Inspire Version History
Click to skip to each Version history below:
Version 9.1 Release
We are thrilled to announce the latest features in our 9.1.0 release, which are meticulously designed to provide you with a more intuitive, efficient, and secure experience. Stay tuned for more exciting updates as we continue to enhance Inspire Software.
Corporate Strategy
Hierarchy display settings: Customize your view by showing or hiding numeric KR details, dates, and the hierarchy controls to suit your strategic needs.
Strategy timeline display settings: Tailor your timeline with the option to show or hide the corporate objective owner, strategic key result owner, and dates, offering a clear overview of progress.
Check-in on strategic key results: Seamlessly enter status updates for CKRs or LTKRs and instantly post to the Newsfeed, keeping everyone in the loop.
Additional Strategy enhancements:
- Monitor actual units complete with ease.
- Identify private OKRs with a simple icon.
- Effortlessly adjust or remove alignment team objectives directly from the strategy hierarchy.
- Show or hide priority and numeric details from the timeline for a refined focus.
Objectives
Objective tags: Enhance your organization by tagging OKRs and filtering by tags in the explorer, making it easier to track and manage objectives.
Observer check-ins: Empower users not directly contributing to key result progress to provide valuable status updates.
Additional Objective enhancements:
- Recognize check-ins easily from the objective side panel.
- View key result dates in read-only objective views, enhancing transparency.
- Ensure new team KRs are defaulted to Shared progress, fostering collaboration.
Objective Explorer
Privacy filter/column and Project filter/column: Refine your search and organization with the addition of Privacy and Project filters/columns, making your explorer more intuitive.
1-1
Generate an agenda summary with Inspire AI: Quickly draft an agenda summarizing the status of objectives with the help of Inspire AI, streamlining your preparation.
Initiate a conversation in the 1-1 with Inspire AI: Easily start a conversation with your manager in the 1-1, using Inspire AI to create draft suggestions for a smooth dialogue.
Performance
Performance Cycle customizations: Administrators can now disable the grade sheet for a cycle and adjust the placement of the Summary tab, offering greater flexibility in managing performance cycles.
Download appraisals: Download a PDF version of an appraisal in the Performance module or profile. Admins can download specific user appraisals (active or archived) or export all appraisals for any cycle, with downloads provided as .zip files containing one file per cycle participant.
Plan
Reassign tasks: Seamlessly reassign tasks, ensuring efficient task management if task assignment is enabled for your organization.
Suggest tasks with AI Assistant: Propel your OKR progress forward by generating high-impact tasks from the Objective Activity widget or Weekly Plan, thanks to our AI Assistant.
Reports
Custom Task Report: Create personalized views of tasks to efficiently track completion and status, keeping you on top of your objectives.
Integrations
Excel: Integrate strategic, team, and individual key results with Excel for a comprehensive overview.
Slack: Receive Inspire notifications within your Slack workspace, staying informed and connected.
Additional Enhancements
Refreshed login experience: Enjoy enhanced security and a sleek new look with our updated login interface.
Localization: We are thrilled to announce that Chinese is now available as a locale, making our platform more accessible to a broader audience.
These updates are designed to provide you with a more intuitive, efficient, and secure experience. Stay tuned for more exciting features in the future!
If you have any questions about our newest features and updates from the 9.1 release, please contact us at support@inspiresoftware.com.
Version 9.0 Release Highlights
At Inspire Software, we are dedicated to empowering organizations with our latest 9.0 release, featuring the new Objective Explorer for detailed tracking, Strategy Narrative updates for clearer action items, and Public Objective Conversations to enhance collaboration. These enhancements are designed to streamline workflows and drive organizational success.
Objectives
Introducing the Objective Explorer
Our new Objective Explorer offers a comprehensive overview of all your objectives, neatly displayed in an intuitive list format based on the filters you apply. This powerful tool appears directly within the Objectives module, allowing you to set and refine filters to display precisely the data you need. Each objective is presented with sortable columns such as Owner, Priority, Current Progress, Objective Status, Confidence (if enabled), Team Name, and Business Unit. Clicking on any title opens a detailed Objective side-panel for in-depth insights.
