How the Documents feature works

The Documents feature in Teamspective is used for creating and managing documents such as individual development plans (IDPs), performance assessments, and individual targets. Documents live in the Performance section alongside structured and growth feedback.

Document types

Teamspective includes three built-in document types:

• Individual Development Plan (IDP) — for career growth and development planning.

• Performance Assessment — for manager evaluations of team members.

• Individual Targets — for goals, objectives, and key results.

Workspace admins can also create custom document types with their own templates and settings.

Templates

Each document is created from a template. Templates define the starting structure — sections, guiding questions, and placeholder content. Templates also control key settings:

• Approval type — no sign-off, formal approval, or acknowledgment before finalizing.

• Self-creation — whether employees can create the document themselves, or only managers can.

• Subject role — whether the subject gets editor, viewer, or no access.

• Manager access — New: whether a manager of the subject automatically gets viewer access without an explicit share (see Sharing and access).

• Public sharing — New: whether editors can create a public link to the document.

• Individual sharing — whether the creator can manually share the document with others.

• Section headers — whether users can delete template section headers or must keep them.

• AI instructions — custom guidance for the AI coaching feature (see AI features).

Templates can be restricted to specific segments. Segments do more than grant bulk viewer/editor access — a segment can carry a creator role that governs who is allowed to create documents from that template:

• If a template has no creator segments, any eligible workspace member can create from it.

• If creator segments exist, the creator must belong to one of them, or creation is blocked.

• This is separate from subject access: creator segments govern initiation, while subject role governs the subject's access after creation.

Template duplication. Admins can duplicate a template. Duplication is a full copy of its settings: content, approval settings, sharing settings, reminders, AI instructions, type, and all segment rules are copied. It creates a fresh template with reset created/updated metadata and appends "(Copy)" to the name.

Admins manage templates from the Document Templates tab in structured feedback settings.

Creating and editing documents

Documents are created from the documents list view, accessible under the Documents tab in the Performance section. Managers see their direct reports listed and can create documents for them. If self-creation is enabled on the template, employees can also create documents for themselves.

Documents start in draft status. Editors can write and revise the content freely.

Real-time collaboration. When collaborative editing is enabled for the workspace, multiple editors can work on the same document at the same time, with changes syncing live:

• The document's content is kept in sync automatically as people type, rather than being saved as one static version at a time.

• New documents start from the template's content and are set up for live syncing right away.

• Once live syncing is on for a document, edits always go through that live sync — a plain save-over from an older version isn't possible; you'll get a conflict instead.

• Documents created before this feature was available are switched over to live syncing automatically the first time someone opens them for collaborative editing.

Sharing and access

Access to a document is controlled through shares. Each share grants either viewer (read-only) or editor (full edit) access. Access can come from several sources:

• Creator — automatically gets editor access.

• Subject — access determined by the template's subject role setting (editor, viewer, or no access).

• Reviewer — gets editor access when a review is requested.

• Template segments — bulk access granted to user segments defined on the template (and creator-role segments govern who can create).

• Individual shares — manually added by the creator (if allowed by the template).

• Manager access — New: when enabled on the template, a manager of the subject automatically gets viewer access without needing an explicit share. This access is handled automatically and is read-only — no editing, sharing, or deleting through that path.

• Public link — New: when enabled, an editor can create a public link granting viewer or editor access to anyone with the link. It's stored as a special kind of share with no specific user or segment attached, and is removed by turning off the link's access level.

Documents are private by default: apart from the automatic access above, a user needs an explicit share to access a document.

Review and approval workflow

Documents support an optional review and approval workflow, depending on the template's approval type:

1. None — no reviewer step. The document uses a "mark ready" path rather than reviewer approval; it stays in draft until marked ready/approved.

2. Approval — the creator requests a review from a specific person (typically the manager). The reviewer can approve the document or send it back to draft for further work.

3. Acknowledgment — the subject (employee) acknowledges the document. This is simpler than the approval flow: the subject acknowledges, and there is no parallel "decline / send back" action like reviewer approval has.

When a new document is approved, any previously approved document of the same type for the same subject is automatically archived.

Reminders

Templates can have automated reminders enabled. There are four types:

• Draft stale — sent to the creator when a draft hasn't been updated for a configurable number of days.

• Review stale — sent to the reviewer when a review request has been pending for a configurable number of days.

• Acknowledgment stale — sent to the subject when an acknowledgment request has been pending.

• Missing document — sent to users who should have a document (based on template segments) but don't have one yet, after a configurable grace period. Only applies when self-creation is enabled: manager-only templates never send missing-document reminders, even if a grace period is configured. Selection also filters to users eligible by creator/subject segments and avoids sending duplicate reminders to the same person.

Editing the document resets the stale timer.

AI features

Documents include AI-powered features:

• Coach evaluation — analyzes each section of a filled-in document and rates it as complete, partial, or empty, with suggestions for improvement.

• Tips — generates focus areas and suggested feedback questions based on the document content.

• Template evaluation — New: evaluates the template itself (not a filled-in document) — section quality, completeness, and alignment with intent — and returns per-section ratings plus a full suggested improved template. It is primarily an admin/template-author tool. Inputs include the template markdown, its AI instructions, and the user language.

Templates can include custom AI instructions to tailor the coaching to the specific document type and organizational context.

Document lifecycle

Only draft documents can be deleted. Approved and archived documents are retained. Note that archiving is broader than "automatic after a newer approval" — documents can also be manually archived, including drafts.