This guide explains what to expect when you write a manager review in a cycle using AI-Assisted Reviews. Instead of starting from a blank page and recalling a year from memory, you start from evidence gathered from the performance period. 15Five AI drafts answers for eligible open-text questions, and you decide what is accurate and what to keep.
In This Guide
- What stays in your hands
- What 15Five AI drafts from
- How writing works
- Preparing for the conversation
What stays in your hands
- 15Five AI drafts open-text questions. It does not choose or recommend ratings. Every required rating is your own selection.
- Every draft can be edited, rewritten, or removed. Nothing requires you to keep the original draft.
- You can choose to write an answer yourself instead of starting from a draft.
- 15Five AI never submits a review, and drafting never blocks submission.
What 15Five AI drafts from
Evidence about the employee's work is gathered as Moments. Your admin sets a performance period for the cycle, and that period sets the boundary for what can become a Moment. Not everything inside the period becomes one.
While writing, you can open the Context library to see what an answer is grounded in and to add more. It brings together Moments, 15Five Data, Notes, Files, My Context, and Company Context. Your existing permissions still apply, so you only see what you already have access to.
If a connected tool is missing, or context exists only in your own records, add it as a Note or a File for that review. Connected work tools are optional.
How writing works
When you open the review, you choose how to start. Start drafting generates answers for eligible open-text questions before you enter the review. Write it myself leaves those answers blank, and does not turn AI-Assisted Reviews off. Either way you can draft individual answers later, use the review assistant, open the Context library, add context, and redraft.
The entry page can call out questions where there may not be enough context to draft from, so you can address those gaps up front or handle them when you reach the question.
The review assistant is available while you write. You can ask 15Five AI to make an answer more specific, shorten or restructure it, clarify a growth area, check for bias, identify what may be missing, focus on a particular project or outcome, or help phrase difficult feedback.
Before you submit, you go through a preview and final-check step. It prompts you to consider the balance, specificity, and actionability of your feedback before you commit. This is a final step for you as the writer, not another assessment of the employee.
For the full walkthrough, see Write a manager review with AI-Assisted Reviews.
Preparing for the conversation
Once the self review and the manager review have both been submitted, and if conversation guides are enabled for the cycle, you get a conversation guide for the review discussion. It is built from those two submitted reviews. It does not independently go back through Moments or the rest of the Context library looking for new evidence, and an additional-manager, peer, or upward review is not added as a separate source.
The guide includes an AI-generated Review Summary that you can edit. It is manager-private. It is not displayed or sent to the employee when the review is shared or finalized, and Share review shares the standard review rather than the Review Summary.
From the guide you can create an Individual Development Plan that writes through to Growth Studio, so development continues after the cycle closes. An IDP is not a Performance Improvement Plan.
For the full walkthrough, see Use the Conversation Guide after a review (Manager).
Key Rules
- AI drafting applies to self, manager, and additional-manager reviews. Peer and upward reviews can be part of the same cycle, but they do not receive AI drafting, Moments, or review assistant.
- AI drafting and conversation guides are enabled independently. A cycle can have one without the other.
- Only work inside the performance period your admin set is eligible to become a Moment.
- Your existing permissions apply inside the Context library.