Conversations v2 in Perform & Engage 365: manage conversations

Introduction

Conversation and Super admins can manage individual conversations throughout their lifecycle. This includes viewing conversation details, monitoring participant progress, reviewing responses, assigning reviewers, and returning conversations to previous stages when changes are required.

This article explains how to manage conversations after they have been created.

Before you start

To manage conversations, you must:

• Be a Conversation or Super admin.
• Have access to the Conversations v2 feature.
• Have an existing conversation campaign with generated conversations.

Manage a conversation

Admins can manage a conversation throughout its lifecycle.

Typical management tasks include:

• Open the conversation.
• Review responses, comments, and attachments.
• Monitor stage progression and conversation history.
• Assign or update reviewers if required.
• Return the conversation to a previous stage when changes are needed.
• Review completed conversations.

Open a conversation

Admins can access conversations from a campaign.

1. Go to Organization > Conversations > Explore Campaigns near the top of the page. The Campaigns tab opens on a separate page.

2. Select the campaign that contains the conversation. The campaign opens on its own named page.

3. Select the Conversations tab below the Stages section.

4. Find the conversation.

5. In the Actions column of the conversation, select the ellipsis menu (...) > Manage Conversation. The conversation opens on its own named page.

Understand the conversation page

The conversation page provides admin access to all conversation information. Unlike the participant experience, admins can see the entire conversation regardless of stage visibility settings.

From this page, admins can:

• View all stages.
• Review responses.
• View comments.
• Review attachments.
• View participant information.
• Review stage history.
• Send conversations back to previous stages.

Admins can see all conversation content regardless of stage visibility settings configured in the template.
 
The page also displays:

• Focus person
• Assigned reviewer
• Current stage
• Conversation status
• Stage history.

Review responses

Admins can review all responses submitted by participants throughout the conversation.

Responses might include:

• Open-text answers
• Rating scores
• Choice selections
• Goal planning information
• Action items
• Data summaries and comments.

Admins can review responses across all stages, including stages not visible to individual participants.

Review comments and attachments

Conversation elements might contain comments and attachments added by participants.

Admins can:

• View all comments.
• Review discussion history.
• Access uploaded attachments.
• Review supporting documentation provided by participants.

Comments and attachments remain available after stages have been submitted and after the conversation has been completed.

Monitor stage progression

Each conversation moves through the stages configured in its template.

Admins can review:

• Current stage
• Previous stages
• Completed stages
• Pending stages

This visibility helps identify conversations that might be delayed or waiting for participant action.

Understand the conversation status

A conversation progresses through different statuses as participants complete stages.

• Not started. The conversation has been assigned, but no participant has opened it or entered any information.
• In progress. One or more participants have started working on the conversation, but not all required actions have been completed. The conversation remains editable.
• Completed. All required participants have completed their actions and the conversation has been finalized. No further edits can be made.

Admins can use the conversation status together with the current stage to determine whether a conversation is awaiting participant action, actively being worked on, or completed.

Review conversation history

The conversation page maintains a history of conversation activity.

Admins can review:

• Stage progression
• Submission activity
• Send-back actions
• Conversation status changes.

The history provides an audit trail of how the conversation has progressed over time.

Manage reviewer assignments

Reviewer assignments determine who participates in a conversation as the reviewer. Admins can review, assign, and update reviewers when necessary.

Understand reviewer assignments

When a conversation is created, the reviewer is assigned using the reviewer selection strategy configured on the campaign:

• Manager assigns the focus person's direct manager.
• Manager of manager assigns the focus person's manager's manager.

If no eligible reviewer can be identified, the conversation is created with a Missing Reviewer status until an administrator assigns one manually.

Manage conversations with missing reviewers

If an eligible reviewer can't be identified when a conversation is created, the conversation is created with a missing reviewer.

Conversations with missing reviewers require an admin to assign a reviewer before reviewer-stage activities can be completed.

Manage reviewer assignments

Use the Manager reviews action to view assigned reviewers, assign missing reviewers, replace existing reviewers, or remove reviewers.

1. Go to Organization > Conversations > Explore Campaigns near the top of the page. The Campaigns tab opens on a separate page.

2. Select the campaign that contains the conversation. The campaign opens on its own named page.

3. Select the Conversations tab below the Stages section.

4. Find the conversation.

5. In the Actions column of the conversation, select the ellipsis menu (...) > Manager reviews. The Assign Reviewer panel opens.

6. Review the reviewer assignment status.

Although the Assign Reviewer panel is opened from an individual conversation, the reviewer assignment status message reflects reviewer assignment status across the entire.

• If all participants in the campaign have reviewers assigned, the message "All participants have reviewers assigned!" is displayed.
• If one or more participants in the campaign don't have a reviewer assigned, the message "n participants don't have reviewers assigned" is displayed, where n represents the number of participants without a reviewer.

If a participant doesn't have a reviewer assigned, Select reviewer is displayed in the Reviewers column.

7. Select one or more reviewers from the Reviewers drop-down list.

To remove an assigned reviewer, select the x next to the reviewer name. Removing a reviewer doesn't remove the participant from the conversation.

When should you manually assign a reviewer?

You might need to manually assign a reviewer when:

• The focus person doesn't have a manager assigned in the organization structure.
• The assigned manager has left the organization.
• The reviewer selection strategy couldn't determine an eligible reviewer.
• An alternative reviewer needs to participate in the conversation.

How reviewer changes affect conversations

Reviewer assignment is determined when the conversation is created.

If the focus person's manager changes later:

• Existing conversations keep their current reviewer assignment.
• Reviewer assignments aren't automatically updated.
• Admins can manually update reviewer assignments when needed.

Send a conversation back to a previous stage

Sometimes participants might submit a stage before completing all required information, or additional information might need to be added after a stage is submitted.

Admins can return a conversation to a previous stage to enable participants to make updates.

Why send a conversation back?

Common reasons for sending a conversation back include:

• A participant submitted a stage before completing all required information.
• Additional feedback needs to be provided in an earlier stage.
• A manager or employee needs to revise a response after submission.
• New information becomes available that affects previous responses.

Send a conversation back

1. Open the conversation.

2. Select Send to previous stage near the top of the page. The Send conversation back? dialog opens.

3. Review the confirmation message.

4. Select Send back to confirm the action, or Cancel.

The conversation is moved back one stage and becomes editable again for the relevant participants.

What happens when a conversation is sent back?

When a conversation is returned to a previous stage:

• The conversation moves back one stage.
• The affected participants can edit their responses again.
• Existing responses remain intact and can be updated.
• Comments remain available.
• Attachments remain available.
• The full conversation history is preserved, including who advanced the conversation and when it was sent back.

Understand completed conversations

A conversation is marked as completed when the participant configured with completion permission completes the final stage.

Completed conversations:

• Remain accessible to admins.
• Become read-only for participants.
• Retain all responses, comments, and attachments.

Admins can continue to review completed conversations for reporting, audit, or follow-up purposes.

Best practices

When managing conversations:

• Monitor active conversations and follow up on conversations that appear stalled.
• Review conversations with missing reviewers and assign replacements promptly.
• Use the send-back function when corrections are required instead of creating new conversations.
• Encourage participants to add comments where additional context might be helpful.
• Review attachments when supporting documentation forms part of the conversation process.
• Periodically review completion rates within active campaigns.

Related articles

• Introduction to Conversations
• Complete a conversation
• Create and launch conversation campaigns
• Manage conversation campaigns
• Create and manage conversation templates
• Conversations FAQs