This API can be used to get the list of appraisal cycles, appraisal periods, employee appraisal in an appraisal period and setting up employee objective (BSC & OKR) setup, which is an important aspect in either taking an appraisal or performance review in an organisation.

Developers can also use these endpoints to create, switch, update, delete, activate, and cancel employee objectives in an appraisal cycle.

Keys

BSC - Balanced Score Card
KPI - Key Performance Indicator
OKR - Objective Key Result
PR - Performance Reviews
LM - Line Manager

Objective setup can be done in several ways, however, for this documentation, below are the guidelines you need to set up objectives. This is a requirement for taking appraisals or performance reviews, with that being said, Employees are expected to set objectives for them to take appraisals or performance reviews.

Objective performance type can either be BSC(KPI) or OKR framework
To set up either of the frameworks mentioned earlier, you must ensure the appraisal cycle has a mode set to performance appraisal or both and either BSC, OKR or both framework are selected.

To check the framework and mode attached to the appraisal cycle, use the endpoint to list the cycle GET /cycles

Type of objective that can be created

If the performance mode is both - either BSC or OKR can be created
If the performance mode is BSC - only BSC can be created
If the performance mode is OKR - only OKR can be created

To use an objective in an appraisal or PR, it has to be activated, and this can be done in 3 major ways depending on what has been specified in objective settings (settings tab > general appraisal > objectives)

Self-activation
Admin/LM/HOD activating objectives on behalf of the employee
Submitting the objectives for approval - this goes through an approval workflow that has been specified in the objective activation settings

For this documentation, activation can be done by the admin or admin submitting the objective for approval.

To set objectives

Ensure the employee does not have existing objectives, if an objective was created and not in use in an appraisal and a switch is done using the POST /objective/switch-framework endpoint, it automatically deletes previous objectives for you to create a new set of objectives in the selected framework
Hit the endpoint to create BSC or OKR - this gets saved under the draft objective, to activate,
Hit the endpoint to activate or,
Hit endpoint to submit for approval

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Once an objective is activated, it is ready for use in an appraisal or performance review; however, if the objective is submitted for approval, it needs to through the approval workflow for it to get activated. Objective submitted for approval can be cancelled using the Cancel pending objective request endpoint.

for the BSC(KPI) objective, only the selected KPI type that is applied to the organisation can be created (settings tab > BSC > KPI type)