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Setting up HCM for your organization ​

For a full walk-through with screenshots and every field, follow Onboard your organization: step by step. This page is the outline.

This page walks an administrator through the first day: from creating the organization to the point where people can sign in and work. Each step names the screen to use and who can do it. How licensing fits in is explained on How licensing works.

Who does what ​

RoleWhat they do during setup
Tenant Owner / Tenant AdminRegisters the organization, creates people, decides who may open which application.
Security AdminCan be given the right to decide application access, without the other administrator rights.
HCM administrator (an administrator role inside HCM)Creates roles and grants permissions inside the HCM applications.
Platform administrator (the vendor)Sets the organization's licence: edition, term, features and limits. A tenant administrator cannot change it.

1. Register the organization ​

Registration has two steps. On the sign-in page choose Create an organization.

  1. Account. Enter the company name, your email, your mobile number and a password (twice), then choose Continue. Nothing is created yet, and Back on the next step returns here with what you typed.
  2. Applications. Choose the applications to try, then Create account. The list is the applications currently available to install, so it always matches what is offered. You can pick one or several; Core HR is always installed because the others need the employee record.

Registration does the following in one step:

  • creates your organization with its own database, so your data is never mixed with another organization's;
  • creates your administrator account and gives it the Tenant Owner role;
  • creates the standard administrator roles (Tenant Admin, Tenant Manager, Tenant Viewer, Security Admin, User Admin, Audit Admin) with their permissions;
  • installs the applications you picked, in dependency order, together with the app launcher;
  • starts a four-week free trial of the Professional edition, with no credit card. The trial ends on its date (28 days after you register). A platform administrator sets your purchased edition and term when you buy a plan.

2. Check what you are licensed for ​

Open the app launcher. Check Licence with your vendor before the trial ends: after the end date the licence expires and people can no longer work. The launcher shows only the applications that are installed and licensed for your organization. If one you expected is missing, it is not licensed or not installed yet; ask your vendor to review the licence. See How licensing works.

3. Create your people ​

Open HCM Users (Administration). Use Create User for one account, or Import a CSV or XLSX file to create many; the columns are listed on HCM Users. Each person needs a unique username and email in your organization.

An account is separate from an employee record. The employee record lives in Core HR; the account is what lets the person sign in. People who only use Employee Self-Service need an account, and it should be linked to their employee record.

4. Give roles ​

Open Roles & Permissions in the application and give each person the role that matches their job. A role says what a person can do inside an application (for example read employees, approve leave). Nobody can do more than their roles allow. See Permissions catalog for the available permissions.

5. Decide who may open which application ​

Licence says what your organization has bought. Application Access says which of your people may use it. By default everyone in your organization may open every licensed application. To keep someone out, open Application Access in Studio, choose the person and the application, and choose Deny. Allow puts them back. The person's launcher then stops showing that application, and its pages refuse them.

Only Tenant Owners, Tenant Admins and Security Admins can see or change Application Access. Anyone else gets: "Only a tenant administrator can decide who may open which application."

All five HCM applications currently share one access setting, hcm. Denying it blocks all five for that person.

6. Set regional options and load your data ​

  • Choose your country and language options so dates, currency and legal rules follow your country. See Country packs.
  • Load reference data (leave types, tags) with Data Import, and employees one at a time through Core HR > Employee Directory > Add Employee (there is no employee file import yet).
  • Set up your organization structure (departments, positions) before adding employees so each person lands in the right place.

7. Go live ​

  1. Sign in as an ordinary user with a role you created and check that the launcher, menus and pages show what you expect.
  2. Check the header: your name and job title come from your employee record, and Sign out is in the menu next to your name. The same menu has My Profile, My Preferences and All apps.
  3. Tell people to sign in. A session that expires sends the person back to sign in and returns them to the page they were on.

Moving from the single HCM application ​

Organizations created before the five applications were introduced stay on the single HCM application until an administrator moves them. See The five HCM applications.