As a leader or experienced worker, you know that there is a lot of different information which others in your organization would benefit from being familiar with. By making it more clear who is expected to be familiar with what, we can more easily ensure that the right people are exposed to the right information.

Most often the expectation of being familiar with something occurs in association with a role, meaning that we expect a person holding the role to be familiar with certain aspects of the role.

For instance, we might expect someone who is a project manager to be familiar with the responsibilities they are expected to practice, the processes they are expected to contribute to, the risks they are expected to mitigate, etc.

In other cases, we might have particular expectations of certain individuals to be familiar with a particular piece of information.

The platform supports both these use cases, by providing two ways of setting familiarity expectations both for roles and individuals.

Set familiarity expectations of a role

Setting familiarity expectations for a role consists of dictating which roles are expected to be familiar with a given piece of information.

This is the preferred method of indicating familiarity expectations, as it will ensure that both existing and future role holders will be exposed to the expectation.

In order to request familiarity via a role, add the roles you would like to be familiar with the information under the "Relevant for" section in the right column of the piece of content.

Requesting familiarity via roles does not produce any specific email notifications to role holders, but rather assumes that users are utilizing the Maintaining familiarity with expectations functionality in order to remain up-to-date with role expectations.

Set familiarity expectations of individuals

In some cases, you might want to specifically request familiarity from individuals. Use cases include information which does not require familiarity from a given role, but you still want a particular person to be familiar with it.

When you request familiarity, an email is sent to that person. The email contains a link that will take them to the relevant context where familiarity can be set.

To request individual familiarity, open the Familiarity panel, click the "Request familiarity from someone else" button and fill out the form that appears.

When the invitee changes the state of their familiarity, a new email is sent to the person who requested the familiarity notifying them of their familiarity level.

In some cases, you might want to specifically request that someone update their familiarity. Use cases include

• When you want to draw attention to a particular piece of information
• When information has changed sufficiently to warrant refamiliarization 
• As reminders/social accountability when people have not updated their familiarity in accordance with the expectations of the organization, team or team leader.
• When you feel like the familiarity indication of an individual does not accurately reflect their current familiarity

When you request an update to familiarity, an email is sent to that person. The email contains a link that will take them to the relevant context where familiarity can be updated.

Why requesting familiarity updates is a manually triggered process

You might wonder why requesting updates to familiarity isn't triggered automatically by the system.

The reasons for requiring individuals to trigger this manually are:

• We are more prone to respond to requests from an actual person rather than a system (especially if that person is someone we care about, or someone who holds judgement on our performance).
• In very busy periods, updating familiarity might not be what's most important, and having an automated system continuously nagging about this could result in the recipient slowly developing notification blindness.
• Some organizations/teams/team leaders have come far and have high expectations when it comes to keeping familiarity updated, while others have not (yet). By triggering requests manually the requests remain more relevant and in sync with the actual expectations of the organization and its leaders.
• It's more motivating to update familiarity when we know that a real person actually cares about or is looking to gain insight into our familiarity.

You can request familiarity from individuals in the following contexts.

Piece of information

Request missing familiarity

If you would like to request familiarity from the people who hold roles which are expected to be familiar with the information, but have not yet indicated familiarity, trigger the Familiarity panel and click the orange bell button in relation to the header "Missing familiarity from".

Request an update to familiarity

If you have made significant updates or changes to a particular expectation, it's useful to allow the people who have already indicated their familiarity to familiarize themselves with the updates.

Whenever you edit a piece of information with which people have already indicated their familiarity, you will be prompted whether or not you would like to request a familiarity update from those people.

You can also trigger a familiarity update request manually by opening the Familiarity panel, clicking the "Request an update to familiarity" button and filling out the form that appears.

When you request an update to familiarity, an email is sent to everyone who has already indicated their familiarity requesting them to update it.

If you want to request a familiarity update from a single person, click the allipsis in association with that person and select "Request updated familiarity".

Person

If you would like a person to update familiarity to all the role expections with which they are not 100% aware, navigate to the focus dashboard of that person and click the orange bell button in relation to the "Training and development" heading.

The button only appears if there are role expectations with which the awareness is below 100%.

Expectations in focus

If you would like a person to update familiarity with their expectations in focus, navigate to the focus dashboard of that person and click the orange bell button in relation to the "Expectations in focus" heading.

The button only appears if there are at least 6 days since familiarity was last updated for any of the expectations.

Role

If you would like a person to update familiarity with the expections of a specific role expectation with which they are not 100% aware, navigate to the role holder view and click the orange button with the text "Request missing familiarity".

The button only appears if there are expectations with which the role holder awareness is below 100%.