Every review cycle in Workleap Performance has a schedule that decides when each person's reviews start and how long they get to finish them.
A Focal schedule starts everyone together, the way cycles have always worked.
An Anniversary or Tenure-based schedule starts each person from their own hire date — for work-anniversary reviews and for probation or new-hire checkpoints — and fills the cycle over time without you creating a cycle per hire month.
This article explains the three schedules, how to set up a hire-date cycle, how to open and lock any cycle automatically, and what changes once a cycle runs on a schedule.
Who can schedule a review cycle
Executives and Collaborators can choose a schedule, set automated start and lock dates, and manage upcoming reviewees on any cycle they can edit.
Direct Managers don't configure schedules. They receive each report's review when that person enters the cycle, with a due date specific to that person.
Employees enter the cycle on their own date and complete their reviews as usual. They don't see the schedule settings.
Administrators have no additional Performance permissions unless they are also an Executive or Collaborator.
How review cycle schedules work
A schedule answers two questions: when each person's reviews start, and how long they get to finish them.
Schedule | Who starts, and when | Typical use |
Focal | Everyone starts together and shares one set of deadlines. | Company-wide annual or quarterly review. |
Anniversary | Each person starts on their own work anniversary, every year. | Annual reviews spread across the year instead of one campaign. |
Tenure-based | Each person starts once, when they reach a length of service you pick: 30, 60 or 90 days, 6 months or 1 year after hire. | Probation reviews, 90-day check-ins, first-year reviews. |
Anniversary and Tenure-based are hire-date schedules. On a hire-date cycle, deadlines and the evaluation period belong to each person, not to the cycle: someone who enters in March and someone who enters in October both get the same number of days.
Note: Hire dates come from your employee data (HRIS sync or manual entry). Hire date is an optional field in Workleap, so check the count of people without one before you launch (see Limits and things to know).
How to set up a probation or anniversary review cycle
Log in to Workleap and go to Performance.
Select Review cycles, then Create a cycle — or open an existing draft.
Build the form, review types and audience as you would for any cycle. See Create a review cycle.
In the schedule settings, choose Anniversary or Tenure-based.
For a Tenure-based cycle, pick the length of service that starts each person's reviews: 30, 60 or 90 days, 6 months or 1 year after hire.
For an Anniversary cycle, choose how people enter: individually on their exact date, in weekly cohorts (everyone due that week starts on the Monday), or in monthly cohorts (everyone due that month starts on the 1st). Tenure-based cycles always admit people individually.
Set the review window — see below.
Set the enrollment length: how long the cycle keeps admitting people after enrollment opens, from 7 days to a year. After it ends, nobody else enters.
Optionally set an automated start date and an automated lock date — see How to open and lock a cycle automatically.
Review the list of people due to enter and the count of people with no hire date on file.
Select Launch.
A hire-date cycle launches empty. People enter as their date arrives, and the cycle fills over time.
Important: You still launch the cycle yourself. No cycle launches on its own. An automated start date opens enrollment on that date; it does not replace the Launch action.
How to set the review window on a hire-date cycle
On a hire-date cycle you set lengths of time, not calendar dates. Each value counts from the day a person's reviews open.
Deadlines — One per review type you enabled (self, manager, peer, upward), from 1 day to a year after the person's reviews open. Two weeks for a manager review is two weeks for everyone, whenever their turn comes.
Evaluation period — The stretch of time reviewers reflect on, ending on or after the day the reviews open and starting 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 or 12 months before it. On an Anniversary cycle a start is required, so next year's review doesn't cover the same ground. On a Tenure-based cycle you can leave the start open to cover everything since the hire date.
Workleap AI insight: The evaluation period is also what Workleap AI looks at when it helps write a review, so choose the period you want reviewers to think about.
How to open and lock a cycle automatically
Automated start and automated lock work on any schedule, including Focal.
Automated start — Enrollment opens on the date you set. On a Focal cycle, the cycle launches empty and admits its whole audience on that date. Without an automated start, enrollment opens when you launch.
Automated lock — The cycle locks itself on the date you set. Reviews become read-only, exactly as with a manual lock, and the people who created, edited or launched the cycle receive a Review Cycle Locked notification. The lock date must fall after the last deadline the cycle can produce.
You can still launch or lock a cycle manually at any time, whatever is set.
Tip: Set an automated lock date on every cycle. Cycles left open past their real end distort completion and results reporting.
What happens when someone enters a scheduled cycle
Entry uses the same path as adding a reviewee by hand, so everyone gets identical treatment whether they entered at launch, were added by an Executive, or entered on their own date:
Their reviews are created with their own due dates.
Their Direct Manager is added to the cycle and sees the new reviewee and due date in the manager daily digest.
If upward review is enabled with Direct Reports or Reporting Line nomination, upward reviewers are nominated automatically and notified.
The participant-added notification is sent during working hours (9 AM–5 PM, Monday to Friday) in the person's own time zone.
Important: Peer reviewers are not nominated automatically. On a hire-date cycle, assign peers for each person as they enter, the same way you do today. See Manage and track a review cycle.
Entry is checked every 6 hours in your organization's time zone, so a person enters within hours of their date, not at midnight exactly.
How to manage upcoming reviewees
On the cycle management page, people who are due to enter appear as upcoming reviewees, with the date they will enter, alongside people already in the cycle. You can search this list.
To add someone before their date — Use the add-reviewee action as usual. If their date is still ahead, they wait for it. If their date has already passed, they enter immediately with a full review window.
To keep someone out — Use the remove action on an upcoming reviewee. They are excluded from the cycle and will not enter when their date arrives. You can reverse this by adding them back.
The list of upcoming reviewees is not fixed at launch. It updates when people are hired, deactivated, moved between teams or segments, or when a hire date is added or corrected — so a new hire who reaches 90 days while the cycle is still enrolling is picked up automatically.
What you can change after launch
Setting | After launch |
Schedule type (Focal / Anniversary / Tenure-based) | Frozen |
Cohort mode (individual / weekly / monthly) | Frozen |
Length of service on a Tenure-based cycle | Frozen |
Automated start date | Editable until enrollment opens, then frozen |
Automated lock date | Editable — new date must be in the future |
Deadlines and evaluation period | Editable — changes apply to everyone in the cycle, including people already reviewing. This is how you give a cohort more time. |
Audience (teams, segments, exclusions) | Editable on hire-date cycles; frozen on Focal cycles |
Review types, upward nomination mode, acknowledgment setting | Frozen (as before) |
Limits and things to know
People without a hire date are skipped. A hire-date cycle cannot place them, and launch is not blocked. The setup screen shows how many people are affected. Add a hire date and the person is picked up automatically — there is no backfill for dates already passed.
Nobody enters retroactively. If someone's date fell before enrollment opened, they are left alone. Add them by hand if you want them in; they enter immediately.
A missed deadline closes nothing. Reviews stay open until the cycle locks. Overdue is tracked per person against their own due date.
Completion percentages can go down. On a cycle that is still enrolling, the total grows as people enter.
One cycle shows many due dates. Reviewee lists, the manager digest and reminders all use each person's own deadline.
Cycles don't repeat. A cycle does not re-run itself yearly or quarterly. An Anniversary cycle already reviews each person every year; to re-run a Focal cycle, duplicate it.