Skill map cycles
A cycle runs skill maps, assessments, endorsement and profile updates again for a group of people, with an opening date, a deadline, reminders and a record of each round. Use it, for example, to map the same people every semester and compare one round with the one before.
If this is your first time with cycles, start with What cycles are and when to use them, which explains what they are for, the difference between round and continuous, and examples.
Cycles are in People > Cycles. Administrators always have access; a manager only gets in with the Manage cycles permission, set in the user's permissions. The Cycles tab lists drafts, scheduled, open and closed cycles; the Archived tab keeps the ones you took off the list. Below the title you see how many cycles were scheduled in the last 12 months and the plan limit.
This article shows how to create a cycle. The others cover the rest:
Take part in a cycle at your company, what the person sees
Create a cycle
Click New cycle. The form has five steps: Period, Steps, Audience, Flow and notifications and Review. Save draft keeps your work to continue later.
1. Period
Give it a name, a short description and the date the cycle opens, which must be tomorrow or later. Then pick the Cycle type. The two cards show side by side who enters, how deadlines count, how the cycle ends and what happens next time:
Round: everybody in the same period, with an opening and a closing. With Repeat this cycle, the next one is created some months later, as a draft for you to review or already scheduled.
Continuous: it has no end. Each person enters on their own time, for example when they join the company, and comes back to renew after an interval.
Once scheduled, the type no longer changes.
2. Steps
Each kind of step shows as a card with its name and what it asks of people. Check one or more cards and click Add. The steps come in the order that makes sense: map, assessment, profile update, endorsement and announcement.
Skill map: each person rates the skills of their position in the career map. You pick the maps applied.
Assessment: a published company assessment. Each person gets the invite of the assessment itself, valid until the step closes, at the credits of a regular invite.
Profile update: each person reviews the profile sections you check. See Profile update cycle.
Endorsement: whoever you name confirms or adjusts the levels each person marked in the map. It is only available after a map step. See Endorsement in a cycle.
Announcement: only sends an e-mail, for example to say the cycle has started.
Once the first steps are in, they stay on top and the same cards sit below them. A click on a card adds that step after the others. Remove step takes a step out of the draft.
3. Audience
In Who takes part, pick one of three options:
People in the chosen careers: each person gets the map of their position. In Leave out some people of the chosen careers, search by name or e-mail for who should stay out. Check Include who joins the audience after scheduling so that people hired into or moved to those careers before the closing come in on their own.
Specific people: search by name or e-mail and check people one by one. They come in even if they are in no career.
The same people and maps as a previous cycle: useful when the maps were sent person by person, with no position.
In a continuous cycle, this step also sets Who enters: who never concluded the activity enters some days after joining the company, and who already concluded it comes back on renewal, counted from their last conclusion. The preview shows how many people enter at the opening and how many only enter later.
The preview at the end of the step shows how many people enter the cycle and how many have no map among the ones checked. Who has no map stays out of the map step and of the steps that depend on it. The orange notice shows how many people that affects.
4. Flow and notifications
For each step, set when it is sent (at the cycle opening, on a date or after the person concludes another step), the deadline and when it closes. After the deadline, who has not concluded shows as overdue and can still answer until the step closes.
Skip who completed this activity in the last N days leaves out who took the same assessment, the same map or the profile review recently, in a cycle or not. The option can be turned on or off even after the step has started and counts for the next entries; whoever was already skipped does not get the step again. In a continuous cycle, see Continuous cycle: invite, reminder and renewal, below.
In Generate for, the step can go to The whole audience, Only who did not conclude a step of another cycle or The audience and the pending people of another cycle. See the section below.
In E-mails, each send shows the date it goes out: invite, reminders before the deadline and overdue notice. Reminders and notices only go to who has not concluded. To write a text for this cycle only, click Edit text, next to the send. The preview shows how the email arrives. In an assessment, this text replaces the invite of the assessment itself. In a continuous cycle, reminders count from the invite, and each send also has the text for whoever comes back on renewal.
If the company prefers to tell people itself, check The company tells people itself and the step sends no e-mails.
5. Review
The review gathers the number of people, the credits, the use of the plan quota, the comparison with the previous cycle and the timeline. Skill maps use no credits. An assessment uses the credits of a regular invite per person who reaches it; who is skipped or stays out of the step does not count. Below 90% comparability with the previous cycle, confirm you are aware before scheduling.
Click Schedule cycle. From then on, the list of people is frozen and the platform sends each step on its date.
Continuous cycle: invite, reminder and renewal
In a continuous cycle, invite, reminder and renewal are different things:
Invite: goes out when the person enters the cycle, the first time or on renewal.
Reminder: goes only to whoever has not completed the activity that time. The first one goes out some days after the invite, and Repeat sets how often it comes back and up to how many times. The schedule is the same the first time and on renewal.
Renewal: is the return of whoever already completed it. After the interval set in Audience, under Renewal, counted from the last completion, in the cycle or not, the person enters again and gets a new invite.
Each send has two texts: Edit text changes the one for whoever does it for the first time, and Write the text for who comes back (renewal) changes the one for whoever is renewing. If the renewal text is left blank, whoever comes back gets the usual text.
So a single continuous cycle covers the first time and the renewal. Two cycles of the same activity for the same audience would send two invites to the same person.
Example: with a 360-day renewal and a reminder 1 day after the invite, repeated every 60 days, whoever completed it on 10/29/2026 gets the renewal invite on 10/24/2027 and, until they complete it, reminders from 10/25/2027.
Renewal already leaves out whoever completed it recently. So, on the step the renewal counts on, which is the cycle's first assessment, map or profile update, the option Skip who completed this activity in the last N days gives way to a note that explains this. If the step has the option on, a warning asks you to turn it off: with it, whoever comes back on renewal is skipped as soon as they enter and gets nothing. The platform also does not accept a skip as long as the renewal interval or longer.
Only who did not conclude, or the pending people of another cycle
In Generate for, a step can read the same step of another open or closed cycle of the company. Pick the Source cycle and the Source step, which must be of the same kind.
Only who did not conclude a step of another cycle: who concluded the source step is left out of this one. Use it, for example, to give the assessment to people hired or back from leave after the first round.
The audience and the pending people of another cycle: besides leaving out who already concluded, it brings in who left the source step pending, even outside this cycle's audience. Use it for a second wave that carries what the first one left.
Who comes in from pending people gets only the steps they left pending, with a new attempt or map in this cycle. The old attempt or map stays in the source cycle, so each cycle's numbers stay right. In the People tab, these people show as carried from the previous cycle.
The review shows how many people are left out for having concluded and how many pending people come in. Both cycles show the link below the title, and duplicating or repeating the cycle makes the step read the cycle copied. Continuous cycles only take Only who did not conclude a step of another cycle.