What is a "period"?

A period is simply this year's evaluation campaign (or for this call). Think of it as a folder that groups everything that will happen during the process: who is being evaluated, the date ranges, and which steps will be taken (assess, calculate results, create an improvement plan, etc.).

Only one period is created per campaign, not one for each employee nor one for each department.

In this article you will find:

• Before you start: 2 important decisions
• Step by step: create the period
• What the 4 tabs mean
• Dates: which ones can be changed later
• Assign a color to the period

Before you start: 2 important decisions

Before you touch anything on the screen, make sure these two things are clear:

1. Who is going to be evaluated? There's no need to create a different period for each person or team. Normally, you create a period that groups together a large and meaningful group: for example, "the whole company", "the sales team", or "everyone who joined this year". The more small and isolated periods you create, the harder it will be later to compare results between people or generate overall reports.

2. Which steps do I want to activate? A period can include up to 4 steps (explained below). You have to decide which you want to use before creating the period because once created you cannot change which steps are activated — you would only be able to delete the whole period and start a new one. Take a moment to think before clicking save.

Step by step: create the period

1. Go to Configuration (the settings menu) > Competency Development > Competency development periods.
2. Click the Add period (+) button.
3. Fill in these details:
   • Name: something that will help you identify it later (example: "Evaluation 2026").
   • Start and end date: the date range when this period will be open.
   • Collaborators group: to whom it applies (see point 1 above).

The next step is to decide which tabs to activate.

What the 4 tabs mean

Inside the period file you will see 4 tabs. Each one represents a phase of the process, and can be activated or not separately:

• Evaluations: this is where people fill out the questionnaires (they self-evaluate, or their manager evaluates them). It is almost always activated.
• Consolidation: here the system collects all responses from each person and calculates a final result per competency. We recommend always activating it — without it, the next steps (plan, matrix) will not have data to work with.
• Development Plan: this is where each person lists the actions they will take to improve (a course, a new task, etc.). Activate it if you want, after evaluation, for an improvement plan to be automatically created for each person.
• Competency matrix: this is a visual map that compares each person on two axes (how well they perform, and their growth potential). It only makes sense to activate it if you're really going to use this map for decisions (for example, in a talent committee). If you don't know if you'll use it, it's better not to activate it yet.

? If you are unsure whether to activate something or not, activate it only if you know what you are going to use it for. Activating things "just in case" only creates empty screens and questions from people about what they are for.

Dates:

Here is an important nuance that confuses many people:

• The start and end date for the entire period (the one you set in step 3) can only be changed from the period’s "General information" tab.
• But each tab (Evaluations, Consolidation, etc.) also has its own "commitment date", which is like a target date, a reminder. This one can be changed whenever you want, even while the period is running, and does not block anything: it only serves to display reminders and pending tasks to people.

In summary: if you need to allow more time for a specific phase (for example, to extend the evaluation deadline), you can do so without a problem by changing its commitment date, as many times as needed.

Still have questions? Check also:

• Configure 360 evaluation — if you want more people (not just the manager) to evaluate someone
• Competency catalog