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A hierarchy is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) in which the items are represented as being "above”, "below," or "at the same level as" one another. Each item can have zero or more subordinates (“children”), and zero or one immediate superior (“parent”). For example, members of an organization could be ranked according to relative status or authority. Most governments, corporations and organizations are hierarchical.
Hierarchies are used in Forsta Plus for example when running employee satisfaction surveys, to define the structure of the organization. This allows employees to be grouped into the correct departments under the correct managers, and this in turn allows the appropriate permissions to be allocated so that the employees have access to information relevant to their positions within the organization when the results are reported.
Each “location” in the hierarchy, in this case each position in the company, is termed a “Node”, with the lowest level - those with no-one reporting to them, being termed “Leaf” nodes to indicate their positions at the ends of the branches - - see the figure below.
Figure 1 - Hierarchy example
The Forsta Plus Hierarchy Management functionality allows you to define your hierarchies by importing Excel® spreadsheets, which may for example be based on output from a Human Resource Information System (HRIS). The hierarchy can then be edited further within Forsta Plus. Or you can export a definition file from Forsta Plus to Excel, edit the file and then re-import. Forsta Plus supports up to 15 levels in a hierarchy.