Do it with One: "Which performance reviews am I taking part in, and how many evaluations do I have left?"
Performance reviews let your company collect structured evaluations of employees from themselves, their manager, their peers and their direct reports, score them, and turn the results into action plans. Customers also call them appraisals, evaluations, review cycles or 360 reviews. Every review lives in Performance > Reviews, and each one runs through the same lifecycle: you set it up as a draft, launch it, people answer, and you read the results.
Before you start
- Your company needs the Performance module. Reviews are part of Performance on the Business and Enterprise plans.
- Everyone with Performance sees Performance in the sidebar. The Reviews tab shows the reviews you own, take part in, or can see as a manager or admin.
- On the Factorial mobile app, reviews open from Hub > Performance reviews. The mobile app shows the same pages as the web app, but exporting and editing review settings are only available on a computer.
Key concepts
| Term in Factorial | What it means |
|---|---|
| Review | One evaluation campaign, for example "2026 annual review". It has a title, owners, review types, a target group, questions, a deadline and settings. |
| Target group | The employees who are being evaluated in the review (also called targets, participants, reviewees or people to evaluate). |
| Review type | Who evaluates whom: Self review, Manager to direct report, Peer and Direct reports to manager (upward review). A review can combine several. |
| Evaluation | One questionnaire that one reviewer fills in about one person. A review with self and manager review types creates two evaluations per person. |
| Owners | The people who can edit the review and see all its results, in addition to admins. |
| Performance score | An optional overall score per person, calculated from a final question or from weighted questionnaire sections. |
| Action plan | A follow-up space where the manager and the employee compare answers, agree on action items and submit a signed PDF. |
| AI insights | Summaries generated by Factorial AI from the answers: performance, alignment, strengths, areas to improve and suggested action items. |
The lifecycle of a review
A review always has one of these statuses. The status is shown next to the review name.
| Status | What it means | What admins and owners can do |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | The review is being set up. Participants don't see it. | Edit everything, preview the questionnaire, launch or schedule. |
| Scheduled | The review has a future launch date and starts automatically. | Remove schedule to go back to Draft. |
| Launching | Factorial is creating the evaluations. This takes a few minutes. | Wait. You can leave the page. |
| Active | Participants can answer. | Add or remove participants, assign peers, replace reviewers, send reminders, Stop review. |
| Finished | The deadline passed or someone stopped the review. No more answers. | Read results, export, run action plans, Reopen review with a new deadline. |
Step by step
Find your reviews (everyone)
- In the sidebar, click Performance.
- Click the Reviews tab.
- Click a review in the list to open it.
Run a review end to end (admin or review owner)
- Create the review: Performance > Reviews > New review. See Create a performance review: templates, questionnaire and target group.
- Add questions for each review type in the review's Questionnaire. See Create a performance review: templates, questionnaire and target group.
- Click Launch review and choose Launch now or Schedule for later.
- Follow participation and send reminders while the review is Active.
- Read the results in the Insights, Answers, Heatmap and Team insights tabs when answers come in.
- Start action plans with each employee.
Rules and behavior
- If a review is in Draft, then nobody except admins and its owners can see it.
- If a review reaches its deadline, then it moves to Finished automatically and nobody can submit more answers.
- If you are a reviewer, then you get an email and an inbox task when the review starts.
- If you are both a reviewer and a person being evaluated, then you see both your pending evaluations and your personal results in the same review.
- If your company uses a score scale (for example 1 to 5), then every new review uses the scale that is set in Settings > People > Reviews when the review is scheduled or launched.
Limitations
- You can't run calibration sessions inside a review. Use the review results, the 9-box grid in Talent Analytics and action plans instead.
- You can't add reviewers outside the four review types (self, manager, peer, direct report).
- You can't make a review repeat automatically. Duplicate a past review or save it as a template to reuse it.
- You can't link a review to a performance cycle.
Troubleshooting
- Symptom: "I don't see Reviews under Performance." → Cause: your company doesn't have the Performance module, or reviews aren't part of your plan. → Fix: ask an admin to check the subscription.
- Symptom: "I don't see the New review button." → Cause: you don't have the Create reviews permission. → Fix: ask an admin to add it to your permission group.
- Symptom: "A colleague says they got a review but I can't see it." → Cause: you only see reviews you own, take part in, or manage people in. → Fix: ask an admin or the review owner to add you as an owner if you need to manage it.
FAQ
1. Can I run a 360 review?
Yes. Select Self review, Manager to direct report, Peer and Direct reports to manager as review types in the same review.
2. Do employees see their scores?
It depends on the review's Visibility settings. By default, employees see their published results once the review is finished. Potential scores are never shown to the evaluated person.
3. Can I use the same review every year?
Yes. Duplicate the review or save it as a template, then launch the copy.
Ask One:
- "Which performance reviews am I taking part in?"
- "How did our latest performance review go?"
- "Show me the per-review-type scores for my team in the 2026 annual review."