Product Releases: May 2026

May's updates centered on making goal management more intelligent and secure, giving reviewers more control over the review lifecycle, and improving everyday reliability across the platform. Here's a breakdown of what's new, organized by feature.

🤖 Reviews

• Unpublish performance reviews: HR and Admin users can now unpublish a performance review after it's been published. When a review is unpublished, the manager receives an email notification automatically.
• Peer reviewer change notifications: Managers now receive an email alert when a participant updates their peer reviewers mid-cycle — so there are no surprises. Notifications are sent when the participant initiates the change, a manager is assigned, and auto-approval is off.
• Appraisal cycle status filter: You can now filter appraisals by cycle status. The filter defaults to "Active" for new users.
• Reviewer task modal improvement: When adding new reviewers, the option to include them in ongoing tasks is now on by default. The checkbox label has been updated to: "Include newly assigned reviewers in ongoing tasks" — making the behavior clear at a glance.

🎯 Goals

• AI Goal Agent upgrades: The AI goal coach is now smarter, safer, and more context-aware. Employees, managers, and admins each get streamlined tools tailored to their role — making it easier to manage personal, team, or company goals directly from chat. The agent now distinguishes clearly between personal and team/department goals, surfaces the right options for your situation, and receives your role and available context on launch for more relevant suggestions. Managers can search departments and view or manage their team's goals; admins can create company-level goals directly.
• Goal permission hardening: Security and consistency have been strengthened across all goal-related actions. You can only edit, update, or attach goals if your role and relationship permit it — and cross-company or cross-team issues are blocked. Employees can no longer edit an approved goal (though progress logging is still available). Permission checks are now unified, so you'll see consistent options and more meaningful error messages across every screen.
• Goal ownership changes: Owners of goals can now be updated by authorized users where appropriate.
• Department goal fixes: The "Department" field is now editable for department goals, and department goals you own now appear as expected in select lists when linking personal goals or editing existing ones. The AI agent also correctly includes owned department goals in suggestions.

⚡ Platform & Performance

• Review dashboard UI improvements: Minimum page heights have been set for participant, task progress, and appraisals pages for a cleaner, more consistent layout.
• Department visibility for agents: Departments are now reliably visible to agents and in company settings.