Inspire Software 10.2 Release
Inspire 10.2 introduces the new Inspire Agent alongside a deep round of platform enhancements across strategy, objectives, performance, the newsfeed, recognition, and administration. AI now lives where the work happens, and the experience around it is faster, cleaner, and easier to configure.
Highlights for this release:
- The Inspire Agent, a built-in AI chatbot for your work
- Bring-your-own-AI through the Inspire MCP server and connectors
- Aspirational corporate objectives for stretch-goal tracking
- A cleaner, faster objective and key result experience
- Self-assessment downloads and refined performance cycles
- Embedded web content on the homepage and Daily Calendar
The Inspire Agent
- A conversational assistant now lives on the Inspire home screen, ready to answer questions, guide users, and take action without leaving the platform.
- Professionally written prompts included, no prompt engineers needed!
- The assistant opens each day with proactive, day-aware prompts that surface what needs attention, from pending check-ins to upcoming 1-1s.
- Users can create and refine objectives and key results in a guided conversation, turning a plain-language goal into a structured OKR.
- Check-ins can be completed directly in the chat, so progress updates happen in the flow of conversation rather than on a separate screen.
- New users are walked through onboarding by the assistant, shortening the path from first login to first meaningful action.
Bring Your Own AI
- Inspire now provides an MCP server, letting teams connect the AI assistant they already use, including Claude, Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok.
- The connection is bidirectional, so your AI assistant of choice can both read from and write to Inspire, answering questions about your goals and updating them on your behalf.
- Every action is permission-scoped to the signed-in user, so the assistant only sees and changes what that person is allowed to.
- All activity is fully audited and tenant-isolated, keeping each customer’s data separate and traceable, and Inspire never uses your data to train a model.
Advanced Agent & Skills
- Scheduled agents can be provided to users of Claude or Copilot that now bookend the workday, with a morning Daily Briefing and an afternoon Daily Closeout that pull context from MCP Connectors including Outlook, G-Suite, Teams, documents, HubSpot/Salesforce, Inspire and any relevant connectors from systems to help the productivity of your day.
- A DISC-aware recognition skill helps managers recognize teammates in language tuned to how each person prefers to receive it.
- Additional skills support everyday leadership work, including 1-1 preparation, weekly planning, strategy authoring, and OKR review.
- Live dashboard embeds let teams surface Inspire data inside the surfaces where they already work.
Corporate Strategy & Objectives
- The strategy hierarchy now shows an objective’s parent chain when viewing an LTKR or CKR, making it clear where each result sits within the larger strategy.
- A new filter on the Corporate Objective Summary widget lets users narrow which corporate objectives appear on the homepage.
- Corporate objectives can now be set as Aspirational similar to Corporate Key Results, marked with a distinct purple line and inheriting aspirational status thresholds.
- The strategy hierarchy adds a horizontal alignment view, with filters and clearer labels for how objectives align across the organization.
- Check-ins can now be started directly from the LTKR and CKR side panel on the strategy view, without opening a separate screen.
- When adding an objective from the strategy view, all available periods are now shown, so work can be placed in the right timeframe.
- Progress status text now autofills on overridden LTKR and CKR check-ins, reducing manual entry.
Objectives (OKRs) / Goals
- The objectives settings panel now lets users show or hide due dates and turn objective grouping on or off.
- The Objective Activity widget gains a settings gear for displaying due dates, filtering by task priority, and choosing the sort order.
- The key result edit panel now shows only the fields relevant to the chosen result type and collapses disabled fields for a cleaner view.
- The contributor table is hidden when a key result has a single contributor, and activities are hidden by default to simplify the panel.
- Hovering over an objective’s performance indicator now shows which cycle the objective belongs to.
- A default alignment of Direct or Indirect can now be set for CKRs, so new key results align consistently without manual selection.
Performance
- Self-assessments and appraisals now offer a Download action in place of Print, producing a cleaner saved copy.
- Objectives can now be included in self-assessment and appraisal cycles even when no performance agreement exists, with a new Auto Assign Performance Objective job scheduler to populate them.
- A new mid-cycle comment, tied to the performance agreement, lets users add context during the cycle, with section selection and grading where applicable.
- The prompt that appeared when submitting a self-assessment with objectives not marked achieved has been removed, streamlining submission.
- Supervisor score fields are now hidden on self-assessment-only appraisal downloads, while the grade still displays where appropriate.
- Check-ins can now be started from the objective side panel within performance and appraisal views.
Recognition & Reports
- The Recognition Activity report now includes the name of the admin or manager who approved or rejected each award.
- Recognition admins are now notified when awards are pending their approval.
- Custom reports can now include objective and key result descriptions.
Administration & Platform
- Microsoft 365 sign-in now uses a full-page redirect in place of the pop-up window, improving reliability across browsers.
- Admins can now enable or disable each check-in flag individually, choosing whether Win, Setback, and Initiative are available to users.
- A new free AI software license is provided to all clients to enable the use of the new 10.2 Inspire Agent Chatbot. The initial release provides 10 licenses to all clients for the initial evaluation period and is recommended to be assigned to the Inspire admins, champion and power users to evaluate this new capability. Free AI licenses will be provided for all users later in Q3 2026.
- Admins can enable or disable the new AI Agent/Chat feature for all users. Only users with the AI license assigned will see the new AI Agent Chat in the homepage options.
- Admins can now turn the Nudge feature on or off across the organization.
- New HubSpot-backed support and feedback forms let users submit requests with attachments directly from Inspire.
- The mobile module controls have been removed from the admin navigation to simplify settings.
Additional Enhancements: 1-1, Newsfeed, Homepage & Calendar
- The 1-1 Agenda agent now splits the post-agenda setting for managers, with separate controls for posting your own agenda and posting agendas for direct reports.
- The Newsfeed check-in display has been revised so Nudge moves into the ellipsis menu.
- Status text now truncates to three lines and tagged key results display in grey for easier scanning.
- In the Newsfeed, the owner label is hidden when no owner is assigned and when the owner posts their own check-in, while contributor names still display.
- The Daily Calendar can now enable or disable an embedded web content widget.
- An Embed Web Content widget can now be added to the homepage, letting teams surface external pages, such as a daily briefing alongside their primary widgets.
Bringing It All Together
Inspire 10.2 pairs a major leap in AI with steady, practical refinement across the platform. The Inspire Agent and bring-your-own-AI bring intelligence into the daily flow of work, while dozens of enhancements to strategy, objectives, performance, the newsfeed, and administration make the everyday experience faster and easier to manage.
If you missed our previous releases in 2025 or 2026 so far, here are links to the highlights:
10.1 Release: Explorer folders, Quick Add Objective, Configurable periods for COs, Enhanced Team Details, Improved performance management workflows, more
10.0 Release: More flexible and efficient performance cycles, Stronger OKR collaboration, visibility, and control, Cleaner reporting and easier data access, Expanded survey capabilities for richer feedback, New AI assistance to support team OKR / goal execution
9.3 Release: AI Agents, Corporate Objective Privacy, Team Objective workflow, more
9.2 Release: Strategy List View, Strategy Department & Business Unit Filters, Explorer Enhancements, more
9.1 Release: Objective Tags, 1-1 Agenda Summaries & Conversations with Inspire AI, Customize Performance Cycles & Download Appraisals, more
9.0 Release: New Objective Explorer, Strategy Narrative updates, Public Objective Conversations, more