human-resources

OpenFGA for HR, Payroll & Directory Systems

Use Case

This model represents the authorization needs of a human resources information system (HRIS), like BambooHR, Workday, or Rippling. These platforms manage employee records, payroll, benefits, time-off, and organizational structure.

The model captures the following requirements:

• Multi-tenancy: Multiple organizations, each with their own employees, teams, and HR data.
• Role-based access: Organization-level roles (admin, hr_manager, member) control who can manage employees, view sensitive data, and approve payroll.
• Employee self-service: Employees can view their own records and sensitive fields (SSN, salary), while managers can only see non-sensitive data for their direct reports.
• Manager hierarchy: Direct managers can view (but not edit) employee records, while HR managers and admins can edit them.
• Sensitive data isolation: Personally identifiable information (SSN, date of birth) is gated behind can_view_sensitive, accessible only to the employee themselves and HR administrators.
• Payroll & benefits: Only HR managers and admins can view payroll runs and benefits. Only admins can approve payroll.
• Time-off workflow: Employees submit requests, designated approvers and HR managers can approve. The requester or anyone with employee management permissions (HR managers, admins) can cancel.
• Team hierarchy: Teams support parent-child nesting — members of a parent team can view child teams. Group members and managers can view their groups, and only managers or admins can manage them.

The model, tuples, and tests are in model.fga and store.fga.yaml.

Try It Out

1. Make sure you have the FGA CLI

2. In the human-resources directory, run fga model test --tests store.fga.yaml