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Anytime feedback

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Give a colleague feedback outside a review round, named or confidential, and how reported feedback is handled

Anytime feedback is a note about a colleague that nobody asked for, given whenever you like.

How it works

Each note is about one person and goes to them, to them and their manager, or to their manager only. It is named or confidential: a confidential note hides your name from its readers, but SquadBear stores who wrote it. The manager who reads a note is the person's line manager when it was sent, and only while they still manage the person. A note cannot be edited once sent.

Give feedback

  1. Go to Performance → Feedback and choose Give feedback, or start from a colleague's profile. It opens its own page, and Cancel leaves it.
  2. Under About, search for the colleague, then write Your feedback (up to 1,500 characters).
  3. Under Who sees it, pick the audience. Feedback for the manager only always shows your name. If the person has no manager in SquadBear, or you are their manager, only the person can see it. Who sees this, beside the form, names every reader.
  4. Under Your name, pick Shown or Confidential, then choose Send feedback.

Every note reaches its readers as soon as you send it. Named feedback notifies them. Confidential feedback sends no notification and is dated without a time. You can send one confidential note about the same person every 7 days; inside that window the page offers Show my name instead.

Your feedback lists

Performance → Feedback shows About me, I gave and, for managers, My team, 20 notes at a time. Someone who manages people without a manager role sees My team once a note has reached them as a manager. To take a note back, open it under I gave and choose Withdraw. That list shows each note as Sent or Withdrawn only.

Always named

An admin can switch confidential feedback off for the workspace under Settings → Review settings: on the Anytime feedback card, turn on Always named. Every new note then shows who wrote it. Feedback already sent stays as it was.

Reported feedback

The person can Report a note under About me. It is hidden at once from everyone who could see it. Admins see reported notes only, under Performance → Feedback → Reported, and choose:

  • Restore: it shows again to the people it was for, who can report it again. If its author withdrew it in the meantime, it stays withdrawn.
  • Remove: nobody sees it again. This cannot be undone.
  • Show author, on a confidential note: shows who wrote it. Every reveal is recorded in the audit log with the admin's name. A named note already shows its author.

The list shows the 100 oldest reports at a time. When more are waiting it says so, and restoring or removing these brings in the rest. Any admin except the author can restore or remove a note. Show author is not offered to the person or their manager, so another admin has to; if no admin can, the author stays hidden.

Feedback in reviews

Notes sent during a review's period appear in that review, up to 50, newest day first. The reviewer finds the notes that reached them as the person's manager under Anytime feedback on the rail's Peers tab. The person finds the notes addressed to them on the Feedback tab of their self review, as Feedback you received. Confidential notes show no name there either.

Worked example

In August, Aleksandra sends Tomasz, an engineer on Northlake's Platform team, a confidential note about the incident review Tomasz ran, for Tomasz and Ewa, Tomasz's manager. Both can read it at once, as from "A colleague", and neither gets a notification. In Northlake's Q3 2026 round, Ewa sees the note under Anytime feedback while writing Tomasz's review, and Tomasz sees it under Feedback you received in the self review. Had Tomasz reported it, Marta, the admin, could restore it, remove it or show its author.