Managing Review Cycles

Introduction

Review cycles are the assignment of the same review template to a set of employees. These work well when you are going to be doing the same review for a group or perhaps employees in similar positions. Cycles also provide reporting and visualization where you can see review results across multiple subjects. To create or manage a review cycle, navigate to the Reviews page inside the Reviews dropdown in your navigation. You will see listed any existing cycles; you can also navigate to the All Reviews list to see any review done in PerformYard.

Setting Up a Review Cycle

To set up a new review cycle, click New Review Cycle to complete the steps for creating a cycle: establishing the basic information for the cycle and selecting the review subjects.

For the basic information, complete the following:

• Cycle name: Give the review cycle a short, recognizable name for future reference
• Lock reviews from non-admins: Selecting this option will only allow Admins to make process changes to the reviews once set up.  This will prevent managers from making changes such as adding forms, changing authors/signers, modifying visibility and updating due dates.
• Group-specific cycle: Select a group if you only plan to have subjects from one group in the cycle. This selection also provides access to the cycle for any group administrators for the selected group. This field is optional for Admins/Billing Admins, but required for Group Admins to select from groups they manage.
• Which review template would you like to use?: Choose the template you have set up for this cycle. As a reminder, the template provides the basic setup for the forms, authors/signers, days to complete, visibility and redact author setting.
• Start date: Select the date and time you want the review cycle to begin. This defaults to the default review cycle start time selected in your Company Settings on the start date, but can be modified by clicking the clock icon.

Once you have selected the template and start date, all of the forms in the template will be listed. This will display each form, the authors/signers as in the template, due dates as calculated based on the start date/time and the template days to complete, visibility and redact author setting. Note that editing the redact author setting is not available to Group Admins.

If you want to change the setup for any form, click Edit beneath the setup parameters for that form. You can update/add/remove the authors and signers, due dates, visibility and the redact setting. As a reminder, these are intended to be generic and will be set up for each subject selected. After making changes, click Save.

You can Delete any form from the setup by clicking Delete. This form will not be added to the reviews when set up.

Select Add New Form at the bottom of the page to include an additional form in the cycle setup.

Add forms by searching for form name. Once a form is selected (Goal Creation Form in the sample below) enter the remaining parameters (author/signer, due dates, visibility and redaction). This form will be assigned to each subject when the cycle is launched.

If after selecting your template and start date/time, you choose to edit the start date and/or time, you will be prompted with an option to Recalculate form dates that will use the days to author/sign from the template to redefine the due dates in the forms to be assigned based on the new start date/time. This is not required, but would allow you to set the form due dates and then change the start date without impacting the due dates.

At the bottom of the page beneath Add New Form, you will also have an option to Reset template forms that will cancel any changes you have made to the forms and return you to the original state after you initially selected the start date and template (adding back forms you deleted, removing forms you added, recalculating due dates, and adjusting visibility/redact authors).

When you have the cycle setup complete, click Next to select your subjects. Begin by checking the box to the left of the employee names to add individuals to the cycle one-by-one.

If you have not pre-selected a group, you may use the search to find employees or use the Add Group button (to the right of the search bar) to either select All Employees or employees in a specific group. You can use this function to add more than one group.

Each person in the selected group will then appear with a check to the left of their name.

You can check and uncheck employees to be included. Then you can display just those employees that have been selected using the Show only selected employees checkbox to the upper right of the table.

If you selected a group in the Group-Specific Cycle field (the Customer Support group in the example below), the subjects list will be pre-filtered to only display employees in the group. You can then use the Add Group button to select all employees in the group.

Click Create Cycle to begin the process of setting up your cycle. Note this may take a few minutes to set up. Once ready, the page will refresh to show you the cycle status page.

Once a cycle has been created, you can click on its name to see the cycle details. Cycle details include:

• Cycle name
• Start date
• Due date
• Number of review subjects in the cycle
• Pie charts indicating the number of reviews and a breakout by review status
• Bar charts indicating the overall, author, and signer completion

If you have access to automated reviews and have chosen to automate the cycle you are creating, you will also see the following information about your review automation:

• The review automation type
• If the automation is enabled or disabled
• When the automation runs
• When the automation will stop running

As well, you'll see a list of each subject reviewed in the cycle, including a link on the left to Open Review. Additionally you have indicators for if the review has unassigned forms or includes external reviews. Then there are bar charts for author completion, signer completion and form completion. The example below shows a cycle that already has progress; until the cycle has started and forms have been authored/signed, the progress bars will appear blank.

