People (Employee Data Management) FAQ
Answers to common setup and operating questions about People.
For what the app is and how to set it up from scratch, see the
People Overview.
Setup
Does People require a licence?
Yes. People requires a licence and is disabled by default. An administrator enables it from the Apps Marketplace. It is opt-in per tenant — it will not appear for employees until an admin turns it on.
How many standard fields does People ship with?
People ships with 68 standard fields organized into seven sections: Personal Information, Contact Information, Employment Details, Compensation, Compliance & Legal, Onboarding, and Offboarding. Each field can be individually toggled active or inactive, set as required or optional, and given an edit permission level (employee, manager, or admin only).
What custom field types can I create?
There are 16 custom field types: text, textarea, number, email, phone, URL, select, multiselect, radio, checkbox, date, datetime, time, file, currency, and rating. Custom fields are organized into 10 categories: Basic Info, Contact, Locations, Employment, Compensation, Emergency, Documents, Compliance, Skills & Credentials, and Additional Info. Each custom field supports ordering, min/max and regex validation rules, and a per-field usage report.
Permissions and access
Who can see and edit custom fields?
Each custom field has independent visibility and edit permission settings. Visibility has four levels: Everyone (appears in the directory), Managers (visible to the employee’s manager chain), Employee (visible to the employee only), and Admins (admin-only). Edit permission has three levels: Employee edit (the employee can update it), Manager edit (the employee’s manager can update it), and Admin only (only admins can change it). Admins can always see and edit all fields regardless of these settings.
Who can view the org chart?
By default the org chart is visible to everyone. An admin can restrict it to managers and admins only by turning off the Org chart visible to all employees toggle in the People settings. When restricted, employees below manager level cannot access the org chart or department-level lookups — they can still see their own My Team view.
Day-to-day
How does the profile update approval workflow work?
When an employee changes a field they cannot directly edit (an admin-only or manager-only field), the change is submitted as an update request. If Manager routing is enabled (on by default), manager-level requests route to the employee’s direct manager. Admin-level requests go to the admin queue. The reviewer sees impact flags for payroll, benefits, and compliance, and can set a future effective date before approving. Approved future-dated changes apply automatically on the effective date.
Only one pending request per employee per field is allowed at a time. The employee can cancel a pending request and resubmit.
What are the SLA and escalation settings for update requests?
Three settings control the lifecycle of pending requests:
- Reminder days — a reminder is sent to the assigned manager after this many days (default 3, range 1–10).
- Escalation days — the request escalates from the manager queue to the admin queue after this many days (default 5, range 3–14).
- Expiry days — requests still pending after this many days auto-expire and the requester is notified to resubmit (default 30, set to 0 to disable).
A daily job enforces all three. If the employee’s manager changes while a request is pending, the request is automatically escalated to an admin.
What happens when an update request is approved for a field that affects payroll, benefits, or compliance?
The request is flagged as High Impact and shows which systems are affected: Payroll, Benefits, and/or Compliance Reporting. Specifically: first name, last name, date of birth, address, marital status, and similar fields trigger payroll and benefits impact. Gender, date of birth, and marital status trigger compliance impact. The impact flags are informational for the reviewer — the field change is applied to the employee record on approval, but downstream payroll/HRIS sync depends on the Payroll Connect or HRIS Connect apps being configured.
Compliance monitoring
What compliance checks are built in?
Five checks, each with its own drill-down view and the ability to send bulk in-app reminders to the selected employees:
- Missing emergency contacts — employees with no emergency contact on file.
- Visas expiring soon — employees with a work visa expiring within a configurable window (default 60 days, range 1–365).
- I-9 reverification due — employees with I-9 reverification due within the next 30 days (hard-coded).
- Probation periods ending — employees whose probation ends within a configurable window (default 14 days, range 1–90).
- Incomplete profiles — employees missing a phone number, hire date, or job title.
Can I change the probation period length for new hires?
Yes. The default probation period is 90 days and can be set between 0 and 730 days in the People settings. The notification window for probation endings (how far in advance probation-ending employees appear in the compliance dashboard) is a separate setting that defaults to 14 days (range 1–90).
When something looks wrong
“I revealed a sensitive field but now it’s asking me to verify again”
The step-up verification (password or personal PIN) lasts 15 minutes. After that, you must re-verify before viewing any masked field again. If you fail verification 5 times, you are locked out for 15 minutes before you can try again. This applies to SSN, date of birth, annual salary, hourly rate, bank account and routing numbers, and paycheck figures.
“My employee can’t request a profile update”
The employee can only submit update requests for fields they are not allowed to directly edit. If a field’s edit permission is set to Employee edit, the employee changes it directly — no request is needed. Also, only one pending request per employee per field is allowed; if there is already a pending request for that field, a new one cannot be submitted until the first is resolved.
“The org chart isn’t showing for some employees”
If the Org chart visible to all employees setting is off, only managers and admins can see it. Employees below manager level will not have access to the org chart pages. Check the People settings and toggle it on if you want it visible company-wide.
“A profile update request was auto-expired”
Pending requests that sit unresolved past the configured expiry window (default 30 days) are automatically expired by the system, and the employee is notified to resubmit. You can change this window or disable auto-expiry (set to 0) in the People settings under the approval workflow section.
Employee ID and former employee portal
How does the Mango Employee ID work?
There are three generation modes, configurable in the People settings:
- Auto (default) — generates an ID in the format E + 7 random digits (e.g., E1234567).
- Typed — uses an employment-type prefix + separator + sequential number. Default prefixes: FT (Full-Time), PT (Part-Time), ST (Seasonal/Temp), HR (Hourly), SL (Salaried), CT (Contractor), EMP (Other). The separator can be a hyphen, slash, or period, and the sequential number is zero-padded to 4–8 digits (default 6).
- Pattern — a custom token template up to 24 characters.
Bulk regeneration is available to reissue IDs across the workforce when switching modes.
How does the former employee portal work?
When an employee is terminated, they can receive a secure token link (via email or SMS) to access their historical employment records. The portal settings are:
- Access duration — how long after the termination date a former employee can use the portal (default 7 years).
- Token validity — how long each token link remains active (default 7 days; can be refreshed).
- Experience letters — whether former employees can request experience or verification letters (on by default).
- Salary in letters — whether experience letters include salary information (off by default).
- Auto-send on termination — whether the portal access link is automatically sent when someone is terminated (on by default).
The former employee must verify with the personal email or phone number on their employee record. All portal access is audited.
Profile completeness
How is the profile completeness score calculated?
The score is a percentage based on 8 fields: first name, last name, email, phone, hire date, job title, date of birth, and emergency contacts (at least one). Each filled field counts equally — a profile with 6 of 8 fields completed shows 75%. The incomplete-profiles compliance check uses a narrower set (phone, hire date, job title) because first name, last name, and email are always required at account creation.
More help
- People Overview
- Ask AI — the assistant answers People questions from these articles.