People and Systems


People and Systems in LINQ are organisation resources that are defined from your models or predefined before your modelling process begins.  These organisational assets are shared across all models in your account, and shows the relationships between roles, people, systems and infrastructure in your organisation.  

You can assign people to roles and define their capacity, tracking the total hours and costs associated with each role in the People and Systems Model.


Accessing the People and System Model


To access the People and System Model, you can:

  • Select People and systems from the Models dropdown menu. 


  • Or click Open people and systems model from the Organisation view Card.   


Automatically represented relationships 


The People and Systems view in LINQ auto-generates resource relationships based on existing models. 

For example, if a Customer Service Rep uses Excel to perform actions like updating an email address, this relationship is automatically represented in the People and Systems model. There’s no need to manually define these connections, as LINQ builds them from your defined model actions. 


Adding Roles and Systems


To make additional resources available in the People and System Model, follow these steps to create and manage roles and systems:  

1. Add a new role or system:

  • Drag a new Role or System nodes into the People and System Model workspace. 
  • Enter a name for each new resource, then select Save model. 

2. Use added new roles and systems across models: 

  • Once saved, these added roles and systems will appear in the dropdown menu in any model.  You can select these newly added Role or System from the dropdown to assign them to specific actions within your model.


3. Define role and system relationships:

  • If you specify how a system is used by a role in your models, the relationship will automatically appear in the People and Systems Model.


Note: Relationships established within models cannot be deleted directly in the People and Systems Model. An error message will appear if deletion is attempted, indicating that the relationship is currently in use in a model. 



Configuring Capacity Against Roles


In LINQ, you can configure capacity for each role in the People and Systems Model to reflect its availability for performing actions in models. Follow these steps to set role capacity:  


1. Select the Role node for which you want to set up the capacity. 


2. Scroll down to the Properties Panel from the left-hand side or double click the Role node and find the Capacity section.  And click Add people or click here to set a capacity message.  

 

 

3.  Toggle the bar to Set capacity. This will allow you to define specific working hours for the role, rather than ignoring capacity. 


4. Enter the typical time worked by each person for the role. Fill in the Days, Hours, Minutes, and Seconds fields as needed. Choose the frequency of work (e.g., workday, week, or year). If selecting workday, specify the number of weeks per year—for instance, 52 weeks. And Save it.  



Defining Cost for Roles


If there are multiple people in a role, you can specify their number and associated costs from the Costs section in the Properties Panel or by double-clicking the Role node:  


  • Enter the total number of people assigned to this role (e.g., 2 people), and specify the annual cost per person or enter an hourly rate if that's more suitable. 


Defining Capacity for Roles against System


To define the capacity for the role against the system: 


  • Click the System Node, go to the Properties Panel from the left-hand side, or double-click the System node. The number of people in the role has been defined, but you can still set the annual cost per Person for using this system based on individual salaries. 
  • You can add system costs in the Fixed annual cost area if you know how much the system will cost annually. 


 

Adding Individual People to Define Role Capacity


To add specific individuals and integrate their capacity into a role, follow these steps:


  • Drag a Person node into the People and Systems Model, name it, then drag an edge from the individual person to the role (e.g., GIS Team). This action links the person's capacity to the role, adding to the role's total capacity. 


Note: When you add a specific person or teams to a role, the role capacity and cost can only be defined by completing capacity and cost for the people in the role. If you have previously set capacity and cost at the role level, that information will be removed when you connect a person or a team to the role.



  • Define individual capacity by selecting the Person Node and going to the Properties Panel or double-clicking it.  Select click here to set capacity message, set the working hours. For instance, specify that the person works 8 hours per workday for 45 weeks per year, accounting for leave and holidays. 



  • You must specify the annual cost for the newly added person, as the total capacity and cost for the role will be calculated based on the sum of all individuals' capacities assigned to it.  Incomplete individual assignments, such as not setting costs, may result in inaccurate capacity calculations for the role. 


Splitting People Between Roles


If an individual's capacity is split across multiple roles, or in other words, they work in multiple roles, you can divide their capacity as follows: 


  • Choose the person whose time you want to allocate across multiple roles (e.g., Hillary).  In the

    Roles section of the Properties panel, set the percentage of time the individual spends on each role. For instance, Product Marketing is 70% (allocating 1190 hours) and Marketing Admin is 30% (allocate 510 hours).  


LINQ will calculate and display the allocated hours for each role based on the percentage split, providing a detailed breakdown of the individual's time commitment to each role. 


Merging Duplicate Roles

If you encounter situations where the same role has been created multiple times under different names, and you can merge the duplicated roles into a single role in People and Systems Model.  This also merges the duplicated roles across all models where they are used.  


Follow these steps to merge duplicated roles:


1. Select roles to merge: Go to Open insights (right panel), click on Role icon at the top of panel to display a list of all roles.  Then, click the checkbox next to the role name you want to merge. 


2. Go to the Node Properties Panel (left panel) and find the role you want to merge into from the Select a node to merge node(s) into drop-down list. 


3. Choose the roles and then select Click here to merge nodes into selected node message.  


4. A confirmation dialog will appear, displaying the roles you are about to merge. Type the word Merge in the provided field to confirm, then click Yes to finalize the merge.  



Configuring Infrastructure to Support System Operations


In LINQ, you can add infrastructure nodes to ensure that systems have the necessary infrastructure required to enable the system to operate effectively.  LINQ provides three types of infrastructure nodes to represent different support environments: 


  • Infrastructure: Infrastructure that supports systems. Used to inform carbon and costs. 
  • On-Premise: Infrastructure that belongs to and is run from within the organisation. 
  • Cloud-Based: Infrastructure that is provided as a service by an external organization. For systems hosted in cloud environments. 


To add Infrastructure Nodes to the People and Systems Model:

  • Drag the desired infrastructure node from the palette into the People and Systems Model workspace. Draw an edge from the infrastructure node to the system it supports. This connection represents the infrastructure required for the system to operate.  



Infrastructure nodes also serve as a basis for carbon emission. For more information on setting emission factors and understanding direct and indirect emissions, please refer to the Carbon Emission section or watch the LINQ Onboarding video-Configuring Emissions for Carbon Intensity Insights.


Accessing Insights Across Models 


Once you have configured roles, systems, and infrastructure at the organisation level, LINQ provides insights across all your models. Here’s how to access and analyse this data: 

  • Go to Open insights (right panel), select Role, choose Chart type as Bar chart and Y axis as Cost to generate a Cost Bar Chart. This chart displays the costs associated with each role based on their usage across models. 


  • If you select the Workload option, you can access the workload for each role defined in the models.  For instance, in the demo organisation in LINQ, the Product Marketing role shows a deficit of 50 hours. This indicates that the current capacity is insufficient to handle the workload specified in the model. 

 

For more guidance, please refer to the demo organisation embedded in LINQ to see examples of how to configure role and system capacity.