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What's New in Phase 4

The Phase 4 release introduces the HR Tool's biggest additions yet: Hera, an AI assistant; a company Org Chart; a full Performance Review system; plus batch employee import, employee notes, document visibility controls, a new Manager role, and image-rich announcements.

Headline features​

🤖 Hera AI assistant​

Hera is the HR Tool's built-in AI assistant — ask it questions like your current leave balance and get answers from your real HR data. You'll find it when you sign in; see Dashboard for an overview.

📋 Performance Reviews​

HR can now schedule company-wide review cycles with self-assessment and manager-review deadlines. Employees complete a self-assessment, managers review their team with ratings, written feedback, and a recommendation, and HR tracks completion across departments. See Performance Reviews and, for employees, My Performance.

Along with this, the old "Performance & Feedback" menu item has been renamed Targets — the targets feature itself is unchanged (see Performance Management).

🏢 Org Chart​

A new Organization menu contains the interactive Org Chart, built from each employee's Reports To field, and Departments (which moved here from its old spot in the sidebar). See Org Chart.

Employee management​

Batch employee import​

Add many employees at once from a CSV file. On the Employees page, click Batch Upload in the toolbar:

[📷 Screenshot placeholder — Batch Upload Employees modal, upload step]

  1. Download Template gives you a CSV with the correct column headers, a description row (delete it before uploading), and a filled-in example row. The template covers personal details, employment, pay, superannuation, tax, and banking fields — Full Name, Email, Hire Date, and Employment Type are required.
  2. Drag and drop your completed CSV (only .csv files are accepted) and click Upload & Import.

Handy behaviors to know:

  • Departments and Positions named in your file are created automatically if they don't exist yet.
  • Rows with errors are skipped, not fatal — valid rows still import. The results screen shows counts of Imported, Skipped, and Failed rows, lists each problem row with its reason (e.g. duplicate email), and offers a Download Report CSV of the outcome.
  • Every imported employee is automatically sent a login invite email.

[📷 Screenshot placeholder — import results screen with Imported/Skipped/Failed tiles]

Employee notes​

Each employee profile now has a Notes tab where HR and the employee's direct manager can keep a running record — the employee themselves cannot see these notes.

[📷 Screenshot placeholder — Notes tab on an employee profile]

  • Notes have a type — General, Performance, Conduct, or Onboarding — and can be filtered by type.
  • Each note shows its author and timestamp, newest first, up to 4,000 characters.
  • HR can edit or delete any note; managers can edit or delete only the notes they wrote.

Documents​

Document visibility levels​

When uploading a document you now choose who can see it, under the lock-icon section of the upload dialog:

[📷 Screenshot placeholder — document upload dialog with the visibility dropdown]

  • Employee — the default level
  • Manager — visible to your manager and HR
  • HR — visible to HR admins only
note

Visibility is set at upload time and cannot be changed afterwards — if a document needs a different level, re-upload it with the new setting.

Roles & permissions​

New Manager role​

A Manager role is now available in the Access Level dropdown when adding or editing an employee. Managers get staff-level access plus abilities driven by their reporting line:

Managers do not get access to the full Employees module, leave approval, or contract templates — those remain HR functions.

Tightened staff permissions​

The default User (staff) role no longer includes document deletion or access to Contract Templates. Staff can still upload and share their own documents.

Announcements​

Images in announcements​

Announcements now support images. In the announcement composer, use the image button in the editor toolbar, or simply paste an image into the body.

[📷 Screenshot placeholder — announcement composer with an embedded image]

  • Accepted formats: JPEG, PNG, SVG, up to 5 MB per image
  • The first image in an announcement is displayed as a full-width cover above the text in the announcements feed

Other improvements​

  • Team Directory report — the Position column now populates correctly, department labels were cleaned up, and the Download PDF button works. The report shows Full Name, Position, Department, Contact Info, Country, and Full Address, filterable by department.
  • Password reset from the login page — use "Forgot password" to receive a reset code by email, no login required.
  • Careers page & LinkedIn sharing — public job listings and the Share to LinkedIn action now load reliably.
  • Dashboards — refreshed AI-first look and feel across admin and employee dashboards.