FS-DOC-03Operations
Process Runbook / SOP
Performance Review Cycle
[YourCompany.com] · HR Department · Prepared by FullSpec · [Today's Date]
This runbook is your day-to-day operating guide for the automated Performance Review Cycle. It covers exactly what the system does at each step, what your team still handles, how to respond when something goes wrong, who to call on for help, and what routine maintenance keeps the process running smoothly cycle after cycle. FullSpec built and configured everything described here. Your team's only ongoing responsibility during a live cycle is the calibration meeting and the final rating sign-off.
01Process overview
The Performance Review Cycle automation manages everything from the moment HR marks a review period as open in BambooHR through to writing confirmed ratings back into employee records. Three coordinated agents handle kick-off notifications, submission tracking and reminders, and manager summary drafting. HR no longer needs to send individual emails, maintain a manual spreadsheet, or write summary documents from scratch. The two steps that remain with your team are the calibration meeting, which requires judgement, and the formal sign-off on final ratings before they are written back to BambooHR. The full cycle runs bi-annually across roughly 80 to 150 review submissions and previously consumed around 10.5 hours of HR time per week during the four-week window. With the automation in place that figure drops to approximately 14 hours across the entire cycle.
Process name
Performance Review Cycle
Trigger
HR marks the review cycle as open in BambooHR
Final output
Confirmed ratings written back to every employee record in BambooHR
Agents running
Cycle Launch Agent, Submission Tracker and Chaser Agent, Summary Drafting Agent
Tools involved
BambooHR, Google Forms, Google Sheets, Google Docs, Gmail, Slack
Weekly volume
80 to 150 review submissions per cycle, 2 cycles per year (approximately 220 automation runs per month during the active window)
Human checkpoint
Calibration review meeting (HR Director) and final rating approval before BambooHR write-back
Process owner
HR Manager (Priya Mehta)
Process Runbook / SOPPage 1 of 4
FS-DOC-03Operations
02Step-by-step: what happens and who acts
What you actually need to do: Your team has one active step during the automated cycle. After the system delivers all manager summaries, the HR Director runs the calibration meeting as normal. Once ratings are agreed, the HR Manager reviews them and gives formal approval. The automation then writes the confirmed ratings back to BambooHR. Every other step in the table below is handled by the system with no action required from your side.
Step
What happens
Who acts
Type
1
The HR Manager marks the review cycle as open in BambooHR. The Cycle Launch Agent detects this event via the BambooHR API, pulls the current active employee list, removes any contractors or leavers, and prepares personalised content for every recipient.
Cycle Launch Agent
Automated
2
Personalised kick-off emails are dispatched via Gmail to every employee with their self-assessment form link and submission deadline. A matching Slack notification is posted to the relevant team channels and direct messages so nothing is missed.
Cycle Launch Agent
Automated
3
Separate briefing emails are sent via Gmail to every people manager explaining the review timeline, their responsibilities, and the direct links to each of their direct reports' manager assessment forms.
Cycle Launch Agent
Automated
4
The Submission Tracker and Chaser Agent polls Google Forms responses every four hours and updates a live Google Sheets tracker in real time, marking each employee and manager as submitted or outstanding. No manual spreadsheet updates are needed.
Submission Tracker and Chaser Agent
Automated
5
On a daily schedule the agent identifies everyone who has not yet submitted and sends an automated reminder via Gmail. A Slack nudge is also sent 48 hours before the deadline. This repeats until submission is received or the deadline passes.
Submission Tracker and Chaser Agent
Automated
6
Once both the employee self-assessment and the manager assessment form are submitted for the same employee, the Summary Drafting Agent reads both sets of responses, applies the structured template, and produces a Google Doc summary saved to the manager's designated folder.
Summary Drafting Agent
Automated
7
The manager receives a Gmail notification with a direct link to the completed summary document, confirming it is ready to review before the calibration meeting. No separate email from HR is needed.
Summary Drafting Agent
Automated
8
The HR Director runs the calibration meeting with senior management to review summaries, align ratings across teams, identify high performers, and resolve any inconsistencies. This step requires human judgement and discussion and is not automated.
HR Director
Human
9
The HR Manager reviews the agreed ratings from the calibration meeting and gives formal approval. Once approved, the automation writes the confirmed ratings and review notes back to every employee record in BambooHR via the API.
HR Manager (approval) then automation (write-back)
Human
Process Runbook / SOPPage 2 of 4
FS-DOC-03Operations
03Handling exceptions
Situation
What the system does
What you do
An employee's record in BambooHR is missing required fields (for example, no manager assigned or no department listed)
The Cycle Launch Agent flags the incomplete record and skips sending kick-off communications to that employee. The record is written to an exceptions log in the Google Sheets tracker, highlighted in a separate tab labelled Incomplete Records.
Review the Incomplete Records tab at the start of the cycle. Correct the missing information in BambooHR and then manually trigger the kick-off step for that employee by contacting FullSpec support or using the manual re-trigger option confirmed at handover.
A duplicate form submission is received, meaning an employee submits their self-assessment more than once
The Submission Tracker and Chaser Agent detects the duplicate by matching the employee identifier in the form response. It marks the first submission as the active record and logs the duplicate in the tracker. Reminders stop as soon as the first valid submission is received.
