Configure basic performance review feature settings (Admin)

Ben Pemstein Ben Pemstein
· Updated

Note: Your organization may have renamed this feature. If you don't see Best-Self Review® in your navigation, check with your admin for the name used in your account.

Account Admins configure performance review feature settings to establish defaults for every future review cycle. When complete, settings are saved and applied to all new cycles going forward.

Important: Changes made here do not apply retroactively to active cycles unless the setting is marked with an asterisk (*) in the UI.

Before You Begin

  • You must be an Account Admin to access feature settings.
  • This feature is available on the Perform and Total Platform pricing packages.

Steps

  1. Click the gear icon in the bottom-left corner of your 15Five account.
  2. Go to Features > Best-Self Review®.
  3. Scroll to the setting you want to configure — all Best-Self Review® settings appear as a single labeled list on this page (there are no grouped section headers).

Set the display name

  1. Click the Display name field.
  2. Enter the name your organization uses for performance reviews.

Note: 15Five continues to use the default name internally in guides and system references regardless of the display name you set.

Configure review administrators

  1. Select which Account Admins should have Review Admin permissions.
  2. To exclude HR Admins from automatic Review Admin status, uncheck Automatically include HR administrators as review administrators.

Exclude groups or individuals from your reviews

  1. Add any employees who should not participate in reviews as participants or review writers.

Important: Do not add someone here if they should write reviews but not be reviewed. Exclude participant-only exceptions during cycle creation instead. See Add or remove a participant from a review cycle for instructions.

Configure visibility settings

  1. Under Visibility setting, choose the default:
  • Basic visibility — results visible to the participant, their direct manager, cycle collaborators, review viewers, and review admins
  • Hierarchy visibility — results visible to all Basic roles plus anyone above the participant in the reporting hierarchy
  1. Under Who should see Private Manager Assessment results? (within Visibility setting), choose whether participants can see their manager's answers to Private Manager Assessment questions.
  2. Under Direct managers and additional managers past reviews visibility (within Visibility setting), allow direct and additional managers to access direct reports' historical review results.

Note: If only some managers should see past reviews, assign them as review viewers rather than enabling this setting broadly. See Add a review viewer for a participant for instructions.

Configure additional settings

  1. Set Automatic manager updates in active cycle* to on or off.
  2. Set Review Acknowledgement to on or off.
  3. Edit the Review kick-off email default template if your organization uses a standard opening message.

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

  1. Click Save.

Disable Best-Self Review®

  1. Scroll to the Disable Best-Self Review® setting at the bottom of the list.
  2. Disabling removes the Best-Self Review® tab from the main 15Five navigation for all users. All review data is saved and can be restored if you re-enable the feature later.

What Success Looks Like

After clicking Save, the page reloads or displays a confirmation. Your display name appears in the navigation for all users. New review cycles created after saving will reflect these defaults.

If Something Goes Wrong

Issue Check Fix
Display name change is not visible to users Confirm you clicked Save after editing Return to Features > Best-Self Review® and click Save again
HR Admins still appear as Review Admins after unchecking the option Confirm Save was clicked Reload the settings page and verify the checkbox state; click Save again if it reverted
Excluded employees still appear as available participants Check whether the employee was added before or after an active cycle launched Exclusions apply to future cycles only; remove the participant manually from the active cycle using Add or remove a participant from a review cycle
Kickoff email edits are not reflected in a draft cycle Check whether the cycle-level email was already customized before the feature-level edit Edit the kickoff email directly at the cycle level
Visibility setting is not reflected in a new cycle Confirm the cycle was created after the setting was saved Delete and recreate the draft cycle, or adjust visibility at the cycle level

Not Covered Here

This article does not cover peer and upward review settings, advanced component settings (Company Values, Objectives, Performance Ratings+), or cycle-level configuration. See the related articles below.

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