Not familiar with the concept of templates, or terms like Template Builder? Read all about that and more in:
Why build templates?
The Templates feature in Performance Management includes the Template Builder, which empowers you to create reusable, multi-purpose templates for performance appraisals. You can structure your templates using sections, each populated with questions grouped by common themes.
Once you've created a template, anyone with reviewer permissions can use it as the foundation for their performance review, seamlessly applying it whenever they start a new review and send it to colleagues. You'll also have the flexibility to:
Edit the template to refine it.
Clone it to keep an original copy while modifying the duplicate for a different purpose.
Delete it if it becomes outdated or unnecessary.
Over time, you'll have built a well-organised, easily accessible library of reusable templates in the Templates section. This will streamline the performance review process, making it faster, more efficient, and adaptable to your evolving needs with minimal effort.
Building up your template
Sections
The first step in building a template is dividing it into sections. Think of these sections like dividers in a physical folder, each grouping related questions into a specific category.
While it's technically possible to place all questions in a single section, we don’t recommend it. Structuring your templates with sections offers several key benefits:
Better organisation for easier navigation.
Improved analytics through more efficient question tagging.
Flexible score weighting for more precise evaluations.
For example, one section could focus on company culture, assessing how well someone fits in and engages with the team, while another could evaluate job performance, measuring efficiency and recent achievements.
Let's create one of those two sections as your template's first!
Head on over to Indigo > Performance Management > Templates.
Click the blue + New Template button in the bottom right corner of the Templates screen.
Pick one from Pick from Question Bank and Create your own question—for now, this option won’t affect anything, as you’ll be able to choose again later.
You are now looking at the Template Builder which occupies the right half of your screen. Click the blue Create Section button to create your first section.
Fill in the fields in the Create Section button:
Section Title: give your section a name.
Section Category: choose the category that best fits from the available list.
Tags: these help group questions by topic, making it easier to analyse data after conducting performance reviews.
⚠️ Important: the words you enter here will either match existing tags or create new ones. To keep things clear, follow your company’s tagging standards. For example, avoid using both 'Performance' and 'Accomplishments' if they mean the same thing—this could split your data and make analytics less effective. Read more here!
Description: this is for internal use only, useful to clarify the purpose of this section and how it aligns with the overall template.
Instructions: here you can provide more details on how to use this section. This can help a colleague working with you on the template understand what questions to include or also serve as guidance for someone using the template for an upcoming performance review.
Click + Create Section to finalise this section, Save & New to finalise and immediately start a new one, or Cancel to discard and start over.
After creating your first section, you’ll notice a big change in the Template Builder’s main area—a header which includes:
A dropdown menu to navigate between the template's sections, showing you the relevant questions.
The blue + Add Section button, now repositioned for easy access.
A three-dot (kebab) menu with the following options:
Edit Section to modify the details entered during creation.
Move Sections to reorder how sections appear.
Delete Section to ⚠️ permanently ⚠️ remove it from the template.
💡 Note: When you have more than one section in a template, you can move questions between sections using the Move Question button. This button appears only when there’s more than one section and can be found in the bottom right corner of question cards in the Template Builder.
Questions
Questions are the main stars 🌟 of the show in templates. They are added to the selected section in the Template Builder from the left side of the screen. Here in the header, you’ll find tabs that allow you to either add questions from the Question Bank or create your own through the Create a Question tab.
By combining both methods, you can maximise the effectiveness of the Templates feature and design performance reviews that are perfectly tailored to your needs.
By default, the Template Builder screen will open up on the method you picked in the New Template screen.
Questions have characteristics which are either pre-determined when picking them from the Question Bank or customisable by you when creating a question from scratch.
More on Question Characteristics
More on Question Characteristics
Target reviewee: The target reviewee refers to who will be answering the questions. This is determined by whether or not you enable the Employee Question Description, Manager Question Description or both. If both are enabled, that question will have two different versions, one for the employee and one for the manager.
Note: a single template may include questions for both employees and managers.
If a reviewer starts an Ad Hoc review and uses such a template, the review will be sent to all selected employees, but each employee will only see the questions relevant to their role, according to the company’s Organisation Chart.
