Sorry there's been a bit of a miscommunication here.

Initially we thought it would be fairly straightforward to just hide the links when appraisals weren't in use but further investigation found that it was actually a bit more complicated. The problem is that some permissions are given in the user's context, which means that we'd need to check every single row/user separately as they might all have different answers. This could be a performance issue for large sites.

After making some progress on a patch to do this, we decided that it would make more sense to implement a feature that our feedback survey revealed is pretty important - the ability to turn of individual pieces of functionality (such as learning plans, appraisals) via a config setting. So we've decided to do that instead, which is why it's taken us a bit longer than we first thought to get this fixed.

The patch to add 'enable/disable toggles' in currently in review and initially it will make it possible to "turn off" goals, learning plans, 360 feedback and appraisals individually. That should resolve your issue in a much more efficient way. We may extend it in the future to cover more areas of functionality as required.

The question of a customisable totara menu is slightly different (although there is clearly some overlap). Ideally a fully customisable totara menu would allow people to add their own options, rearrange the order and hierarchy, and control wording and when menu items are shown.

The feedback survey has also shown this request to be a very high priority (almost everyone who filled out the survey requested it!) so I am planning to start working on a more detailed spec for this feature when I have some time. I'll be sharing that with the community for comment and then we'll schedule it for development as time allows (hopefully to be ready for 2.6).

Simon