This article explains how to use placeholders in accordance with your company's internal guidelines.
Note The placeholders mentioned in this document can only be used for employee data. Learn more about placeholders that can be used for email templates and document templates in the recruiting section.
Create a Text Template – Placeholders
First, create a text document in MS Office (DOCX/DOTX) or OpenOffice (ODT/OTT). Edit and format the document as usual. When using placeholders, please note that they must always be placed inside two sets of curly brackets.
Personio allows you to work with three different types of placeholders:
- Predefined system placeholders – for system attributes
- Custom placeholders – for attributes you have created
- Free placeholders – that do not reference attributes
Attribute-related placeholders are selected when the template is used and automatically populated with the corresponding employee data. Placeholders that do not reference attributes can be populated with free text.
Predefined System Placeholders
Note These placeholders are linked to system attributes and must be named in English.
Example: {{first_name}}
| Predefined Placeholders | Employee attribute |
| first_name | First name |
| last_name | Last name |
| Email address | |
| position | Position |
| department | Department |
| team_id | Team |
| gender | Gender |
| status | Status |
| hire_date | Hire date |
| probation_period | Duration of the Probation Period |
| probation_period_custom | Probation period end |
| contract_end_date | Contract end date |
| termination_type | Termination type |
| termination_reason | Termination reason |
| termination_date | Termination date |
| last_working_day | Last working day |
| document_date | Document's creation date |
| weekly_working_hours | Weekly hours |
| children | Children |
| supervisor | Supervisor's full name |
| supervisor_position | Supervisor's position |
| office_id | Office |
| subcompany | Subcompany |
| fix_salary | Fixed salary |
| hourly_salary | Hourly wages |
| FTE | FTE |
| last_login | Last login |
| cost_centers | Cost center |
| date_of_birth |
Date of birth |
| vacation_day_balance |
Leftover vacation days |
You can find detailed information on the use of gender variables and date formatting in the linked articles.
In Personio, the placeholders are displayed as follows under Employee Profile > Documents:
Custom Placeholders
Note These placeholders are linked to attributes that you create freely in Personio, and they must be named in the same language as your Personio account. Make sure to use the exact name that you used for the attributes.
Example: {{Name Bank}} {{IBAN}} {{BIC}}
In the Personio document management, this would look as follows:
Free Placeholders
Note These placeholders are not linked to attributes and therefore have no naming requirements. You will have to manually fill in these placeholders with text.
Example: {{Task 1}}
List a Fixed Number of Points
In a Word document, you could, for example, use the following Individual text blocks (best practice templates):
In the Personio document management, this would look as follows:
List an Optional Number of Points
You can also create a flexible number of tasks. This is useful if, for example, you want to enter the tasks individually without being committed to a certain number. Use the following formatting for this:
In the Documents tab of the employee profile, select the required number of tasks under Options and then fill out the corresponding free placeholders:
Tip As shown above, the number of placeholders in the document will correspond to the number you selected under Options.