A note is anything worth writing down between reviews: something to bring to your next 1:1, something that went well or badly, or something the next review should know about. Writing it when it happens beats reconstructing it the night before a review.
Notes live on the employee's record. You can write on your own record, and a manager can write on the records of their direct reports. Nobody writes on their manager's record. Nothing needs a review to be open.
Private until you share it
A new note is private until you share it. Until then the other person sees nothing of it: not the note, not a count, not a hint that one exists. That lets either of you get a point ready for a 1:1 before raising it. Tick Share with your manager, or on a report's record Share with and their name, when you want them to read it, either when you write it or later. Notes you've shared carry a Shared tag in the list.
Private is not confidential. What a manager writes about someone is that person's own data, and a request for it has to be answerable.
Sharing is one-way. Once a note is shared it stays shared, even if you edit it.
Who can read a note
- Whoever wrote it, always.
- Once it is shared, the person whose record it is on and their current manager. If they move to a new manager, the new manager reads the shared notes on their record from then on.
- Nobody else. Admins can't read notes.
Marking a note as evidence
Tick Mark as evidence on a note you want to draw on in the next assessment. You don't pick a dimension when you write it. You pick one when you cite the note in an assessment, so a note can back whichever rating it ends up supporting.
The assessment's Browse evidence lists every note marked as evidence since the last review closed that you can read, whoever wrote it. Citing a private note shares it, after a confirmation, and removing the citation afterwards doesn't make it private again. See Assessments for when a rating needs evidence.
You can take the evidence mark off until the note is cited. After that it stays.
Check-ins
A note the manager writes on a focus area of the plan is a check-in. Only the manager writes them, from the plan, and a check-in is shared as soon as it's written. It shows on the plan and under Notes. See Plan.
Before a 1:1
Nothing in improwe records when a 1:1 happened, so you choose how far back to look. On the Notes tab, pick Past week, Past 2 weeks, Past 4 weeks or Past 8 weeks to see what you've both written since the last one. Your own private notes are there too, so you can see what you meant to raise.
Editing and deleting
Notes belong to whoever wrote them. You can edit or delete your own and can't touch anyone else's, in either direction. An edited note says so. Deleting a note removes it for good, but if a closed review referred to it, what was written in the review stays as it was.
Where notes show up
- The Notes tab on the record, newest first, 20 to a page. Search it, show only Evidence, Check-ins or Shared notes, narrow it to the past few weeks, or narrow it to one author.
- The last few notes on the record's landing page.
- The evidence picker while writing an assessment.