An Options menu in the upper left includes links to:

• Visualize data, where you can create visualizations about the reviews in the cycle (covered here)
• Edit the cycle’s parameters to change the name, start date (if the cycle has not started) and update various form parameters (covered here)
• Add subjects to the cycle, where you will select more individual employees to include
• Download CSV to export the answers to all forms in the review cycle for all subjects
• Copy the cycle to create a duplicate where you can edit parameters of the duplicate cycle
• Close cycle, where you can close out each review in the cycle
• Delete cycle, where you can remove the cycle (only available for cycles that have not yet started or where there are no reviews in the cycle)

Once a cycle has been set up, you can include additional subjects in the review cycle. This is helpful for cycles that are ongoing or if you forget an employee during initial setup. This is also a two-step process as was creating the cycle.

Initially you will see the name of the cycle to which you are adding the subjects. Then select the Lock option if you want to limit process changes to Admins. If this is a group-specific cycle, the name of the selected group will appear. This selection will also then determine available subjects in the next step, only showing employees in the group that do not yet have a review. You will also see the name of the template originally used for the cycle. Enter the start date/time for the reviews you are adding. This will then populate all of the forms based on the template and start date/time as occurred when initially creating the cycle. The remaining options for making modifications will remain the same.

Click Next to select from employees not already in the cycle to add to the cycle. Once you have selected from the available employees, click Add Subjects. Any employees already in the cycle will not be available to be selected again as an employee can only appear in a cycle once. Note that after you are returned to the cycle page, you may need to refresh the browser window to see all subjects listed.

For any review cycle, you can view information about each subject's review, including due date, progress and the number of unassigned/external review forms. You also have options to Open Review, on the far left which will let you see the details of the forms in the review, and Delete, on the far right which will remove the review entirely.

There are additional search and filter options available on any cycle above the table of employees being reviewed. To search, just type in the name of the person whose review you want to find.

To filter, click the Filter button to the right of the search. The filter includes a number of options on those reviews, such as:

• Unassigned forms
• External forms
• Due date, before or after
• Author, signer and overall progress

Click Update after selecting your search parameters, and the table of employees being reviewed will update to just those that meet the filter criteria.

Updating a Review Cycle

Once a cycle has been set up, you can edit certain parameters about the cycle itself and the forms that have been assigned within reviews in the cycle. 

To edit a cycle, first open the Reviews dropdown within the navigation then select Review Cycles. You should be on a page that displays all created cycles. Click the name of the cycle you'd like to edit.

Once inside the cycle you'd like to edit, click the Options menu and select Edit.

Initially you will be presented with information about the cycle and the forms therein, including:

• Cycle Name
• Cycle Start Date
• Listing of all forms within the cycle, including each form's name and the number of times that form appears across all reviews in the cycle

To edit the cycle name, click on the pencil to the right of the current name. Likewise you can edit the start date/time if that date is in the future. After editing, click Save.

Options If Cycle Has Started

Within the list of forms, you can make a few types of changes depending on if your cycle has started. If your cycle has already started, you'll find options to Edit Form and Delete Form by clicking the three dots to the right of the form name.

Edit Form will allow you to make bulk edits to all versions of the selected form across all reviews in the cycle. This means that any change you make here to one of those forms will be applied to every assignment of that form in the cycle regardless of review subject. This bulk edit feature allows you to edit any of three sets of parameters listed below: 

• Author & Signer Due Dates
• Visibility of the form to the subject of the review
• Redact author setting (only available to Admins or Billing Admins, not Group Admins)

You can change any/all of the three parameters at once. Note that because the same form can be in a single review more than once, or it can be in reviews of different subjects, and in all cases can have different due dates, visibility or redact author settings, your selection(s) in editing will update every instance of the form in the cycle to be identical.

With regard to updating dates, if you want to change due dates, select the box for Would you like to change due dates? The interface will update to allow you to enter new author & signer due dates using the calendar function.

Things to note with updating due dates:

1. You cannot change the author due date to be before the latest start date of any review in the cycle. Because reviews can be added to the cycle after the cycle begins, the ability to update all forms means that all reviews in the cycle have to start before the earliest new due date.
2. The signer due date must be equal to or after the author due date.
3. Both dates must be filled in. Even if your use of a form may not typically include a signer, you must include a signer due date in the event that a form's assignments may have been modified individually.

For updating the visibility of a review form, select the box for Would you like to change the visibility setting?

If you select to update the visibility setting, you will be changing/updating the visibility of all versions of the selected form in the cycle regardless of how those forms may currently be set. If you then want to make them all visible, then check the box for Is visible to the subject (when all authors/signers are finished). If you do not want the forms to be visible, then do not check that box for Is visible to the subject.

Administrators and Billing Administrators may also change the Redact author setting, which anonymizes the author's name to the subject and signers. To change that for all forms, select the box for Would you like to change the redact author setting?

