This release adds a third approval step to the review cycle, gives you finer control over who can see what, and makes AI Assist more accurate and more consistent. Fourteen fixes also went out across reviews, surveys, integrations and mobile.

What's new
✨

New features

1 item
NewReviews

An approval step before a review is finalised

Reviews can now pass through a third party before they complete. Once the reviewee and reviewer have filled in their sections, the review goes to HR or a senior approver, who is the one to finalise it. Reviewers can be prevented from completing a review themselves, so nothing reaches the employee until it has been signed off.

Refinements
⚡

Improvements

13 items
ImprovementEmployee Development

Employee development features now sit in one module

Objectives, skills, training and the rest of the development tools have been brought together under a single Development menu, in the same way performance management is already grouped. There is less hunting through the navigation to find the area you need.

ImprovementDocuments

Company Documents can be hidden from selected security groups

A new security group setting controls whether the Company area of Documents is visible. Turn it off and Company Documents disappears from the Documents menu and from the tabs in Files, while personal documents keep working as normal. This stops people uploading personal paperwork into the company area, and is useful where company files already live on an existing intranet.

ImprovementObjectives

Select all when assigning an objective to your team

Managers setting the same objective for everyone they manage can now tick Select all rather than choosing each person in turn.

ImprovementPeople & Teams

Personal details and emergency contacts can be made read-only

A new person setting stops employees editing their own personal details, emergency contact and next of kin, so the record stays as HR entered it. Where editing is allowed, the employee's manager is notified when a change is made.

ImprovementSuccession Planning

Managers can be hidden from their own succession plan

A new toggle in People & Groups, "Disable Manager view of themself in Succession Planning", removes a manager from the Succession Planning Dashboard table when they have a manager of their own. They keep full visibility of the people they are planning for.

ImprovementReviews

Review templates are chosen from cards, not a dropdown

When an employee adds a review, the template list is now shown as cards, matching the layout already used in Manage Reviews. It is easier to tell templates apart, and it lays out properly on a phone.

ImprovementReviews

The review panel colour can be changed to match your brand

The blue panel in the review screen is no longer fixed. It can be set to a colour of your choosing, so reviews sit alongside the rest of your branding.

ImprovementSettings

Departments, Sites and Regions added to the Settings menu

These three areas are now linked directly from the Settings menu rather than being reached through another screen.

ImprovementTalent & Succession

A reworked 9-box grid with filters and manager access

The 9-box grid dashboard has been rebuilt and can now be filtered by team, review template and date range. Managers can be given access to it, and the grid respects their visibility permissions, so each person sees only the people they are entitled to see. The grid's labels are also available to AI Assist, and a prompt can now be narrowed to a specific review template or period.

✦ AIImprovementAI Assist

More accurate AI Assist reporting

AI Assist now excludes leavers from reports and figures unless you ask for them, shows people's names rather than their internal ID numbers, and tells the difference between training objectives and training logs. Reports built from a prompt should now match what you would get from the equivalent report in the platform.

✦ AIImprovementAI Assist

AI Assist remembers the data it has already looked at

AI Assist now carries the data it has retrieved from one message to the next, instead of starting again each time you reply. You can refine a report over several messages, and answers come back faster and cost less to produce.

✦ AIImprovementAI Assist

Cleaner AI Assist replies

AI Assist no longer writes out its working in the chat. Its reasoning happens out of sight and you are left with the answer.

ImprovementNew accounts

New accounts start on the current version of Holidays & Absence

Newly created accounts are now set up directly on rules-based Holidays & Absence, so there is no migration step to run before the current absence rules can be used. New accounts also start with the latest optional features switched on rather than having to be enabled one at a time.

Now resolved
🔧

Bug fixes

14 items
Bug fixReviews

Reviewee lists limited to the people you manage

When a manager adds a review, objective, task or worksheet, the person list now shows their direct reports rather than everyone on the platform. The full list still appears for anyone with the Everyone permission.

Bug fixPeople & Teams

Profiles outside a manager's team are no longer reachable

A manager could open the profile of someone two levels below them by clicking their name in the Manage Requests table, even though that person did not appear on their People screen. Profile access now follows the same visibility rules as the rest of the platform.

Bug fixReviews

Archived reviews removed from self-assign

Review templates that had been deactivated were still offered to employees when they added a review for themselves. Only active templates now appear.

Bug fixReviews & Surveys

Scored and option questions can be reordered

Drag-and-drop reordering only worked on text questions. Scored and multiple-option questions can now be moved into any order.

Bug fixSurveys

Response times showing on survey reports

Some responses came through without a "Date Time Of Response", leaving a blank column on the report. Every response now records the date and time it was submitted.

Bug fixSurveys

Article images available on surveys built from a template

Starting an engagement survey from a template left the article image option greyed out until the topic tag had been changed. The image option is now available straight away.

Bug fixInsights

Recent department and role changes appear on the Movers report

The Movers Departments and Roles report was not picking up changes made recently, returning nothing for current dates. It now reports on changes as they happen, and follows the Everyone permission and manager reporting lines.

Bug fixInsights

Deleted people no longer counted in dashboards

People who had been deleted were still appearing in the objectives and reviews dashboards and in the figures behind them. Deleted records are now excluded everywhere, and offboarding closes off any objectives and reviews left open.

Bug fixIntegrations

New people arrive awaiting activation

People synced from an HR system were created in an active state, which meant they could receive notifications and sign in before a launch was ready. They now come in awaiting activation, with an auto-activate setting on the integration for anyone who wants the previous behaviour. Records can also be filtered on custom fields, such as employee type, before they sync.

Bug fixIntegrations

Changing an email address no longer creates a second account

When someone's email address changed in the connected HR system, the sync created a new person record rather than updating the existing one. The change is now applied to the same record, so history and permissions stay intact.

Bug fixIntegrations

All records sync from IRIS Cascade

A large batch of people marked to sync was left showing as not synced after the sync had run. Records now come through in full when Auto Sync is on.

Bug fixIntegrations

Microsoft 365 authentication warning cleared

A red authentication warning appeared on the Microsoft 365 integration screen while the integration itself was working normally. The warning now only shows when there is a real problem to fix.

Bug fixPeople & Teams

Quick Add saves reliably

The Save button on the Add Person quick add panel could stay greyed out even with every required field completed, and closing and reopening the panel was the only way round it. Save now becomes available as soon as the form is valid.

Bug fixMobile

Mobile layout corrected across several screens

A number of screens on a phone were misaligned, scrolled sideways, or hid fields behind other elements. Completing a survey, adding a comment, voting and playing a video in an article have all been corrected in the activity feed, and the Manage Reviews screen now hides the counters that were covering the review list.