Document Statuses during Review and Approval

Employee reviews and management approvals are not required in all cases. If they are required, the manager's evaluation is the one that is reviewed and approved, and the status of this document reflects the review and approval status.

The manager's evaluation is the final document in the performance process and becomes the document used to communicate the employee's performance. In addition, the manager document is the one that other applications such as Salary Planning use for official purposes. Therefore, it is the document that goes through the review and approval process.

Document statuses provide a way of identifying the stages that a document moves through during the review and approval process cycle. Status codes also control when users can view or edit document data, what actions they can perform, and what page controls are available to them.

The statuses through which final documents must pass and the sequence of these statuses are determined by the review process option that is selected at the document template level.

The document statuses that are involved in evaluations are:

• Evaluation in Progress

  The document is changed to this status when it is ready for the employee, peers, and the manager to fill out their evaluations. When the document is in this status, the employee, manager, and peers can modify all sections of their respective evaluations that the template definition permits. The document stays in this status until the manager finishes editing the manager evaluation and clicks one of the primary action buttons on the page. The exact buttons that appear depend on setup and the associated review and approval process.

  If necessary, managers can reopen evaluations that were completed by the employee and peers. This reopen capability is available to managers as long as the document status is equal to Evaluation in Progress. To reopen a completed self or peer evaluation, the manager opens it and click the Reopen button in the evaluation. The system then changes the status of the evaluation from Completed to Evaluation in Progress.

• Shared with Employee

  The document status is changed to Shared with Employee when the manager clicks the Share with Employee button in the manager evaluation. This button is available when:

  • The selected review process is either Approval After Review (3-step or 4-step) or No Approval with Review (2-step or 4-step), and the current status of the evaluation is Evaluation In Progress.

  • The selected review process is Approval Before Review (3-step or 5-step) and the current status of the evaluation is Approval - Approved.

  While the evaluation is shared, the employee can view the manager evaluation and add comments to the Employee Comments section, if the section was included on the template. During this status, the manager can only edit the Manager Comments section, if the section was included on the template.

  While the consolidated document is available for review, the Request Acknowledgement button appears on the manager view of the document. The manager clicks this button when they are ready to send a request to the employee, asking that the employee acknowledges that both parties have met and discussed the evaluation.

  Note:

  The step to request acknowledgement from employees does not apply to these streamlined processes: Approval After Review (3-step), No Approval with Review (2-step) and Approval Before Review (3-step).

• Pending Acknowledgement

  This document status indicates that the manager has discussed the consolidated document with the employee and has sent an acknowledgement request to the employee. During this status, the employee and the manager have read-only access to the document, except to enter or edit the Manager Comments or Employee Comments sections, if applicable. The Acknowledge button appears on the employee evaluation for the employee to provide acknowledgement when they are ready.

  Note:

  This document status does not apply to these streamlined processes: Approval After Review (3-step), No Approval with Review (2-step) and Approval Before Review (3-step).

• Acknowledged

  This status indicates that the employee has acknowledged the document, or the manager has overridden the employee acknowledgement.

  Note:

  The manager has the ability to override the employee acknowledgement in the event that the employee refuses to acknowledge the document or the employee isn't available to acknowledge the document.

  When this status is in effect, both the manager and employee have read-only access to the Manager Comments and Employee Comments sections of the document. An exception to this behavior is when the Manager Comments (or Employee Comments) special processing is enabled in the setup of a document section. In other words, the manager can still add comments in the comments section in which the Manager Comments special processing is selected. Similarly, the employee can edit the comments section if the Employee Comments special processing is enabled.

  When a document is in this status, only the HR administrator has the privilege to change the status back to Evaluation in Progress.

• Approval - Submitted

  This status indicates that the manager has submitted the evaluation for approval by clicking the Submit for Approval button. This button appears when:

  • The selected review process is either Approval Before Review (3-step or 5-step) or Approval, No Employee Review, and the current status of the evaluation is Evaluation In Progress.

  • The selected review process is Approval After Employee Review (3-step or 4-step) and the current status of the evaluation is Acknowledged.

• Approval - Approved

  This status indicates that the evaluation has been approved by approvers. The manager can then click the Complete button to finish the evaluation process.

• Completed

  This status indicates that the evaluation process is finished. No further changes to the document are permitted. With this status, employees and managers have read-only access to the document as historical or view-only document and are unable to edit or modify the content.

  Only administrators have the ability to reopen completed manager evaluations if necessary.

• Canceled

  This status indicates that the document and all its associated evaluations is canceled. Managers can cancel documents in two places: from the manager evaluation or from the manager’s Cancel Document page (applicable only to documents that are in one of these statuses: Define Criteria, Track Progress, and Evaluation in Progress. HR administrators can cancel documents at any time using their own Cancel Document page.

Note:

The Shared with Employee, Pending Acknowledgement,, and Acknowledged statuses do not apply when the review process option is set to No Approval, No Employee Review or Approval, No Employee Review. In these cases, employees can only view the manager's document when the status is Completed.