No action is needed in most cases. If the employee believes their first submission contained an error and the second is correct, contact FullSpec support to swap the active record before the Summary Drafting Agent runs.
A manager assessment form is submitted but no matching employee self-assessment exists (or vice versa)
The Summary Drafting Agent holds the unpaired submission in a pending state and does not generate a summary. The Google Sheets tracker shows the pair status clearly. No summary email is sent to the manager until both submissions are present.
Check the tracker for the affected employee. If the missing submission is genuinely outstanding, the chaser reminders will continue automatically. If the employee has left the business or is exempt from this cycle, update BambooHR and notify FullSpec support to close out the pending record.
A submitter does not respond to automated reminders and the deadline passes with no submission
After the deadline the Submission Tracker and Chaser Agent stops sending reminders and marks the record as Overdue in the tracker. An alert email is sent to the HR Manager via Gmail listing all overdue submitters.
Decide whether to extend the deadline for specific individuals or proceed to calibration without those submissions. If proceeding without a submission, notify FullSpec support so the pending pair record is closed and does not block the Summary Drafting Agent.
Gmail or Slack becomes temporarily unavailable during an active reminder or notification cycle
The automation platform retries the failed delivery up to three times with a 15-minute interval between attempts. If all retries fail, the failed sends are logged in the error log within the Google Sheets tracker and an alert is sent to the HR Manager once the tool recovers.
Review the error log after any reported outage. For any sends that failed all retries and were not recovered automatically, contact FullSpec support to manually re-trigger the affected notifications. Do not attempt to send replacement emails manually while the retry log is still active, as this may create duplicates.
BambooHR is unavailable when the automation attempts to write final ratings back after calibration
The automation platform retries the BambooHR write-back up to five times over a 24-hour window. If all retries fail, the confirmed ratings are held in a staging record in Google Sheets and an alert is sent to the HR Manager. No data is lost.
Check the staging record in Google Sheets to confirm the ratings are captured. Once BambooHR is back online, contact FullSpec support to trigger the manual write-back from the staging record. Do not enter ratings into BambooHR manually if the automation write-back is still pending, as this may cause a conflict.
Process Runbook / SOPPage 3 of 4
FS-DOC-03Operations
04Who to contact and when
Fill in the rows marked with placeholders once your team is confirmed. Keep this table accessible to everyone involved in the review cycle so the right person is reached quickly if something needs attention.
Role
Name
How to reach them
Process owner (HR Manager)
Priya Mehta
[Rep email]
Day-to-day cycle coordinator (HR Coordinator)
Daniel Torres
[Rep email]
Final rating approver (HR Director)
Sarah Lin
[Rep email]
Internal IT or systems contact (if BambooHR access issues arise)
[Your name]
[Rep email]
FullSpec build team (configuration changes, re-triggers, agent issues)
FullSpec
support@gofullspec.com
FullSpec support (errors, outages, urgent issues during a live cycle)
FullSpec Support
support@gofullspec.com
For any issue that stops the automation mid-cycle, for example a failed BambooHR connection, a batch of reminders not sending, or summaries not generating, contact FullSpec support at support@gofullspec.com as the first step. Include the cycle name, the date the issue started, and a screenshot of the error log from the Google Sheets tracker if possible. Do not attempt to restart agents or reconfigure connections without guidance from the FullSpec team.
05Ongoing maintenance
Before each cycle opens (bi-annual)
Confirm the active employee list in BambooHR is up to date, removing leavers and adding new starters. Verify that every employee has a manager assigned and a department recorded. Confirm the submission deadline date with the HR Director so the reminder schedule is correct before the trigger fires.
HR Manager
Before each cycle opens (bi-annual)
Review the Google Forms questions for the self-assessment and manager assessment. If any questions have been added, removed, or reworded, notify FullSpec support so the Summary Drafting Agent template can be updated before the cycle starts. Form changes after the cycle opens will affect summary quality.
HR Manager, with FullSpec support if changes are needed
Monthly during non-cycle periods
Open the Google Sheets tracker and run a spot-check to confirm no stale records, test submissions, or error flags remain from the previous cycle. Archive completed cycle data to the designated folder so the tracker is clean before the next cycle window.
HR Coordinator
Monthly
Review the automation error log tab in Google Sheets for any failed sends, unpaired submissions, or retry failures from the previous month. If the same error appears more than twice, raise it with FullSpec support before the next cycle.
HR Coordinator
When team membership changes
If the HR Coordinator or HR Manager responsible for the process changes, update the contact table in this runbook and notify FullSpec support so alert email recipients can be updated in the automation configuration. Do not leave an inactive email address as the alert recipient.
HR Manager
Quarterly
Review the volume of review submissions against the current plan. If headcount has grown significantly (for example, above 150 employees per cycle), contact FullSpec support to confirm the automation is scaled appropriately and that BambooHR API rate limits remain comfortable at the new volume.
HR Manager, with FullSpec support
The most common maintenance issue for this process is a change to Google Forms questions made between cycles without updating the Summary Drafting Agent template. If the form fields no longer match what the agent expects, summaries will be incomplete or incorrectly structured. Always notify FullSpec support at support@gofullspec.com before editing any form question, adding a new field, or removing an existing one.
Process Runbook / SOPPage 4 of 4