Feedback

Collect ongoing feedback in Windmill via proactive feedback, requested feedback, and Windy-prompted feedback driven by collaboration signals across tools.

There are three different ways that Windmill can help you collect feedback at your organization.

• Proactive Feedback - This is always available to members and lets employees message @Windy to leave feedback for their colleagues.
• Requested Feedback - This is always available to members and lets employees message @Windy to request feedback from their colleagues.
• Windy Prompted Feedback - Windy prompted feedback has to be turned on by an Admin of the Windmill account. When enabled, @Windy will prompt team members to give feedback based on collaboration patterns we see across the integrated systems. Windy Prompted Feedback leverages Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) to reach out to employees at exactly the right time, with the right context, to collect the best feedback possible. This ensures feedback comes immediately after collaboration, when it’s most fresh and relevant.

How to enable Windy Prompted Feedback

As an Admin in your Windmill account, you can enable Windy Prompted Feedback by going to Settings > Feedback and enabling “Windy Prompted Feedback”. This will enable it for any subset of the organization that you choose.

Who can see what in the Feedback settings page

Visibility within the Settings > Feedback page depends on your role in Windmill:

• Admins can see and manage all feedback settings for the organization, including enabling Windy Prompted Feedback, configuring which subsets of the organization receive prompts, and adjusting feedback frequency and sources.
• Managers can see feedback collected for their direct reports, but cannot modify org-wide feedback settings.
• Members do not have access to the Feedback settings page. They can give and request feedback through @Windy, but cannot view or change configuration.

Settings-page access is separate from feedback content visibility. By default, feedback content goes to the recipient’s direct manager — but during a review cycle or via Shoutouts, it can reach a wider audience. See Who can see the feedback I leave in Windmill? for the full picture.

How does Windy Prompted Feedback work?

Windmill connects to your existing business systems (Slack, Google Drive, Jira, GitHub, etc.) and analyzes millions of activities to identify key moments that should yield helpful feedback.

Here’s the process:

1. Windmill analyzes activities - We identify key moments and events across your connected tools
2. Find the right people - We understand who is best positioned to provide meaningful feedback
3. Windy reaches out - Via Slack, Windy contacts team members to collect feedback while it’s fresh
4. Aggregate for managers - Feedback is collected and organized for managers to understand each person’s contributions

This shortens the feedback loop so your team can improve every day.

Benefits of Feedback on Windmill

Feedback in real time Modern managers shouldn’t wait for dedicated performance cycles. Team members deserve the opportunity to improve on a weekly basis, not quarterly or annually.

Reduces manager burden Being a manager is hard, and it’s difficult to keep track of every team member’s contributions. Windmill helps collect feedback from collaborators you may have overlooked.

Keeps business moving Your organization shouldn’t stop for month-long review cycles. The pace of business moves too quickly. Windmill simplifies the process so you can focus on continual feedback and delivering value for customers.

Connect more integrations to give Windmill more context about team collaboration. This improves the quality and timing of feedback requests.

How feedback works

Feedback frequency

Windmill believes that more feedback is better—feedback is a gift. As a general baseline, we aim to collect feedback once or twice per week per employee.

We’re always optimizing to minimize the effort required while maximizing the value of the feedback collected.

Feedback sources

The feedback you see in Windmill comes from two sources:

Windy collects it through Slack Windy solicits feedback from people at critical moments, ensuring it’s timely and relevant.

Your underlying business systems We can also identify feedback in other systems like Slack, Google, Jira, etc., and pull that in automatically.

Initiating feedback

Giving unsolicited feedback

You can always give feedback without Windy asking. Just start a new thread with Windy and say:

“Hey @windy, can I give some feedback to [person’s name]“

Requesting feedback

If you want to request feedback from teammates, ask Windy to collect it for you.

Open a new thread with Windy and write:

“@Windy can you get some feedback about me from [person’s name]”

You can give feedback to multiple people at once. Just reach out to @Windy and ask to give feedback to multiple people—Windy can assist with that.

Who can see the feedback I leave in Windmill?

By default, feedback is private to the recipient’s manager — you don’t choose who sees it, and the person you’re giving feedback about doesn’t see it directly. The manager decides what to share back, and when.

The recipient’s manager sees your feedback on their direct report’s profile, in the Catch Me Up section of their 1:1s, and as [System] writing-aid observations when drafting that person’s manager review during a cycle. Writing-aid observations stay private to the reviewing manager unless they incorporate the content into a written review answer — at which point the answer becomes part of the review packet and follows the packet visibility rules (visible to skip-levels and cycle admins; visible to the subject only for questions marked Visible to employee once the review is shared).

The other path to a wider audience is Shoutouts: for purely positive feedback, Windy will ask whether you want to share it publicly in your Shoutouts channel. Shoutouts only go public after you explicitly say yes.

When Windy prompts you for feedback, they’ll always specify who will be able to see what you write.

FAQs

How does Windy identify when to request feedback?

Windmill uses organizational network analysis to detect when colleagues have been working together. Windy follows up via Slack for timely and constructive feedback right after collaboration happens, making it more relevant and actionable.

How do employees receive feedback requests?

Employees receive feedback requests from Windy directly in Slack as conversational messages. The requests are contextual and timely, based on recent collaboration patterns detected across your connected tools.