We’re pleased to roll out key improvements to the Goal Submission and Approval Workflow—making collaboration between managers and reviewees clearer, faster, and more structured.

• For Managers – Streamline Goal Reviews:

You can now provide actionable feedback and guide goal revisions more effectively with:

1. Request Changes with Comments: Ask for updates with clear context.
2. Approve Goals with Feedback: Leave comments before approving.
3. View Comment History: Track all past feedback in one place.
4. New ‘Request Changes’ CTA: Easy to initiate edits from your side.

• For Reviewees – Clarity and Flexibility in One Place:

Understand feedback clearly and make updates seamlessly:

1. See Manager Feedback Instantly: From tasks or notifications.
2. Access Comment History: All past inputs available in a side drawer.
3. Edit and Resubmit Goals: Update titles, descriptions, or cycles and resubmit anytime.

• A More Transparent Approval Loop:

We’ve made the feedback cycle iterative, so alignment is easier: Submit → Review → Revise → Re-submit → Final Approval

This process continues until goals are fully aligned and approved, supporting more thoughtful and collaborative planning.

We’ve introduced a major enhancement to the experience of assigning Goal Owners and adding people to goals. It’s now faster, clearer, and more intuitive to select the right individuals.

• What’s New?

Previously, dropdowns only displayed employee names. With this update, you’ll now see:

1. Name along with Department
2. Email Address
3. Profile Avatar

These changes apply to:

1. Selecting a Goal Owner
2. Adding People to Goals

• Why This Matters?

1. Quickly distinguish between employees with similar names.
2. Search more effectively by name, department, or email.
3. Make fewer errors when assigning responsibilities.

We’re pleased to announce an update to phase statuses in review cycles. This enhancement improves visibility, streamlines progress tracking, and ensures that actions are available only at the appropriate stage—enabling more efficient and accurate review management.

• What’s New?

We’ve refined the logic behind phase statuses to better reflect their actual state. Here’s how each status works:

1. Not Started: Indicates that the phase has not been launched or automated. Progress is at 0%.
2. Ongoing: Shows that the phase has either been launched manually or through automation and is currently in progress.
3. Completed: Marks that the phase has reached 100% progress.
4. Ended: Displays when the phase or review has been manually ended.

• Key Functional Change?

Once a phase is marked as Completed or Ended, the Launch and Notify actions will be disabled. This change helps avoid accidental or repeated triggers.

We’re excited to announce the launch of a powerful new capability in Nova AI — users can now create individual goals directly in chat with the help of generative AI.

What’s New?

Gen AI to Create Goals is an intelligent, prompt-based system that enables employees to generate goals using personalized inputs, historical data, role-based insights, and real-time goal status.

Key Capabilities:

• Smart Prompt-Based Goal Creation:

1. Create goals with my inputs: Use your own criteria to create goals focused on personal development or team impact.
2. Create goals based on my previous goals: Reuse or reframe past goals from previous cycles, like "Create goals using my Q2 2023 goals."
3. Create goals based on my role: Let Nova generate goals aligned with your role, department, and competencies.
4. Summarize my active goals that are at risk: Get a snapshot of goals that are near deadlines or marked as "At Risk" in the current cycle.

• Natural Conversations & Context Awareness: Nova supports casual, natural language inputs and remembers your last four interactions to provide contextually relevant suggestions. You can check in about your goals or even follow up on past queries with ease.

• Role-Based Access & Security:

1. All employees can use Nova to manage their own goals.
2. Admins can access organization-wide goal summaries but not individual employee goal content.
3. Non-admin users cannot access others’ goals — Nova will redirect the query back to their own goals.

• Personalization & Conversation History: Users can:

1. Rename past conversations for clarity.
2. Switch between conversations (except during response generation).
3. Copy any query or response.
4. Like or dislike Nova's responses to improve performance over time.

Error Handling & Prompt Safeguards:

1. If an error occurs during goal generation, users can regenerate the response.
2. Nova includes prompt hijacking protection and automatically redirects conversations back to goal-related discussions when irrelevant inputs are detected.

Additional Prompts You Can Try: Here are some bonus commands to explore:

1. “Create goals for me”
2. “Create goals using my active goals”
3. “Create goals using my upcoming goals”
4. “List out my goals”
5. “Create goals for a specific reason”

Company-Level Goal Alignment:

Nova AI can generate more aligned and relevant goals if company objectives are available. To set this up:

1. Navigate to Nova AI Settings > Goals AI Module > Set up your context.
2. Fill in your company’s context details for smarter, aligned goal suggestions.
3. You can revisit and update this information anytime.

Admin Setup: Admins need to enable the Goals AI toggle in the Nova AI Settings page to grant access to this feature for all employees.

Data Privacy & Security: Your data is private. Nova AI does not use your conversations for training and ensures that all interactions are secure and confidential.

We’re introducing new enhancements to the Admin Growth Path Competency module. These updates are designed to streamline how admins manage teams, positions, and competency mappings—making the process more efficient and easier to navigate.

