Manage Onboarding Roles
Onboarding Roles in Ashby's People Workflows allow you to automate ownership and eliminate manual task routing. Whether you need to assign actions to defined individuals like an Onboarding Coordinator or Buddy, or to functional teams such as IT, Roles ensure the right work reaches the right people. By configuring roles tailored to your organization, Ashby Workflows unlock automatic task assignment, smoother cross-functional collaboration, and a more scalable onboarding experience.
Ashby's People Ops module is currently available through restricted early access. The following documentation is provided for design partners participating in that program.
Permissions and access
To configure onboarding roles, you need view and edit access to the workflow. Your permission set grants this access to either all workflows or specific workflows.
Learn more about Ashby's People Ops permission sets: Configure Permission SetsConfigure Permission Sets.
Built-in onboarding roles
Ashby includes three built-in roles in People Ops, each automatically populated from the Hiring Team assignments on the new hire's Job Consideration in Ashby Recruiting:
- Hiring Manager
- Recruiter
- Recruiting Coordinator
When a candidate moves to the Hired stage, the first individual assigned to each role is mapped into People Ops.
How built-in roles sync from Ashby Recruiting
The Hiring Manager, Recruiter, and Recruiting Coordinator on the Job Consideration serve as the source of truth for People Ops. When a new hire is enrolled in a workflow, these individuals are automatically applied to any steps that reference those roles.
Any custom roles you have configured in Ashby Recruiting will also sync over with the Custom tag but not be available to assign by default. To make these roles available to assign to a step within a workflow, you an do the following:
- Navigate to Workflows and click on any onboarding workflow.
- Click View Workflow Template.
- Click Edit, then Manage Roles.
- Enable the Available to Assign toggles for the custom roles you'd like to make available for onboarding workflows.
Before enrolling a new hire in a workflow, confirm that the Hiring Manager, Recruiter, Recruiting Coordinator and any custom role assignments are accurate on the Job Consideration and that each is assigned to a single individual, not multiple.
Create a custom onboarding role
To create a custom onboarding role in People Ops, navigate to your workflow's configuration and select Manage Roles in the upper right corner.
- Select + Add Custom Role in the upper right corner.
- Enter a Title and Description, and specify whether the role should function as a Group Role.
- Group Roles allow a single task to be assigned to multiple individuals.
- Click Submit to create the role.
Common use cases
Below are some of the most commonly configured Custom Onboarding Roles:
- People Ops Coordinator
- Onboarding Buddy
- IT Team
Assign a workflow step to a custom onboarding role
Once a Custom Onboarding Role is created, you see it as an Assignee option when assigning a step. To send a Workflow Step from a Custom Onboarding Role, select the role associated with the sender. Group Roles cannot be selected as the sender, as messages must come from a single individual.
Set a default assignee for a custom onboarding role
After assigning a Custom Role to a Workflow step, you can designate a Default Assignee. The Default Assignee automatically receives the task each time the Workflow reaches that step.
To set a Default Assignee:
- Navigate to Manage Roles and select Default Assignees.
- Locate the applicable Custom Role, then search for and select the individual who should automatically be assigned any Workflow steps associated with that role.
Assign an onboarding role via a survey step
If you don't know who will be assigned to a Custom Onboarding Role at the time a new hire is enrolled in a workflow, you can collect that information using a workflow Survey step. Configure a Survey step and assign it to the internal team member responsible for determining the assignee of the Custom Onboarding Role. In the survey question, select Assign the [Custom Role Name] role.
Set any subsequent steps assigned to the Custom Onboarding Role as dependent on this survey step.
Common use cases
A common use case for Custom Onboarding Roles is assigning an Onboarding Buddy. Configure a workflow Survey step assigned to the Hiring Manager to select the appropriate Onboarding Buddy for the new hire.
Any tasks or communications configured to be assigned to, or sent from, the Onboarding Buddy are routed to the individual selected in the Assign Onboarding Buddy survey step.
To prevent assignment errors, set the survey step used to collect the Onboarding Buddy as a dependency for any subsequent steps assigned to the Onboarding Buddy role.
Overwrite default assignees
If there are one-off changes to default assignees, you can edit those assignments when enrolling an employee in a workflow, or on a workflow that's already in flight.
When enrolling a new hire
For workflow enrollments with No automationNo Automation or Automation with reviewAutomation With Review, update default assignees or the individuals assigned to built-in roles directly within the workflow enrollment wizard.
- Navigate to the People Ops Home page.
- Select Enroll in Workflow or Review Workflow next to the employee. The option you see depends on your Configure Onboarding Workflow Automationsautomation configuration.
- Continue through the wizard to Confirm Workflow.
- Update the assignee for any role, including built-in roles like Hiring Manager and Recruiter that sync from the employee's job consideration.
- Select Continue, review the steps, then select Start Workflow.
In-flight workflows
You can also swap assignees on a workflow that's already running. Ashby reassigns every pending and future step tied to that role to the new assignee. Steps that are already complete and emails that have already been sent aren't affected.
- Navigate to the employee's workflow and review assigned workflow roles.
- Select Users to review and reassign workflow role assignments.
Overwriting an assignee on an enrollment applies to that employee only. It does not change the workflow template. To change who owns a role for every future enrollment, update the default assignee on the workflow's onboarding roles.
FAQs
For Group Custom Roles, what happens if one person marks a task as complete, or completes a survey?
When a task or survey is assigned to a Group Custom Role, it appears on the task list of every individual in that group. Once any one person completes the task or survey, Ashby automatically marks it complete and removes it from the task lists of all group members.
What happens if I have multiple individuals assigned to Hiring Manager and Recruiter roles in Ashby Recruiting?
If you often have multiple hiring team members in the Hiring Manager or Recruiter roles, you can create a custom hiring team role to represent the hiring manager who should own workflow tasks using the steps at Create a custom onboarding role.
I don't see my new Custom Role as an option when assigning Default Assignees. Am I doing something wrong?
Custom Roles must be assigned to at least one workflow step before they appear as an option for Default Assignees. If your Custom Role isn't listed, confirm that you've added it to at least one workflow step.