Organization

Personas

Plan work by job function, assign the right person, and report time by Persona.

Plan the work before choosing a person

A Persona describes the kind of work needed, such as Engineer, QA Analyst, or Project Manager. Assign a Persona on its own when you know what skills the work needs but have not yet chosen a person. Later, add a compatible person without losing that choice.

Personas are separate from access roles. Being an Engineer does not grant access to an item, and creating a Persona does not change anyone's permissions. Ordinary person-only assignments still work; assignment remains optional.

Set up your Personas

  1. Open Configure Settings → Organization → Personas, beside Users and Teams.
  2. Click New Persona, enter a unique active name, and click Create Persona.
  3. Open Organization → Users, edit a member, and select their Personas.
  4. Put their usual Persona first. This order supplies the fallback when an assignment has no compatible Persona selected.

A person can have several Personas. You need the existing organization-administration permissions to change the catalog or member details.

Use Search for Personas to find an entry. The gray pencil opens its edit dialog; the red X opens its retirement confirmation. Show Archived includes retired Personas and lets you restore one. Retiring a Persona removes it from new choices while preserving existing references and historical time. If another administrator edits the catalog while your dialog is open, refresh and reapply your change instead of overwriting theirs.

Assign people and Personas together

The Choose Assignee dialog offers People and Personas. You can assign only a Persona, only a person where appropriate, or both. Clear removes the whole assignment.

Your changeWhat happens
Assign Jane to Engineer work; Jane is an Engineer and QA AnalystEngineer stays selected.
Assign Jane to Engineer work; Jane is only a QA AnalystThe assignment becomes Jane / QA Analyst.
Choose Engineer while Jane is only a QA AnalystJane is cleared; Engineer stays assigned, waiting for a person.
Assign a person with no Persona selectedTheir first active Persona is used, if they have one.

Removing a person's membership in a Persona also reconciles affected current assignments. Historical time retains its recorded attribution.

These rules apply to supported item and subtask assignment, bulk changes, table and Gantt editing, automations, and API/MCP operations. Selecting a Persona does not automatically choose a person from its members.

Find and organize work

Use the Persona filter pill to match the Persona assigned to the work. This differs from filtering for people who happen to have that Persona. Persona-only work is assigned work, even while it waits for a named person.

In a board's 2D view, choose Persona for Rows or Columns. Combine it with Status to see work by job function, or with Assignee to see who has taken ownership. Moving work between Persona groups follows the same compatibility rules as the assignment dialog.

See assignment filters and board views.

Report time and capacity

In User Time Tracking, select Persona as the grouping. Expand a Persona total into individual users, then expand a user to inspect their recorded work. Someone who worked in two Personas appears under each with only the relevant hours; their membership does not multiply time.

The Time Allocation Matrix also offers Persona rows for monthly time comparisons over your selected item hierarchy. Current workload and capacity use the chosen Persona, with the person's first active Persona as the fallback, without counting availability once for every membership.

Completed time keeps the Persona captured when it was recorded. Later assignment or membership changes do not rewrite it. Older time without captured attribution remains Unspecified; creating Personas now does not relabel past hours.

See User Time Tracking, Time Allocation Matrix, and Current Progress.

Use Personas in automations

Use Persona Updated as a trigger, Persona as a condition, or Change Persona as an action. The same person/Persona compatibility rules apply. Existing person-based automations keep their meaning.

See setting up automations.