
  shows, the title needs a pay grade with a minimum and a maximum, and the description needs
  its pay-range option turned on.
• Automatic re-acknowledgment is off out of the box. It does nothing until you set a
  cadence in Settings.

3. How it fits together

The working copy and the published version

Each title has one description, and that description has two faces. The working copy is
what admins and Contributors edit. The published version is what everyone else sees. Editing after a
publish never changes what employees see — only publishing does.

Worked example: Registered Nurse is published at version 2, and twelve people hold the
title. HR adds an on-call duty and saves. The Library row now carries an Unpublished
edits badge, the document page warns that employees still see version 2, and all twelve
still see version 2. Publishing creates version 3, and each of the twelve is asked to
acknowledge it.

Every publish freezes a full snapshot — the content, the author, the date, the change
summary you type, and the title’s family, level, grade, code, and competencies as they stood
that day. A later reclassification never rewrites an old version. You can open any prior
version, compare two of them side by side section by section, and restore one into the
working copy; restoring does not publish, so history is never rewritten. Compare working copy with
live shows unpublished edits beside what employees read now, before you publish or submit them.
When you submit for approval, an optional What changed? note and a Don’t ask job holders to
acknowledge it again choice travel with the request and apply when it publishes.

What each row in the Library means

• No description — the title has none yet. For admins this is the work queue.
• Draft — written, not visible to employees.
• Awaiting approval — submitted; the content is locked until it is approved or withdrawn.
• Published — live.
• Published · review due — last published (or last marked reviewed) longer ago than
  Flag for review after in Settings (12 months unless you change it; 0 turns the badge
  off). The State filter uses the same words. Nothing expires; it is a prompt to look at it.
  Two things clear it, and both are on the description’s page for app admins: publish an
  updated version, or — if you reviewed it and nothing needs to change — Mark as
  reviewed. Marking it reviewed records who reviewed it and when, restarts the review
  clock from that day, publishes no new version and doesn’t ask job holders to sign again.
  Either way the badge clears and the review reminder stops. While it stays due, the
  reminder (Settings → Tell the owner when a published job description is due for
  review) repeats every 30 days.
• Archived — taken out of the employee-facing view. History and acknowledgments are kept.

Who can see what

Four tiers, and a person gets the widest one that applies:

• Everyone sees the published description for their own title, and can acknowledge it.
• Supervisors — anyone with people reporting to them, directly or further down — also
  see the published descriptions for the titles their reporting line holds.
• Authors — business admins, super admins, and the app’s App admins and Contributors — see
  every description, including drafts, unpublished edits and every version, and can run the
  compliance check.
• Admins — business admins, super admins and the app’s App admins — additionally see the
  acknowledgment report, Import, and Settings.

Someone named as an approver on an open publication request can also read the description they
are being asked to approve, until the request closes.

Readers cannot edit. Their door is Suggest a change on a published description: they
write what is missing, wrong, or out of date. The person who wrote the description and whoever
last edited it are notified, as long as they can still author job descriptions, along with
anyone in the group chosen under Send Job Descriptions admin notices to this group in
Settings; when that leaves nobody, the app’s admins are notified instead. The note stays on
the document with their name and the version they were reading.

Acknowledgment versus a re-acknowledgment campaign

Both ask a person to sign, and they are not the same thing.

An acknowledgment is pinned to a version. It is created when a version is published, or
when someone takes the title. Publish a new version and the old ask is superseded by a fresh
one, so a signature always refers to content the person actually saw.

A re-acknowledgment campaign asks people to confirm the description they already have —
no content change, no new version. Use it for an annual attestation. People who signed
before are asked afresh and their earlier signature stays on record; people who already have
an open request are left alone rather than given a second one.

Where it touches other apps

• Admin → Job Titles & Families owns families, titles, levels, and pay grades. The
  description reads them and freezes them into each version.
• Job Board owns postings. “Create posting” copies the published description into a
  draft posting linked to the title; the recruiter tailors and publishes it there. It is a
  one-time copy, so later edits to the description do not reach the posting. While a draft
  posting for the title is still sitting in Job Board, Create posting opens that draft
  instead of making a second one.
• Performance Management can score the title’s competencies inside a review. That is
  switched on per review template, on the template’s rating-categories step — not here.
• Ask AI answers questions about descriptions using exactly the read tier above.

4. Running it

Publish a revision without making everyone sign again

1. Edit the description and open Publish revision.
2. Untick **Ask current job holders to acknowledge this version** for a typo or formatting fix. Earlier acknowledgments stand, nobody is re-asked, and anyone who still owed a signature keeps the same request — it moves to the new version, so the obligation neither disappears nor doubles.
3. Type what changed. That summary shows in the version history and on the request.

See who has signed, and chase the rest

1. Go to Acknowledgments. Each published description shows Holders (who holds the title
   today), Requested, Signed, Overdue, and a progress bar.
2. Click a title to list the people, with their status and the date they signed.
3. Export CSV for the whole report.

You do not have to chase people by hand. Reminders start three days after a request is sent.
Before the deadline they repeat on the cadence set in Settings → Remind about an outstanding
acknowledgment every (7 days unless you change it); once the deadline has passed they come
every 3 days. They stop when the person signs, and 8 weeks after the request was sent — after
that the request still shows as outstanding on the report. If Escalate overdue acknowledgments
to the employee’s manager is on, the manager is also told once the deadline passes, and again
every two weeks while it stays open.

Run a re-acknowledgment campaign

1. On Acknowledgments, click Re-acknowledgment campaign.
2. Name it, choose every published description or pick specific titles, set the days to
   acknowledge, and add an optional note for the report.
3. Start it. The flash tells you how many people will actually be asked, and says so plainly
   when nobody is due. Asks are sent in the background and the campaign card fills in.