Strategy Narrative Updates: Clarity at Every Step
We've enhanced our Strategy Narrative with updates that provide clearer action items and improved visualization of CKR status. These updates make it easier to summarize and communicate your strategies, ensuring everyone is aligned and moving in the same direction. A new link in notifications allows users to access narratives directly, streamlining the workflow even further.
Public Objective Conversations: Collaborate Openly
Collaboration reaches new heights with our Public Objective Conversations feature. When enabled, users can add discussions on public OKRs, fostering open communication and collective progress.
More Objective Enhancements
Key Result Owners now have the ability to edit any KR they own, ensuring accuracy and up-to-date information.
Our rich text editor for status updates has been upgraded to enable users to add or clear formatting in their check-ins, making updates more informative and visually appealing.
Reports
Enhanced Reporting Capabilities
Inspire Software 9.0 brings several improvements to our reporting features:
- Revised custom report archived filter
- Strategic confidence added to reports if enabled for your organization
- Enhanced Strategy Snapshot report with additional details
- Now filter to a specific strategies in Check-in Summary, OKR Summary, and OKR Trends reports
- New Permissions report to see which users in the organization are assigned security permissions
Administration
Administration Enhancements
We’ve made several updates to streamline administrative tasks:
- German is now available as a locale
- New Notes widget for Company dashboards, allowing Admins only to edit and update notes visible to anyone with access to the Dashboard
Inspire Software 9.0 is more than just an update; it's a leap forward in organizational excellence. Discover these features and more to see how our latest release can transform your organization's productivity and success.
Meet Your New Digital Assistant Coming Soon: Inspire Copilot ChatBot
(Currently in Beta Testing)
Navigate the capabilities of Inspire with the help of our new ChatBot, powered by Open AI and Microsoft Copilot technology. Currently in beta testing, this cutting-edge tool is designed to enhance your Inspire experience, providing answers and guidance pulled from our knowledge base. While our Copilot AI is not yet foolproof, it represents our commitment to bringing you the latest in AI technology.
Your Feedback is Welcome
While we are dedicated to refining Inspire Copilot AI's capabilities, we welcome your feedback. It is helpful and appreciated, but not a requirement. Rest assured, we are proactively improving the ChatBot to better serve your needs.
If you encounter any troubles finding the answer you are looking for with our new ChatBot, our comprehensive knowledge base remains the most reliable resource for accurate answers. Whether you're seeking quick information or detailed guidance, the knowledge base is your go-to solution. We appreciate your patience and contributions as we perfect this innovative feature.
Version 8.3 Release Highlights
Unleash your organization’s potential with the latest features and enhancements of Inspire 8.3, designed to streamline task delegation, enhance strategy communication and business reviews, and improve performance management.
Version 8.3 Release Highlights
Assign Tasks
Enhance your planning and task execution with the new Assign Tasks feature! Allow users to effortlessly delegate tasks across the organization, ensuring clear responsibility and alignment with team objectives and projects. Ideal for project managers and team leaders, it simplifies workload distribution. With task assignment built directly into Inspire, users can manage tasks related to OKRs and roles without the need for external communication.
Strategy Narrative Subscriptions & Enhancements
The Strategy Narrative feature is invaluable for maintaining transparency and alignment across your organization. Corporate Strategy Administrators can now create Subscriptions for Strategy Narratives, automatically sending narratives to subscribers on a defined cadence. This enhancement reduces the administrative burden of manual narrative creation and ensures key stakeholders receive regular strategic updates via email.
Corporate Strategy Admins can enable a subscription to be open for all users in the organization to subscribe and receive the emailed narrative, or it can be set as closed to a specific group in the organization.
Additionally, the new enhanced filter options for manually and automatically generated Strategy Narratives provide more flexibility and precision in your strategic updates.
Performance Management
Improve the quality of performance reviews and appraisals with our new upgrade to Performance Management. If your organization enables the optional Next Level Supervisor Approval, supervisors' managers must review, then approve or reject appraisals submitted by their direct reports.
By involving skip-level managers in the appraisal review, the feature encourages more personalized coaching and provides constructive feedback, contributing to the development of managers.
Additional Enhancements
Objectives
Users can now set activity completion percentages to indicate progress on an activity associated with a key result. Amplify transparency and minimize external communication for important initiatives with this feature.