Enabled: a question may be disabled to be kept out of the performance review without removing it from the template.
Required: make answering a question mandatory. Until all required questions are answered, a performance review can't be completed.
Confidential: hide answers to this question from other employees. For example, an employee's answer to a question concerning their manager should be confidential and accessible only to the HR Admin.
Question Category: this is based entirely on the content of the question. By default, questions fall under one of five categories, each coloured differently:
Performance (light red)
Engagement (dull orange)
Happiness (bright orange)
Value (rose pink)
Goals (gold)
Answer Type: the type of answer required according to the style of the question, which can be one of four:
Short Answer
Long Answer
Multiple Choice
Rating
Question Tags: adding precise and appropriate tags to questions will help you track them when creating or editing templates and is a fundamental step for effective Analytics in Performance Management.
All of the question characteristics affect in some way or another the appearance of the question in the Template Builder:
the target reviewee at the top (blank if the question is disabled);
required status (toggleable, forced off if disabled);
confidential status (toggleable, forced off if disabled);
category colour on the left;
answer type.
At the top, you can also switch between views of the Template Builder to filter questions by target reviewee:
Method 1 - Pick from Question Bank
The Question Bank, curated by Shireburn with guidance from HR experts, contains frequently used questions that bear time-proven value for performance reviews. Shireburn regularly updates the bank with new questions to ensure its continued relevance and effectiveness.
When this method is selected, the left half of the screen will display all of the questions currently available in the Question Bank.
To add a question from the bank to the template, click the desired question. This will grey out the question in the list, and add it to the Template Builder.
At the top of the Question Bank section are a number of filter options to help you find the desired question(s):
Question category (e.g. Performance, Engagement)
Target reviewee (Employee / Manager)
A search bar is also available where you can find questions via tags or keywords.
When a question displays a blue disguise icon, it is confidential. A red asterisk means that the question is required.
Mousing over a question in the bank reveals its category and answer style. Question categories are also noticeable from the coloured bar on the left side of the question.
Method 2 - Write Your Own Questions
When the Create a Question method is selected, you may begin by selecting one of four answer types:
Short Answer
Long Answer
Multiple Choice
Rating
Clicking on any option will open the same Create a Question drawer menu, where you will be required to configure the question's characteristics as described above.
Note that you can change between answer types from within the drawer itself, without having to return to the Create screen. This option is available under the Answer Setup submenu:
When finished, click Add Question & Close to save and close the drawer, or Add Question & New to save and start creating another question.
Additional Setup for Multiple Choice and Rating Questions
Additional Setup for Multiple Choice and Rating Questions
For Multiple Choice questions, you will need to configure the possible answers the reviewee can choose.
Type an answer in the space provided.
Click the blue + button to add a field for another option.
Repeat these two steps until you have all desired options.
Click the red - button to delete an option.
Click Clear to delete all options.
Toggle Multiselect if you wish to allow reviewees to answer with more than one option. You can also sort all options in either Ascending or Descending order.
When putting in your options, you can also choose to begin from one of three presets.
Rating questions do not require a lot of additional configuration. Decide the maximum number of stars the reviewee is allowed to select by interacting with the - and + buttons.
When answering, the reviewee can input half-star answers (e.g. 4.5 stars out of 5).
Editing and removing questions from the Template Builder
All questions added to the template can be edited from the Template Builder by clicking Edit question (blue 🖉 icon). The resulting drawer works the same as when you're creating a new question.
Editing a question in the Template Builder that was originally from the Question Bank will only change the question in your current template. It will not change the question stored within the Question Bank.
Click Remove question (red ❌ icon) to erase a question from the template.
Saving your template
When finished, click Save & Close to save the template and return to the Templates screen, or Save & New to save the template but remain on the Create screen and start creating a new template. Don't forget to name your template at the top of the builder!
You can find your new template in the Templates screen, where you can click it or another template to edit it. Adding, editing and deleting questions while editing a template follows the same processes described above.
To add, edit and remove questions while editing a template, follow the same processes described above.
When saving your progress after editing a template, the buttons will instead be labelled as 'Update & Close' and 'Update'. Clicking Update will commit your changes without closing the template.
Understand better the main screens of Performance Management: