Personas and perspectives
How the active persona and work perspective shape menus, My Day and Scout — and why they never grant access or authority.
All agency users
/pdcc/my-day/workspaceA persona (also called a perspective or lens) is the role you are working in right now — for example *Contracting Officer*, *Contracting Officer's Representative*, *Branch Chief* or *Acquisition Planner*. The persona reorganizes menus, My Day sections, KPIs and Scout suggestions around that job.
Where personas come from
- Your assigned persona set by the agency User Access Admin (
agency.users.set_persona). - Your authority assignments: a CO warrant adds the *Contracting Officer* lens; a COR designation adds *Contracting Officer's Representative*.
- Business users also get *Procurement* and *Budget* lenses where configured.
Only active assigned personas can be selected. Pending or expired personas appear greyed out on the approved-workspace screen and cannot be selected, queried through Scout or activated by refreshing the page.
Switch your active persona
- 1
Open the account menu
Click your initials in the top bar.
- 2
Choose Active persona
The Active persona (presentation only) selector lists only your active assigned personas.
- 3
Pick a persona
Menus, My Day and My Work re-render for that lens. Each record is rechecked before it opens.
- 4
Optional: review all personas
Open My workspace & personas (
/pdcc/my-day/workspace) to see approved, pending and expired personas with their sources.
What changes when you switch
| Persona | My Work children | Acquisitions menu | Team & Portfolio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contract specialist (default) | My Work, My Automations | Requirements, Acquisition Actions, Contracts & Orders, Market Research, Strategy & Lessons | — |
| Contracting Officer | Assigned Jobs, Packages & Reviews, Calendar | Contracts & Orders, Acquisition Actions, Strategy & Lessons | — |
| Contracting Officer's Representative | Assigned Jobs, Deliverable Reviews, Calendar | Contracts & Orders, Deliverables | — |
| Branch Chief / Supervisor | Assigned Jobs, Reviews, Calendar | Requirements, Actions, Contracts, Market Research | Team Workload, Assignments, Portfolio Overview, Exceptions, Resources |
| Division leader / Director | Decisions & Follow-ups, Calendar | Requirements, Actions, Contracts, Market Research | Office Overview, Teams & Workload, Portfolio, Organization, Exceptions |
| Executive / HCA | Decisions & Follow-ups | Requirements, Actions, Contracts | Leadership Overview, Portfolio, Significant Exceptions |
| Program / requirement owner | Required Inputs, Reviews, Calendar | My Requirements, Contracts & Orders, Deliverables | — |
| Budget reviewer | My Work, My Automations | Requirements, Actions, Contracts | Operational Views, Milestones & Bottlenecks |
Perspectives in onboarding and Scout
- During onboarding you choose a starting perspective (
/pdcc/account/perspective); it can be changed later in preferences. - Scout has its own persona selector. Switching it never expands data access or executes a pending proposal — each proposal stays bound to the persona that reviewed it.
- An automation keeps the execution identity and scope it was approved with, even if you later change persona.
Related guides
Navigation and persona menus
How the sidebar is organized, how persona variants change it, and what lives in the account menu.
My Day
One Core page that brings assigned reviews, evidence gaps, waiting items and upcoming milestones together for your active perspective (SH01).
Role assignments and authority
Keep application roles separate from contract-specific warrants and designations; record and validate authority (UA03).
Ask Scout about your work
Open Scout with Alt+S to get evidence-grounded assistance inside the record you are viewing (SG01).