We have strengthened Inspire’s integration with MicroSoft Planner for better task management. You can now view all Planner Tasks linked to key results without having to edit the OKR. Additionally, we've made it easier to integrate key results with Planner and include all tasks that match your filter(s).
Reports
- The Task Status by Department report provides a high-level overview of task progress and completion.
- Access help articles easily from the filter panel within reports.
- A new option allows you to drill down by status in the OKR Progress report.
Dashboards
- The Embed Web Content widget allows users to easily embed reports in dashboards from outside sources such as Power BI, Tableau, or Looker.
- Expand dashboards and dashboard widgets to full screen for smoother and more comprehensive view during presentations.
These updates are designed to provide you with a more intuitive experience in Inspire, helping you achieve your goals with greater ease and precision. We are committed to continuously improving our software to meet your needs and exceed your expectations!
Version 8.2 Release Highlights
In the latest 8.2 release of Inspire, experience the revolutionary Strategy Narrative AI Widget, our new Microsoft Planner Integration, and more capabilities to increase productivity and collaboration.
Strategy Narrative AI Widget
Empower your strategic planning and monthly or quarterly business reviews with Inspire 8.2, featuring the revolutionary Strategy Narrative AI Widget. Experience a seamless integration of insights and updates from key contributors, all in one intuitive view. With Inspire 8.2, you're not just planning; you're setting the stage for success.
- Leverage additional Strategic Narrative capabilities to generate a comprehensive MBR/QBR presentation using Microsoft Copilot® with a single click.
Microsoft Planner integration
Say goodbye to juggling multiple project management tools. The latest Inspire release introduces a game-changing Planner integration, positioning Microsoft Planner at the forefront of project management. In addition to our standard integration of calendar and tasks with MS Outlook, ToDo and Planner tasks, our new Planner integration feature allows you to synchronize tasks with key results and track your project's progress with unparalleled ease.
Meet Your New Digital Assistant: Inspire Copilot (Currently in Beta Testing)
Navigate the complexities of Inspire with the help of our new ChatBot, powered by Open AI and Microsoft Copilot technology. Currently in beta testing, this cutting-edge tool is designed to enhance your Inspire experience, providing answers and guidance pulled from our knowledge base. While our Copilot AI is not yet foolproof, it represents our commitment to bringing you the latest in AI technology.
Your Feedback is Welcome
While we are dedicated to refining Inspire Copilot AI's capabilities, we welcome your feedback. It is helpful and appreciated, but not a requirement. Rest assured, we are proactively improving the ChatBot to better serve your needs.
If you encounter any troubles finding the answer you are looking for with our new ChatBot, our comprehensive knowledge base remains the most reliable resource for accurate answers. Whether you're seeking quick information or detailed guidance, the knowledge base is your go-to solution. We appreciate your patience and contributions as we perfect this innovative feature.
Version 8.2 Features
Corporate Strategy: A Game-Changer for Your Business
Are you ready to take your corporate strategy to the next level? With Inspire 8.2, you can do just that. This latest version of our software offers a suite of features that will help you create, manage, and communicate your strategic vision with clarity and confidence. Here are some of the highlights of what you can expect from Inspire 8.2's corporate strategy module:
- Create and manage strategic narratives that can be saved, exported to MicroSoft Word® for external use, or showcase them on dashboards with the new Narrative Widget.
- New strategic capabilities now exist to allow the indirect alignment of Corporate Key Results (CKR) and Long Term Key Results (LTKR).
- Gain quick insight on Objective progress by Nudging owners to provide timely updates.
- Gain deeper strategic insights into your business trajectory by setting a confidence levels on Strategic Objectives and Key Results.
Take Your Objectives to the Next Level
Version 8.2 offers a range of features that make creating, tracking, and aligning objectives easier and more effective. Here are some of the benefits you can enjoy with Inspire 8.2's objectives module:
- Use decimal values for weighting key results to increase flexibility.
- Check-in on Objectives with improved features and a refined user interface.
- Objective activities can now be marked off during the Check-in process to help better define progress.
- Sync key result progress with external integrations, such as MicroSoft Planner®.
- View alignment hierarchy, contributor updates, and progress from enhanced Check-in history using the side panel.
