Overview
This product release is aimed at improving the user experience in Evaluate based on user feedback, with lots of new and exciting features, and also the release of our NEW API Access.
These updates are aimed to be deployed to demo on Friday 20th May 2022.
The target release date for this release is Thursday 26th May 2022.
Evaluate Improvements
NEW! Senior Leader Progress Visibility
- We have introduced an Evaluate Senior Leader reporting table into My Team > Evaluate > Wider Team.
- Any manager with a team member who has their own team, will be able to see how many evaluations that the manager has completed.
- They can see the overall status pill for that manager's team member’s evaluations , as well as a statistical breakdown of how many reports are in which state
- Not Started
- In Progress
- To Discuss
- Completed
- They cannot access any of the written information in that manager's team member’s evaluation - it is a statistical table only.
- There is also a dropdown which shows the status of the report for each of the manager.
- They can see the overall status pill for that manager's team member’s evaluations , as well as a statistical breakdown of how many reports are in which state
- Any manager with a team member who has their own team, will be able to see how many evaluations that the manager has completed.
NEW! Notifications
- Users will receive reminder notifications for the following, via email and Teams or Slack (if enabled):
- When a cycle starts
- Employees (if self-evaluation is enabled) and managers included in a cycle will get a notification via email and Teams or Slack if enabled, to alert them of the new cycle.
- New managers added after a cycle has started will receive those notifications as soon as their addition to the cycle is saved.
- The employees of new managers added after the cycle starts will be marked as not applicable initially, but will receive a self-evaluation invitation after they are marked as applicable.
- The employees of new managers added after the cycle starts will be marked as not applicable initially, but will receive a self-evaluation invitation after they are marked as applicable.
- Employees (if self-evaluation is enabled) and managers included in a cycle will get a notification via email and Teams or Slack if enabled, to alert them of the new cycle.
- When a cycle 'Due Date' is 1 week away
- Reminders are sent to managers who have not yet submitted all their manager evaluations.
- Reminders are also sent to any users have not yet submitted all their self-evaluation, if it is applicable.
- Reminders are sent to managers who have not yet submitted all their manager evaluations.
- When a cycle 'Due Date' or 'End Date' is today
- Reminders are sent to managers who have not yet submitted all their manager evaluations.
- Reminders are also sent to any users have not yet submitted all their self-evaluation, if it is applicable.
- Reminders are sent to managers who have not yet submitted all their manager evaluations.
- When a cycle starts
Please note: If a cycle Due Date or End Date was previously in the past, but this is changed by an Admin user, to extend the time to be a week or less from today, the email reminders are sent out immediately upon clicking “Save and Close” or “Save and Continue". Any users who are later removed from the cycle or are marked as “Not Applicable”, after the cycle has started, will stop receiving these reminders.
NEW! Visibility Options for Employee Self Evaluations
There is now the possibility of preventing managers from viewing their employee self-evaluations until they have submitted their own evaluation of them.
This is intended to allow the removal of bias when managers evaluate their team members and it is an optional checkbox on the Details tab of the new evaluate cycle wizard. Please note, it will only become available once self-evaluation is ticked.NEW! In Session Comments Box
- When a manager discusses an Evaluation with their direct report, in a session, there is now a comments box they can use to add additional or final comments based on the discussion.
- These comments can then be viewed by the employee and the manager following the session, once the evaluation "Mark as Discussed" button is clicked.
- These comments can then be viewed by the employee and the manager following the session, once the evaluation "Mark as Discussed" button is clicked.
General Improvements
- The start date field when setting up a new cycle. The start date will be the date on which the “Start” button is clicked at the end of the Evaluate set up wizard.
- We’ve improved the navigation for managers to access evaluations that have been approved for discussion - it is now called “View/Edit”.
- There are now additional tooltips about some of the checkboxes on the Details tab when setting up a new cycle.
- There have been styling improvements to the My Team > Evaluate > [Particular evaluate cycle] view for managers.
- The 1,000 character limit has been removed for:
- Manager evaluation responses
- Employee self-evaluation responses
NEW! API Access
OpenBlend now offers an API integration, to allow you to pull the data from OpenBlend and create your own dashboards using this data.
We have exposed the following endpoints for our API:
- Retrieving current active users
- Retrieving paused and deleted users (who have not yet been anonymised) in a company
Deleted user data is kept in the OpenBlend database for 5 months, from the day of deletion, before being anonymised.
- Retrieving Blend Data
- Retrieving Wellbeing Data
- Retrieving High Fives for the whole company for a particular day, where at least one of the recipient or sender is active and not deleted.
- Retrieving completed session data
- Retrieving data on the full list of all Agenda Items/Talking Points (discussed or undiscussed can be configured)
Please note, enabling the API changes a few things which appear in OpenBlend to let users know about the Privacy and Data Policy, this consists of banners, text on the login and landing page, etc.
Interested in learning more? Please contact with your Customer Success Manager, for more information. If you are unsure who your CSM is, please feel free to get in touch with our Support team: helpdesk@openblend.com If you have already purchased the API Licence, your Customer Success Manager will be in touch to arrange providing you with your API key.
Other Items
NEW! Sentiment Trackers
- We have introduced a simple sentiment tracker at the top of the session summary email:
- Users click on one of the three face-based options and this allows them to submit how the felt about the session.
- This data is only seen to OB.
General Updates
- Auto-added Agenda Items/Talking Points now have the user who made the change in the app to cause the Agenda Item/Talking Point to be added automatically
- We have a new data notice for all users.
- Additional Agenda Item has been renamed to "Custom Agenda Item" or "Custom Talking Point" depending on the wording you have in your account.
Please note, release dates are subject to change, but the OpenBlend team will always ensure that the release notes are kept up to date.