Introduction

Skills can be set by administrators for end-users to attribute to themselves on the front end. These are completely customisable so has the potential to cover any skill utilised within your company or those outside of work (if appropriate)

Chosen skills display on user-profiles and each user can rate themselves on level of proficiency.

Users with selected skills will be returned when that skill is searched globally or using the specific skill search area in the People application, aiding other users to find individuals with appropriate knowledge to facilitate collaboration.

On top of this users can endorse each other for these skills to further support that user's experience and proficiency level.

Managing Skills as an administrator

 - Adding skills

An application administrator of People can add skills by heading to Admin > People > Configure Skills

This will open the 'Skills Management' area, where any skills already configured will be listed.

To add a new skill:

• Click the 'create new skill' button.
• A pop up will appear where the name of the skill can be entered.
• Click 'create' to add the skill to the system.

Once added, users will be able to attribute this to their profile and begin to be endorsed by other users, which is explained in the front end user section of this article.

- Merge/delete skills

The next available tab as an administrator in this area is the ability to merge skills together or to delete them.

If two or more skills are similar and could be merged this can be carried out under a new overarching skill name, or retaining one of the names already given.

Merging skills will effect all users that attributed them to their profile previously, updating their profile with the new name but keeping the amount of endorsements they had intact.

If a user had all skills included in the merge on their profile, the endorsement total across them will be combined and displayed next to the merged skill.

- Give other users the ability to create new skills

The final tab available on the administrative side is where the right to create new skills for other users can be given.

Any user with this permission can add skills to other users profiles directly and does not have to be an application administrator of People in order to do so.

These responsible users (along with application administrators of People) can add new skills to user profiles from the front end which additionally creates them in the back end once added -  allowing these new skills to become available for selection by other users themselves.

Responsible users or administrators add new skills directly on a user profile by using the 'Endorse this person for...' field.

Whatever they type will appear highlighted blue in the dropdown, clicking this adds the skill into the field and clicking 'endorse' adds it to the profile, whilst additionally creating the new skill in the back end.

Front end use of Skills

- User attributes Skills to themselves

When editing their profile a user can begin to choose skills that apply and give themselves a proficiency rating.

End users will be able to select from the list of skills set up on the Admin side by administrators.

The skills area is in the 'Expertise' tab when the user is editing.

Individual skills can be added to the profile or several at once, by using the multiple select field given as shown below:

- Skills search

Once attributed, selected skills can be viewed by other users after performing a skills search.

This can be access via the Binoculars icon given on the front end of People or when on a user's profile.

Once in the search a user can click into the dropdown to see the whole list of configured skills and select one or multiple.

The returned list will give each user that attributed this skill to themselves and the proficency rating chosen.

- Endorsements

The other option given in the search is endorsements.

When skill(s) are searched in this way a total number of endorsements are displayed per user per skill.

The higher the number the more people have endorsed the user for that skill.

A user can endorse another by heading to their profile on the front end and clicking the plus symbol next to a Skill, which highlights in blue.

An endorsement can only be given once per user, so the only option following this is to remove the endorsement which highlights in red.

(Users cannot endorse themselves for skills, instead they set a proficiency rating)

 - Adding new Endorsements

End users can also add additional endorsements to a user's profile and become the first person to do so.

Using the 'Endorse this person for' field a user can select from the skill options configured by administrators and attribute this to the users profile on their behalf.

If a user has been endorsed for a skill by another person that they did not previously attribute to themselves, in order to give a proficiency for this (and appear in the skills search in People rather than endorsements search only) they need to also add the skill to their profile in the 'Expertise' tab.