Totara Perform Open Discussions

Reviewing responses to appraisal activities in later appraisals

Welcome to this forum!

Hi There

Looking for some advice re how the following could be achieved, or if it's something on the cards.

One useful feature of the "stages" in the performance functionality native to Totara Learn was being able to review an employees response at a later stage.

So, for example - In the initial appraisal the employee is asked what activities and objectives they're going to be working on for the next 12 months.

In the next performance "review" 6 months later, the manager and employee could view the objectives set and comment/rate on how they are progressing.

And at the final review 12 months later, they could comment/rate on whether they were achieved or not.

Thanks in advance (this may be possible now, and I just haven't figured it out yet)

Nevin

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Hi Nevin

Appraisals have been made part of Performance activities in Totara 13

These provide more control over selecting participants and visibility of them

Are you using Totara 13 or using the appraisals from before that ?

Regards

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Hi Craig

Am looking at 13 currently.

In 12 - You could redisplay the subjects response to a question in an earlier stage at a later stage of the appraisal.

As in during interim stage you have a question of "what will you achieve" and subject says I will achieve x

In final stage - you had the ability to redisplay their response to that question - and subject/manager could discuss if x had been achieved.

It doesn't appear to be possible in 13 - I believe you'd need probably need to prompt the subject or manager to view their responses to an earlier appraisal activity and then discuss whether it had been achieved. (rather than having their response to the initial question redisplayed) or potentially look at doing something with the reporting ID's.

Cheers

Nevin

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Hi Nevin,

Good news! In the recent v14 release we added the ability to add redisplay questions/elements to performance activities. This allows you to redisplay the questions and/or answers from within the same, or from another performance activity.

By jumping to v14 you'll also enjoy the ability to add competency reviews and aggregated questions within performance activities. Pickle Rick would approve I'm sure ;)

https://help.totaralearning.com/display/TH14/Creating+performance+activities

Kind regards,
Meredith

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Hi Meredith

I am setting up a feedback performance activity (Totara 15) using the redisplay response element and have encountered an issue with the response not redisplaying.

I activated both the application form and a briefing summary. One where the Applicant would complete and one where the Appraiser would complete the briefing summary with some of the application form elements redisplayed. The error message says that the 'Response redisplay cannot be shown, because there is no participation associated with the activity....' even when the applicant has completed the first feedback performance activity.

I then cloned and activated the briefing summary again as a copy and all the missing redisplay content now appears correctly.

I am thinking that Totara Perform 15 doesn't dynamically look through activities that are activated at the same time.

Do you have any thoughts that I could investigate?

Thanks

Ann-Marie

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Hi Ann-Marie,

Product Manager for Perform here, I've had a chat with the technical team around this issue and I'll see if I can summarise what I've learned;

It sounds like you've created two separate performance activities, where the briefing summary will redisplay some responses from the application form.

The expected flow is that the application form will be completed first, and then the briefing summary will pull in elements of the application form once completed.

I believe you may run into your error if the briefing summary instances are created either at the same time as, or too soon after the application form instance is completed. This is because there would not have been enough time for a cron run in-between the two activities, so the briefing summary would be referencing something that doesn't yet exist at its time of creation.

One way you might prevent this error from occurring would be to have the briefing summary instances created a few days later than the application form activity instances; even better if you are able to use the closure of the application form activity as a reference point.

I hope this helps and if I find out anything else I'll let you know!

Ashley

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Hi Ashley

Thanks for getting in touch. I would be keen to understand more about the "closure of the application form activity as a reference point" you mention. We are currently investigating options around when activities are created and how they link with a timed cron but not sure if this will work.

Do you have more details about the reference point?

Thanks

Ann-Marie

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