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 the
Apps Marketplace. Inside the app, only admins — business admins, super admins, and anyone
you delegate Job Descriptions to — can author, publish, import, or see the reports. - 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
- 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. - 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. - 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). - Publish it. Publishing creates version 1, makes it the version employees see, and — if
the acknowledgment setting is on — asks everyone holding that title to sign it. - Confirm it worked. The Library row should read Published with a version and date. The
people holding the title should now see the description on My Job Description, on
desktop and on their phone, with a banner asking them to acknowledge it.
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. If nobody is assigned
the title in their profile, publishing asks nobody. Service and AI accounts are never asked. - Create posting in Job Board appears only when Job Board is enabled for your workspace
and the description has been published. - 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 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.
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 — published more than 12 months ago. The filter calls this
Review due. Nothing expires; it is a prompt to look at it. - 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. - Leadership and admins see every published description.
- Admins additionally see drafts, unpublished edits, every version, the compliance check,
the acknowledgment report, and Settings.
Readers cannot edit. Their door is Suggest a change on a published description: they
write what is missing, wrong, or out of date, and every Job Descriptions admin is notified.
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. - 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
- Edit the description and open Publish revision.
- 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.
- Type what changed. That summary shows in the version history and on the request.
See who has signed, and chase the rest
- Go to Acknowledgments. Each published description shows current holders, requested,
signed, overdue, and a progress bar. - Click a title to list the people, with their status and the date they signed.
- Export CSV for the whole report.
You do not have to chase people by hand. Reminders go out on their own while a request stays
open, and stop when the person signs.
Run a re-acknowledgment campaign
- On Acknowledgments, click Re-acknowledgment campaign.
- Name it, choose every published description or pick specific titles, set the days to
acknowledge, and add an optional note for the report. - 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.
Nobody is asked twice in the same month.
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.
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.
| Setting | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Ask current job holders to acknowledge each published version | On | Publishing asks everyone holding the title to sign that version, in-app and by email. The publish dialog 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 | Sets the due date on each request, and how long it counts as pending before it reads as overdue. |
| Re-acknowledge every N months | 0 (off) | Above zero, one campaign opens each month asking every holder whose last signature is older than the cadence. |
| Default reasonable-accommodation statement | A standard ADA statement | Pre-fills every new description and every import. Editable per document. |
| 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. |
| 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