Seamless Planner Integration
Key Results integration with Microsoft Planner® automates key result progress tracking based on task completion, revolutionizing how you manage projects.
Reports
The OKR Trends report offers a clear view of progress trends for individual and team OKRs, while the OKR Counts report provides an enhanced understanding of OKR counts throughout your organization.
Additional Enhancements
- New rich text editing capabilities for 1-1 conversations.
- New dashboard capability to Embed Tableau content.
- View all award history for yourself or your direct reports in the User Profile
- Administrators can control the display of 1-1 Execution Percentage within the Performance Dashboard
Version 8.1 Release Details
Version 8.1 Release Details
Work Groups and Teams
Inspire now makes teams and work groups first class citizens by allowing team leaders to quickly build, track and report on team objectives, progress and other insights throughout the application.
- Allow selection of teams within the objective editor and step-by-step builder
- Provide teams filters for all new objective reports
Reports & Analytics
Three amazing new reports to show objectives, progress and key status updates by team as well as helpful insights by department, business unit and region. Perfect for quarterly business reviews or regular team meetings!
- OKR Summary Report - Summarize OKR progress and confidence, group by team/department/business unit.
- OKR Counts Report – The OKR Counts Report now includes overall company statistics, and the ability to drill down and view OKR counts for all employees.
- Check-in Summary Report – view all flagged check-ins grouped by Team, Business Unit or Department.
Integrations
A native integration with Domo for rich data experiences along with our new integration with Finch which provides Inspire easy access to over 100 other HRIS and payroll systems including Workday, ADP, UKG, SAP and many more to empower organizations with data-driven workforce insights and process automation.
- Domo integration administration
- User selection of Domo integration within Key Results
- Expose HRIS data through Finch integration
Improved AI
Inspire continues to be the leader in AI prompts with expert guidance from the industries top leadership development authors and consultants.
- Added ability to access multiple AI models including GPT 3.5 and 4.0
- Integration of DISC personality types into performance AI prompts
Objectives
Now setup shared progress key results to allow any contributor to update progress for the team and improve tracking of activities within key results.
- Shared Progress Key Result - Set up a team key result that is shared progress, so that all contributors can update the overall key result completion.
- Measure Key Result Progress by Activity Completion - Set up a key result's progress to be driven by activity completion. As activities are marked complete, key result progress will update automatically.
- Add a Team to an Objective - Within the step-by-step builder and objective editor, select a team to assign everyone as a contributor to the objective.
- Flag a Check-in - Flag a check-in as a win, setback, or initiative to differentiate important status updates.
- Set Objective and Key Result Confidence Level - Indicate confidence in achieving an objective or key result to provide status to stakeholders.
- Replace the read-only objective modal with the slide-out panel - Provide more context and progress history by opening a side panel when clicking an objective title from places like Reports, the Profile, and Performance.
Version 8.0 Release Details
Enhanced AI Assistance
- Implementing AI features in all of the major modules of Inspire including Objectives, Corporate Strategy, 1-1, Performance, and Recognition.
- Access the Inspire AI Assistant in all tabs of a Performance Self-Assessment or Appraisal
- Inspire AI Assistant added to 360s Assessments and optionally utilize the recipient’s DISC in your assessment summary.
- Simple shortcuts available to quickly refine AI prompts.
- Inspire AI Assistant is available when writing a Description of Achievement for an award in Recognition.
Localization
- Fully localized Objectives and Performance modules
- Enhanced localization of 1-1 and Weekly Plan modules
Reports
- Enhanced Custom Report to include Tasks and Numeric KR Data
- Filter for filtering to Team or Individual Objectives only for the OKRs by Status and OKR Status by Department reports
Objectives
- Check-Ins
- Added Suggestions for Check-ins
- Default status update entered when updating key result progress.
- Objective Step-by-Step Builder
- Create an individual or team objective in the revised builder.
- Create an individual or team objective in the revised builder.
Corporate Strategy
- Cascade a strategic key result to a group of users.
- Filter the Strategy by public group.
Key Results Enhancement
- Track Numeric Key Result progress by Actual instead of Difference to make it easier for users to input their actual progress vs putting in the difference of progress.
- Linked Key Results – Select another Objective or Key Result as your key result’s source of progress.
- Key results will inherit the attributes and progress of the source of progress.