Access Best-Self Review® Feature Settings

1. Click the Settings gear in the upper-right corner of 15Five.

   

2. Select Features from the menu.

   

3. Open the Best-Self Review® section.

   

All changes you make here apply to future review cycles. Changes made after a cycle begins won’t apply retroactively unless otherwise noted. Settings with exceptions are marked with an asterisk (*).

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Basic Settings

Use Basic Settings to define the foundation for your review cycles.

Display name

You can customize the name of the performance review feature to match your organization’s terminology. Internally, 15Five will continue using Best-Self Review® in guides and resources.

Review administrators*

Choose which Account Admins should have Review Admin permissions. Review Admins can create, configure, and manage cycles and view review results across the organization.

Learn more about Review Admins here: Best-Self Review® for review admins

Note:
HR Admins are Review Admins by default. To change this, uncheck Automatically include HR administrators as review administrators.

Exclude groups or individuals

Decide if there are any employees that should not participate in the review process by default. Perhaps your organization has interns, seasonal employees, contractors, etc. that will not be participating in the review process entirely— that is, they will not be a review participant nor a review writer. You can add those employees here.

Important:
If someone should write reviews but not be reviewed, do not add them to this exclusion list. You can exclude them during cycle creation instead.

Visibility settings

Set default visibility for review results. These defaults can be adjusted in each cycle.

• Basic vs. Hierarchy visibility: Review results can be viewed by the participants, their direct manager, cycle collaborators, review viewers, and review admins (Basic) OR review results can be viewed by all roles listed for basic visibility and anyone above them in the hierarchy (Hierarchy).

• Private Manager Assessment visibility: Determine if participants can see how their manager answered Private Manager Assessment questions about them.

• Past review visibility: Allow direct and/or additional managers to access their direct reports’ historical review results.

💡 Tip:
If only some managers should see past reviews, assign them as review viewers.

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Advanced Settings

Use these settings to determine what components are available to include in each review cycle. Enabling the settings below will not make them a requirement, but rather will allow you to determine the inclusion of the components on a review cycle-by-cycle basis.

Company values

Enable company values if you want reviewers to assess how employees demonstrate your organization’s values.
Learn more: Add company values in 15Five

Objectives

Determine whether or not you will include objectives in your performance review process. 

If you choose to enable objectives in reviews, determine the default objective types to include (company-wide, group, individual). The objective types can also be customized on a cycle-by-cycle basis. 

Upon creating your review cycle question templates, you will have the opportunity to customize how objectives performance is measured. You can ask a question(s) about all objectives an employee owns collectively, or you can ask questions about each individual objective an employee owns.

Learn More: Include Objectives in a review cycle

Performance Ratings+

Enable Performance Ratings+ to calculate automated numerical performance scores based on self and/or manager answers. Participant ratings can also be pulled into the HR Outcomes Dashboard to measure employee performance.

Learn more: Performance Ratings+

Choose defaults for:

• Who can see the rating

• Whether additional manager reviews are included in the calculation
  

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Peer and Upward Review Settings

Consider the following as you configure your peer and upward Best-Self Review® feature

Peer review settings

Determine default peer review settings. These settings can be adjusted on a cycle-by-cycle basis:

• Who initiates peer reviews: Participants or peers
  

• Number of peers: Choose a minimum and maximum
  

• Peer nomination approval: Allow automatic approval after the milestone date or require manual approval.
  

• Peer review transparency: Decide whether participants can see peer comments and peer identities.
  

Upward review settings

Choose whether managers can see upward review answers and whether direct report identities are visible.

Release peer and upward feedback

Decide who can remove peer or upward review answers before they’re shared with the participant. Removing feedback hides it from the participant but does not delete it.

💡 Tip:
We recommend granting Review Admins permission to remove answers to protect against sensitive or unhelpful feedback.

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Additional Settings

Automatic manager updates*

Decide whether manager changes in 15Five should automatically update during an active review cycle.

💡 Tip:
We suggest disabling this setting so Review Admins can decide changes case-by-case—especially if you use an HRIS integration.

Review acknowledgment*

Enable acknowledgment to prompt participants to confirm that they discussed the review with their manager. This applies to all historical, active, and future cycles.

💡 Tip:
Acknowledgment data appears in reporting but does not impact completion rates. If necessary, you can change an individual's manager review author in an active review cycle.

Review kickoff email

Customize your default kickoff email. If not updated at the cycle level, this message will be sent to all participants.

Note:
Edits to the default kickoff email apply to all draft and future cycles unless the cycle-level email has already been manually customized.

Review Acknowledgement

Select if you’d like employees to acknowledge and sign off their Best-Self Review® results were shared with them and discussed with a manager.

Review Kickoff Email

Review the Kickoff email sent to participants that is sent on the the review cycle's start date. This can be edited on a cycle-to-cycle basis, but if you'd like to have a default template, this is where you can store that.

Disable Best-Self Review®

Disabling the feature removes the Best-Self Review® tab from all accounts. All review data is preserved and can be restored if you re-enable the feature later.

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Next step

You’re ready to choose which questions you want to include in your upcoming review cycle. Explore how to build and customize your review cycle templates next.