Builder guide

For report authors putting a chart together: the patterns that come up repeatedly, with the rows that produce them. If you have not yet bound the basic fields, start with the quick start first — this page assumes a working chart and shows how to build the shapes a real organization actually has.

Before you build

Three other pages cover the pieces these examples assume you already know:

The model overview explains data types, nesting versus anchoring, and multi-chain overlays — the concepts behind every example below.
The field reference lists every field, including which ones are dual-purpose (marked with a |) and mean something different depending on the row's data type.
Bind raw columns, never measures, and keep everything in one flat table — both examples and the model overview assume this throughout.

1. A unit triad with departments

The commonest shape: a CO, XO and senior enlisted leader drawn as one box, with departments hanging beneath the SEL.

The triad is a group with three members; each department is its own group, anchored to the SEL billet.

The rows behind it, abbreviated to the columns that matter:

dataType    id            label            parentId   childId    role
NODE        PHX.CO        CO
NODE        PHX.XO        XO
NODE        PHX.SEL       SEL
GROUP       G.PHX.TRIAD   Unit Triad                             ROW
MEMBER      G.PHX.TRIAD                              PHX.CO
MEMBER      G.PHX.TRIAD                              PHX.XO
MEMBER      G.PHX.TRIAD                              PHX.SEL
GROUP       G.PHX.N4      N4 Logistics     PHX.SEL              GRID
EDGE        E001                           PHX.CO     PHX.XO
EDGE        E002                           PHX.CO     PHX.SEL

G.PHX.N4 sets parentId to PHX.SEL. That is anchoring: the department box hangs beneath that billet. Setting childId instead would nest it inside another group.

2. A region containing units

A region has its own triad and staff, and its detachments hang beneath the region commander. The Include tree shows the result:

Western Region
├─ Regional Triad
│   ├─ CO
│   │   └─ West Detachments ↗
│   │       ├─ Phoenix
│   │       │   └─ Phoenix Triad ↗
│   │       └─ Salt Lake
│   │           └─ Salt Lake Triad ↗
│   ├─ XO
│   └─ SEL
└─ Regional Staff

The ↗ marks a group reached by anchoring rather than nesting. Each unit's triad sits under its own unit name, not beside it — which is what keeps two identical-looking triads distinguishable.

When one detachment IS the region's own leadership seat

Sometimes a region doesn't have separate regional staff at all — the region is run from one of its own detachments, alongside that detachment's own local leadership. Mark that one member as the lead / flagship member on the West Detachments GROUP row (column 12, UIC title — reserved for this on GROUP rows specifically). Two things follow automatically: the lead gets a small gold marker and is always listed first in the grid, and every other detachment's "Reports to" line in the Inspector switches to naming the lead instead of whichever detachment happened to sort first.

Roll-up totals follow both

Ask the region for a manning total and you get the whole region — its triad, its staff, its detachments and everything inside them — because roll-up follows nesting and anchoring. Following only nesting would total the triad and staff and stop there.

3. A mixed military and civilian command

Command leadership rarely divides neatly. A NAVSEA-style chart has flag officers and SES civilians side by side, and a flag officer may be dual-hatted into a second billet that a whole subordinate command reports through.

Billet	Held by	Note
Commander	VADM Burns	Military
Executive Director	Ms. Bryant, SES	Civilian
SEA 05 Naval Systems Engineering	Dr. Phillips, SES	Civilian
Supervisor of Shipbuilding	RDML Franklin	Military
Reserve Program Director	RDML Franklin	Dual hat — same person, second billet

The dual hat is simply a second ASSIGNMENT row for the same person against a different billet, with its own assigned date. The subordinate command's top billet then has a reporting edge to the second billet, and the whole chain hangs together.

Civilians need no special handling. They are roster rows like anyone else, matched into a unit's Unassigned pool the same way a military member is — by their five UICs, not by a category you set. 07_kind (personnel type) is worth setting to something like Civilian for display, but it's descriptive only; which pool category they land in (Billeted local, Externally billeted, and so on) is computed from their UICs regardless of what this field says. They are reachable in the assignment picker once you tick Search the entire roster.

4. A summary panel

Command-level totals in a box beside or below the chart, the way a printed org chart carries a summary block. Panels are configured cell by cell in the format pane, or as JSON for anything more elaborate:

{
  "rows": 2, "cols": 3, "title": "Command summary",
  "cells": [
    { "row": 1, "col": 1, "type": "VALUE",  "slot": 1 },
    { "row": 1, "col": 2, "type": "VALUE",  "slot": 2 },
    { "row": 1, "col": 3, "type": "STATUS", "text": "Status:" },
    { "row": 2, "col": 1, "type": "COUNT",  "text": "Billets:" },
    { "row": 2, "col": 2, "type": "GAPPED", "text": "Gapped:" },
    { "row": 2, "col": 3, "type": "UPDATED","text": "Updated:" }
  ]
}

Cell types cover free text, cumulative values, comparisons, billet and gapped counts, verification, the chart provenance fields, images, and the three bindable footer fields.

Builder guide

On this page

Before you build

1. A unit triad with departments

2. A region containing units

When one detachment IS the region's own leadership seat

Roll-up totals follow both

3. A mixed military and civilian command

4. A summary panel