To run this on a schedule instead, set Re-acknowledge every in Settings. Each month the
app opens one campaign and asks every holder whose last signature is older than the cadence,
and every holder who has never acknowledged the description. People who already have an open
request are left alone, so nobody is asked twice.

Check a description before publishing

Open a description and choose Check this job description from the actions menu. The
panel scores it out of 100 and lists findings by severity, covering biased or exclusionary
language, overstated physical demands, missing ADA elements, FLSA and EEO completeness,
pay-transparency readiness, and reading level.

The header tells you what produced the findings: Rules N · AI review N when the optional
AI pass ran, or Rules only when it did not. Rule findings are deterministic and repeat
identically; AI findings are advisory and carry an AI tag, and may differ between runs.
Nothing here blocks publishing — you decide.

Bring in the descriptions you already have

Go to Import. Upload up to 50 Word, PDF, or text files at once; each is parsed into the
structured sections and matched to a title by code, then exact name, then partial name.
Titles that already have a description are skipped. Everything lands as a draft —
an import never publishes anything — and you get a notification when the batch finishes,
naming each skipped file and why. An AI model reads each file into the sections, so this needs
Let bulk import use AI to read uploaded files switched on in Settings; while it is off, the
Import page says so and takes no files.
If your descriptions are already in spreadsheet columns, use the Smart Import link on
the same page instead.

5. Settings

At Apps → Job Descriptions → Settings.

The page is in four groups — Acknowledgment, Notifications, Document defaults, and AI features —
followed by what the Ask AI assistant can do, the publication-approval status, and sample data.

Setting	Default	What it changes
Ask current job holders to acknowledge each published version	On	Publishing asks everyone holding the title who can open the app to sign that version. The request always reaches their inbox; the email that goes with it follows each person’s Job Descriptions notification preference. The Publish window lets you skip it for a single revision.
Ask new hires and transfers to acknowledge their job description	On	Setting or changing someone’s job title asks them to acknowledge the published description for the new title.
Days to acknowledge	14 days (1–365)	Sets the due date on each request; after it, the request counts as overdue on the Acknowledgments report.
Re-acknowledge every N months	0 (off), up to 60	Above zero, one campaign opens each month asking every holder whose last signature is older than the cadence, and every holder who has never acknowledged the description. People with an open request are left alone.
Remind about an outstanding acknowledgment every N days	7 days (0–90)	Reminders to the person who still has to sign start three days after the request and repeat every N days until the deadline; after the deadline they come every 3 days. They stop 8 weeks after the request was sent. 0 turns reminders off, before and after the deadline — the request still shows as outstanding on the report.
Escalate overdue acknowledgments to the employee’s manager	On	Once a request passes its deadline, the employee’s manager is told, and again every two weeks while it stays open — including after the employee’s own reminders stop. If an admin has set the Overdue Escalation Ladder for job descriptions under Admin › Notifications, that ladder decides instead and this switch has no effect.
Tell job holders when their description changes without asking them to sign again	On	When a version is published without asking for signatures, holders who signed an earlier version are told it changed, with a link. Nothing is added to what they owe.
Tell the owner when a published job description is due for review	On	When a description passes Flag for review after, the person who wrote it is told while they can still author job descriptions, and the notice repeats every 30 days until a new version is published or an app admin marks it reviewed. Nothing is sent while Flag for review after is 0.
Send Job Descriptions admin notices to this group	None	Review due, suggested changes and campaign receipts go first to the person they concern while they can still act on it — the description’s author (for a suggestion, its last editor too), or whoever started the campaign — and the group you pick is added to them. When that leaves nobody, the group is told instead of the app’s admins; a draft marked ready to publish goes to the group’s members who can publish it instead of the app’s admins (when none of them can, to the app’s admins after all). With no group, an empty list goes to the app’s admins (or, if it has none, your business admins).
Default reasonable-accommodation statement	A standard ADA statement	Pre-fills every new description and every import. Editable per document. Up to 2,000 characters.
Flag for review after N months	12 months (0–120)	A published description last published or marked reviewed longer ago than this is badged Published · review due in the Library, and the State filter of the same name finds it. 0 turns the badge and the review reminder off.
Show the pay grade’s range on new job descriptions by default	Off	New descriptions start with the title’s pay range shown on the document, the exports, and any posting built from it.
Job Descriptions AI assistant in Ask AI	On	Turns the read-only assistant on or off. It can find a description, summarize duties, run the compliance check, and list who has not acknowledged — always within what the person asking may already see.
Let the compliance check use AI to review wording for bias and ADA risk	On	Off, Check this job description runs its rule checks only and says Rules only; no description text is sent to an AI model.
Let bulk import use AI to read uploaded files into structured job descriptions	On	The AI model is the only reader for Word and PDF files, so off, Word/PDF import stops working and the Import page says so. Smart Import for spreadsheets is unaffected.
Offer AI describe-to-fill on the job description form	On	Off, the “Describe it and let AI fill the form” bar is not shown on the job description editor.
Publication approval	Not configured	Set in Admin → Approval Workflows using the Job description publication trigger. While a workflow is active, publishing goes through it and approved content publishes automatically.

The same page has Load sample data, which fills the app with example families, titles,
published descriptions with version history, one draft, one due for review, and
acknowledgment rows for you — useful for a walkthrough, and removable from the same card.

6. More help

• Job Descriptions FAQ — specific setup and operating questions, limits, and what to do
  when something does not look right
• Job Board App Overview — postings and applicants, and what “Create posting” hands over
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Job Descriptions from these articles