What it does
Review cycles are structured, periodic evaluations of a program, an institution, or a whole organization — for example an annual program review or a focused special review. Each cycle bundles the evidence, findings, improvement goals, action plan, and final report for one review period in one place.
Who it's for
Program directors and administrators run program-level reviews; institution administrators oversee reviews across programs; organization administrators can run reviews spanning institutions. Creating a cycle requires review-cycle management permission at the scope you're reviewing.
How it works
Review types. Every cycle starts from a review type — a reusable template carrying default required evidence and required report sections. Four types ship with the platform: Annual Program Review, Annual Institution Review, Academic Program Review, and Special Review. Use Special Review for underperformance, accreditation risk, or a targeted quality push. Administrators with review-type permission can rename a type, edit its description, edit its required evidence and report sections, and turn its Active toggle on or off. Only active types appear when someone creates a new cycle.
Creating a cycle. One Create review sheet does this — it's not a multi-step wizard. Pick the review type, then a scope — organization, institutions, programs, or a mix — and the subjects it covers. Then set a name, a collection-opens date, a submission-due date, and search for an owner. Description, the report-due date, and the working phase aren't set here; add those later from the edit sheet. Creating the cycle only starts the draft. The sheet's own note says the rest — framework, evidence, respondents, review stages, administrators, and launch — is finished afterward on the cycle's Setup tab.
On creation, the platform sets up the working structure automatically: a draft report shell with the required sections, one open blocker for each required evidence item, and the owner as the cycle's first member. The report readiness score starts low and rises as blockers are resolved.
Phases and status. Each cycle moves through phases — setup, collect evidence, review findings, set goals, action plan, report, and follow-up — shown as a stepper on the cycle page. The cycle also carries a status: it begins as a draft, becomes active, and ends as archived or cancelled.
Editing after creation. The Edit review cycle sheet lets you change the name, description, phase, and all three dates. Date edits are validated: the start date cannot fall after the due date, and the due date cannot fall after the report due date. The owner set at creation is not editable from this sheet — replacing an owner means creating a new cycle or handling it through cycle membership.
Review oversight dashboard
Organization and institution administrators get a Review oversight dashboard (Goals and Outcomes › Review oversight). It answers "which programs are covered?" instead of "which cycles exist?" Every live program in your scope appears as a row, even ones with no review cycle, which show as Not started. Each program lands in one of four bands based on its latest active cycle: Behind (at risk, blocked, open report blockers, or overdue action items), Not started, In progress, or Complete.
The dashboard has three layers, top to bottom:
Summary chips — counts for each band over everything that matches your search and filters, not just the visible page. Clicking a chip filters the roster to that band.
Needs your attention — a bounded preview of open blockers, overdue requests, and report handoffs across all your cycles, with links straight to each item.
Coverage roster — a dense, paginated program table with status, risk, readiness, open blockers, overdue actions, and owner. The organization portal groups the roster by institution, with per-institution subtotals. The institution portal shows a flat list of its own programs.
Rows with an active cycle open that program's review workspace. Rows with no cycle offer a Start review cycle button (management permission required) that opens the Create review sheet with the program preselected.
The View all requests link on the attention card opens the organization-wide update-request inbox at Goals and Outcomes › Requests, where you can search and work through every open request across cycles.
Before you start
You need review-cycle management permission at the scope you're creating for (organization, institution, or program) — without it the Create review button doesn't appear.
Know which review type applies, and which institutions or programs the cycle should cover.
Do this
Open the Review cycles page (for example
/organization/goals/reviews) → you should see the review list and, if you can manage reviews, a Create review button.Select the Create review button → the Create review sheet opens on the Review template section.
In the Review template section, pick a review type from the dropdown → confirm the type's help text appears underneath.
In the Assign institutions or programs section, pick a scope from the dropdown, then select the institutions or programs to include → the subjects you check stay selected in the section below.
In the Name and timing section, fill in Name, Collection opens, Submission due, and search for an Owner → confirm the fields show your entries before continuing.
Select the Create draft review button → you should return to the review list and land on the new cycle's Setup tab, where framework, evidence, respondents, review stages, administrators, and launch are finished.
You're done when
✓ The new cycle appears on the review list with a Draft status and the setup phase.
✓ The report shell and one open blocker per required evidence item exist automatically for the cycle.
✓ The owner you picked (if any) shows as the cycle's first member.
Boundaries and limits
Creating a cycle requires review-cycle management permission at the chosen scope. Users without it cannot create cycles even if they can view them.
A cycle's scope and review type are locked at creation — you cannot move a cycle to a different organization, institution, or program, or switch its review type. Create a new cycle instead.
Manual status changes are restricted: a draft can become active or cancelled, and an active cycle can be archived or cancelled. Submitted and approved states are set by the review workflow, not by editing the cycle.
Cycles cannot be permanently deleted from the app; they are archived or cancelled instead.
Review types cannot be deleted either. Deactivate a type to hide it from the Create review dropdown. The app has no screen for creating brand-new review types yet.
Required evidence and report sections come from the review type's defaults and become report blockers at creation. Removing them later means resolving or waiving each blocker, not editing the type's list on an existing cycle.
The Edit review cycle sheet has no owner field; an owner set at creation cannot currently be changed from that sheet.
The review oversight roster shows only the programs you can access. Organization administrators see every institution; institution administrators see their own programs. Narrower access shows a partial roster, not an error.
A program's band reflects its latest active cycle. Archived and cancelled cycles don't count as coverage, so a program whose only review was archived shows as Not started.
Common questions
Q: Can one cycle review several programs at once? A: Yes. Choose an institution, organization, or mixed scope and select multiple subjects; each subject gets its own rollup of goals, risk, and readiness inside the cycle.
Q: What happens if I leave the owner field blank? A: The cycle is created without an owner. You can search for and pick an owner in the Create review sheet before selecting Create draft review; there is currently no field to add or change an owner afterward.
Q: Can I change the review dates after the cycle starts? A: Yes — name, description, phase, and all three dates stay editable from the Edit review cycle sheet. The dates must stay in order: start, then due, then report due.
Q: We finished a review. Do we delete the cycle? A: No. Archive it. Archived cycles remain available for reference and cannot be reactivated.
GME programs
Applies to: gme. Differences from the base article only.
How it works
GME programs typically run their Annual Program Evaluation as a cycle built on the Annual Program Review type, scoped to the residency or fellowship program. The Special Review type is designed for the focused case — underperformance, accreditation risk, or targeted quality improvement — and defaults to a restricted privacy posture.
Two GME-specific connections are worth knowing when setting up the cycle:
CCC linkage — Clinical Competency Committee meeting notes are an accepted evidence source, so the program evaluation can reference the committee's existing records directly instead of duplicating them.
Milestone alignment — improvement goals and objectives created in the cycle can be linked to framework nodes with milestone and competency link types, mapping the action plan onto the milestone framework the program reports against.
Boundaries and limits
Review cycles evaluate the program (or institution) as a whole. They are not the tool for semi-annual reviews of individual residents — resident-level competency reviews are handled through CCC meetings in the gradebook area.
Common questions
Q: Can we use a review cycle for each resident's semi-annual review? A: No. Cycle subjects are programs and institutions, not people. Run resident semi-annual reviews through CCC meetings; the CCC's meeting notes can then feed the program-level review as evidence.
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