Hi Adam

That is right the trigger for the Appraisal notification is completion of the stage. This means that the manager should be excluded from the Objective setting stage and then go back to the previous stage to review.

Another alternative is to create Learning Plan Objectives and engage with the learner through this with comments and notifications coming through Learning Plans and then using the 'Objectives from Learning plan' in the Appraisal to pull all this through.

There is extensive development to the Appraisals area including the addition of check-ins in the upcoming v13 release.  Activities containing Appraisal elements can be added with each activity having notifications that can be enabled.  One of the notifications triggers is when the subject completes one of the activities so should be able to be used to notify the manager when a learner completes their goal activity.

Regards