What’s New?

1. CSV Upload for Team-Level Competency Mapping: Admins can now map positions to competencies at the team level using a CSV upload. This enables quick, bulk onboarding and updates.

2. UI-Based Team Creation and Editing: Team creation and editing are now fully supported through the UI—no need to rely solely on CSV uploads. This simplifies team management and reduces manual effort.

3. Redesigned Track and Position Listings: The updated interface provides a cleaner, more user-friendly view of IDP tracks and positions under each team. Smart filters help you quickly locate what you need by competencies or matrices.

4. Detailed Position View with Competency Breakdown: You can now drill down into any position to view all associated competencies—giving a complete view of each role's expectations and structure.

5. Smarter Filters and Usability Improvements: Improved layout, enhanced filtering, and better organization help you navigate matrices and competencies with ease.

6. CSV Download for Competency Data: Easily export competency mappings and matrices in CSV format for convenient review, sharing, and offline editing.

We’re excited to announce a major enhancement to progress tracking—progress bar counts are now calculated and displayed more accurately across each review phase for improved clarity and control.

What’s Changed?

• Phase-Specific Count Display: Progress bars now show the number of participants responsible for completing actions—rather than just the reviewee counts across all phases.

• Phase-Wise Logic:

1. Goal Selection (by Reviewee): Displays the reviewee count. Example: “4/10 reviewees have submitted their goals”.
2. Goal Approval / Peer Approval: Displays the manager count. Example: “3/5 managers have approved goals for all their direct reports”.
3. Manager Summary: Shows the number of managers who are reviewers. Example: “2/5 managers have completed reviews for all their direct reports.”
4. Peer Reviews: Displays the unique peer reviewer count. Example: “8/12 reviewers have submitted all assigned peer reviews”.
5. Direct Report Reviews: Displays the count of direct report reviewers. Example: “4/6 direct report reviewers have submitted reviews for their manager”.
6. Write Review (Nested Phase): Displays unique reviewers across all sub-phases. Example: “5/8 reviewers have completed all their reviews”.
7. Release Review: Continues to show the reviewee count. Example: “Reviews released for 6/10 reviewees”.

• New Tooltips on Progress Bars: Hover over any progress bar to see exactly what’s being tracked—whether it's reviewees, managers, or reviewers.

We’re excited to share a major enhancement to our product—you can now complete performance reviews, select peers, and approve peer selections directly from your mobile device.

Write Performance Reviews On-the-Go!

• What's New?

1. Full mobile support for writing reviews. Previously available only on desktop, now optimized for mobile.
2. Mobile-responsive homepage and review submission pages.

• Mobile-Supported Review Screens:

1. Login Screen
2. Dashboard/Homepage
3. Write Self Review
4. Write Peer Review
5. Write Direct Report Review
6. Write Manager Review

Peer Selection & Approval on Mobile!

• What’s New?

1. Users can now select peers to review.
2. Managers can approve peer selections.
3. Managers can select peers for their direct reports.

• Mobile-Supported Peer Features:

1. Peer Selection
2. Peer Approval
3. Manager-led Peer Selection

We’ve introduced a feature enhancement to give you more flexibility and control during phase launches. It helps streamline the launch process and manage notification preferences more effectively.

What’s New?

• You can now select "Silent Launch" as a channel option alongside Slack/MS Teams, and Email when launching a phase.

Updated Experience:

• Silent Launch, previously available as a checkbox, is now a dedicated button located next to Slack and Email in the Launch drawer.
• Each channel option (Slack, Email, Silent) now includes a brief description to guide users on where the notifications will be sent.

• Selecting Silent Launch will ensure that no Slack or Email messages are triggered during the launch phase.

We've launched Custom Reports — a powerful new feature in Peoplebox that gives you full control over your reporting, allowing you to access insights quickly and create reports tailored to your needs.

What You Can Do with Custom Reports:

• Generate Tabular Reports:

1. Select only the columns you need to create clear, focused tabular reports.
2. Export and share with ease for faster decision-making.

• Build Pivot Reports:

1. Customize rows, columns, and choose how your data should be aggregated.
2. Get multidimensional insights with flexible pivot table functionality.

• Manage Reports Easily:

1. Edit existing reports to adjust them as your needs change.
2. Duplicate reports to reuse formats and save time.
3. Delete reports you no longer need to keep your dashboard clean.

We’ve enhanced the peer selection flow to give managers more control and improve audit visibility.

What’s New:

• Manager-Controlled Peer Selection: Managers now have the ability to directly select peers for their team members' reviews, making the process smoother and more efficient.

• Improved Tracking & Audit Capabilities: We’ve built in a robust tracking system that shows exactly who added which reviewers. This added visibility gives admins better control and improves the audit process, ensuring everything is well-documented and easily traceable.

Note: This feature is currently available via email. Slack and Microsoft Teams integration is coming soon. Stay tuned for more updates and enhancements!