Like with visibility, if you select this option, you will be updating all versions of the selected form in the cycle regardless of how those forms may currently be set. If you want to make them all redacted, then check the box for Redact author(s). If you want the author names displayed and not redacted, then do not check the box for Redact author(s).

You can change multiple parameters at the same time as shown in the following example:

In this example, all versions of the Manager Review Form will be set such that:

• Authors Due Date - August 24, 2020 at 5:00 PM
• Signers Due Date - August 31, 2020 at 5:00 PM
• Visibility - the Manager Review Form will be set to visible to subject
• Redact author - the Manager Review Form will not have the author name(s) redacted

After clicking Bulk Update, you will be presented with a confirmation box that displays what will occur.

Clicking the green check will implement these changes across your cycle immediately. While you can then re-modify that form's parameters or individually edit the use of a form within a single review, there is not an option to undo these changes and revert to what each form may have previously been. Click the red x to cancel these changes, and then you can also click Cancel to return to the form listing.

The second option for each form is Delete Form. This function will permanently remove every version of this form that has been assigned in the cycle. This will occur regardless of completion status of the form and will apply to each review in the cycle where the form occurs.

After selecting the Delete Form option, you will be presented with a final warning message that reiterates your intention to permanently delete the form from all reviews in the cycle. Clicking the green check will implement these changes across your cycle immediately. There is not an option to undo this deletion and all forms will be removed immediately. While you can choose to re-assign a new form, all answers previously saved or submitted by users on these deleted forms are not recoverable.

Beneath the list of forms in the cycle, you will also find an option to Add Form. This option will enable you to add one copy of a selected form to each review in the cycle. Note that this form will be added to all reviews in the cycle, so reviews that had been previously closed or completed will be re-opened with this new form.

Selecting Add Form will provide first the option to choose the form that you want to add to the cycle.After selecting the form, complete the required parameters for this form.

You will need to add author(s), signer(s) (optional), define author and signer due dates, set visibility and redact author preference (admins only). As a reminder, these are intended to be generic and will be set up for each subject selected. Note that while you can select a specific user for authoring or signing, that individual will be chosen for the new form in every review in the cycle.

Once you have defined those parameters, click Save and confirm with the green check mark.

Options If Cycle Has Not Started

If your review cycle has not started, in addition to being able to edit and delete you will also have the option to Replace Form in the cycle. Replace Form will find all existing copies of the original form in the cycle across all reviews and modify the form that will be completed to be the newly selected form. All review assignments from the original form will be maintained, as well as the due dates, visibility setting and redact author setting. The change is that the latest version of the selected replacement form will be assigned rather than the original.

Selecting replace will open a selection box at the bottom of the page where you can choose the replacement form.

Once you select the new form, you will be presented with a confirmation box. Click the green check mark to execute the replacement. Click the red X to return to the forms list.

Note that if you have updated or changed a form after creating the cycle, you can select the same form in the replacement box to update the cycle with the new version. 

Closing a Review Cycle

It's important to make sure outstanding reviews are wrapped up at the end of your process, see the steps below on how to close a cycle.

• Navigate to the Review Cycles page via the Reviews dropdown within your navigation

Note: You can filter the cycle list to show only active cycles by clicking the filter button to the left of the green New Review Cycle button.

• Click on the cycle name to open the cycle of interest.

From the cycle detail page, check for completion to see where incomplete reviews are stuck. They could be incomplete by authors, signers or both. The pie chart below can tell you how many subject’s reviews are complete. Next to the chart, you can see how many forms, author tasks, and signer tasks are completed.

You can check individual reviews to see which specific steps need to be complete. An Administrator can decide to remove outstanding actors on a form to force the form to completion. 

• Click Open Review to see specifics of an employee’s review.

Note: Only a complete form will be visible to the subject's chain of command and any future manager.

Note: Forcing a form to completion is only helpful when a form is partially complete. A form that has not been started won’t have any content and therefore actors do not need to be removed.

• Once you have forced any outstanding forms to completion, click the Options menu and Close Cycle to close out remaining active reviews. 

Close Cycle: If the review is still in process, this function will close the review such that it is no longer expected to be completed and will be paused in its current state. Any active 360 forms will automatically be disabled when the cycle is closed.

If all your reviews within your cycle are complete, you will not see Close Cycle under the Options menu. This is expected as the Close Cycle function is to close out reviews still in process.

 When you look at your cycle list, any cycles with the 360 Enabled badge indicate there are 360 forms within the cycle that are able to be assigned. When you close your cycle those 360 forms will automatically be disabled, however if all reviews in your cycle are complete you will need to explicitly make your 360 forms not active. This will ensure that no additional forms are added to the cycle after the reviews have been completed. 

• Click the cycle name to open it
• Click Options, Edit

• Switch to view the 360 Forms section
• Look for forms marked as Active and use the Edit button to disable