Hi Dan.

Unfortunately, the problem with changing managers is exactly the same problem which prevents temporary managers from filling in for actual managers. When an appraisal is activated, the id of the current manager is copied into the roles table, and this table is used to decide who has what role for all functions within appraisals. Where temporary managers are used in other parts of Totara, they are working directly with the user's 'position' record and have access to data and functions which make it all work. I'm not completely sure, but I think it'd be a non-trivial change to allow temp managers to fill in appraisals.

I've already done some work on a patch to handle changing managers (and other positions), so I have just now put a note on it to make sure that we investigate if temporary managers can be handled better with the new patch.

Giving admins more direct access is something else that we looked at, but I don't think we'll be giving them the ability to edit the data in an appraisal. I think we wanted to add something that allows a user with a certain capability to navigate to a specific appraisal in a "read only" role, where they can see the answers given by users in all roles, regardless of visibility settings set within the appraisal itself.

As an admin, you should be able to select a user (the learner or any of the other roles) and "Login as" so that you can access their appraisals. The appraisal reports might also have the information you need if you just want to see what's happening.

Let me know if you have any more questions or ideas for improvement.

Nathan