Documentation

Getting Started

Logging In

Each company on Timbre gets its own subdomain. To log in, navigate to yourcompany.timbre.top and enter your email and password. If your company has not yet been set up, contact your organization's administrator or sign up for a new account.

Role Overview

Timbre has three user-facing roles, each with different levels of access:

• Client Admin — Full company administrator. Can manage all users, campaigns, reports, settings, billing, and branding. Sees everything within their organization.
• Campaign Admin — Can create and manage campaigns and their own assigned subjects. Cannot access billing, company settings, or other admins' campaigns.
• Survey Subject — The person being evaluated through feedback campaigns. Survey Subjects do not log into the platform and never see their own results.

Dashboard Overview

After logging in, you land on the Dashboard. It provides a high-level summary of your organization's campaign activity, including active campaigns, response rates, and recent results. Client Admins see company-wide metrics, while Campaign Admins see only their own campaigns.

Managing Your Team

Adding and Editing Admins

Navigate to Users from the sidebar. Client Admins can invite new users as either Client Admins or Campaign Admins. To add a new admin:

1. Click Add User in the top right.
2. Enter the user's name, email address, and select their role.
3. Click Save. The user will receive an email invitation to set their password.

To edit an existing admin, click on their name in the user list and update their details. You can change their role, name, or email address. Deactivating a user prevents them from logging in without deleting their data.

Adding and Editing Subjects (ICs)

Subjects are the people who will be evaluated in campaigns. They do not have login access. You can add subjects individually or in bulk:

• Individual: Click Add Subject, fill in name, email, and optionally assign a department.
• CSV Import: Click Import CSV and upload a file with columns for first name, last name, email, and department. The system will validate and preview rows before importing.

Departments

Departments let you organize subjects and unlock department-level reporting. Assign departments when creating or editing subjects. Department names are free-form text and are matched case-insensitively across the platform.

Contact Groups & Recipients

Contact groups define who will provide feedback in a campaign. Each group is a named list of email addresses (contacts) who will receive survey invitations.

Creating Contact Groups

1. Navigate to Contact Groups from the sidebar.
2. Click Create Group.
3. Give the group a descriptive name (e.g., "Engineering Peers", "Q3 Reviewers").
4. Save the group, then add contacts to it.

Adding Contacts

• Manual: Click Add Contact within a group. Enter the contact's name and email address.
• CSV Import: Upload a CSV file with name and email columns. The system validates emails and flags duplicates before importing.

Editing Groups

You can rename groups, add or remove individual contacts, or re-import a CSV at any time. Changes to a group do not affect campaigns that have already been launched.

Using Groups in Campaigns

When setting up a campaign, you select one or more contact groups as respondents. All contacts in those groups will receive survey invitations. You can also deselect individual contacts within a group if needed.

Question Bank

The question bank is your library of reusable survey questions. Questions are shared across your organization and can be used in any campaign.

Creating Scale Questions

Scale questions ask respondents to rate a subject on a numeric scale. Timbre supports two scale types:

• 1-5 Scale: Best for competency ratings and performance dimensions (e.g., "Rate this person's communication skills").
• 1-10 Scale: Best for broader sentiment questions such as eNPS ("How likely are you to recommend working with this person?").

Creating Free Text Questions

Free text questions collect open-ended written feedback. These are essential for capturing nuance that numeric scores cannot convey. Examples: "What should this person start doing?" or "Describe a situation where this person demonstrated leadership."

Archiving Questions

Questions that are no longer needed can be archived. Archived questions are hidden from the question bank but remain intact in any campaigns that used them. You can unarchive a question at any time.

Best Practices for Question Writing

• Keep questions specific and behavior-focused rather than vague or personality-based.
• Use a mix of scale and free text questions for balanced feedback.
• Aim for 5-10 questions per campaign to keep surveys concise and completion rates high.
• Avoid leading questions that suggest a "right" answer.
• Include at least one forward-looking question (e.g., "What is one thing this person could improve?").

Question Templates

Templates are pre-built sets of questions that you can apply to campaigns in one click, saving time when you run similar surveys repeatedly.

Creating a Template

1. Navigate to Question Templates from the sidebar.
2. Click Create Template.
3. Give it a name (e.g., "Standard 360 Review", "Quarterly Pulse").
4. Add questions from your question bank or create new ones inline.
5. Save the template.

Applying Templates to Campaigns

During the campaign wizard's Questions step, click Apply Template to load all questions from a template. You can still add, remove, or reorder questions after applying a template.

Editing Templates

Changes to a template do not retroactively affect campaigns that have already used it. Each campaign gets its own copy of the questions at the time of creation.

360° Campaigns (Individual)

A 360° campaign collects multi-rater feedback about a single subject from a group of respondents. This is the core survey type in Timbre.

Campaign Wizard Walkthrough

Creating a campaign follows a six-step wizard:

1. Basics: Set the campaign name, select the subject (the person being evaluated), and choose the campaign type (360 or Pulse).
2. Questions: Select questions from the question bank, apply a template, or create new questions. Reorder as needed.
3. Respondents: Choose contact groups and optionally deselect individual contacts. These are the people who will fill out the survey.
4. Email: Customize the survey invitation email. Set a custom subject line and body text, or use the platform defaults.
5. Review: Preview all campaign settings before launching. Verify the subject, questions, respondents, and email content.
6. Launch: Launch the campaign immediately or schedule it for later. Once launched, survey invitations are sent to all selected contacts.

Setting Close Dates

Each campaign can have a close date, after which no new responses will be accepted. You can set this during campaign creation or update it later. If no close date is set, the campaign remains open until manually closed.

Custom Email Subject and Body

Customize the invitation email that respondents receive. You can modify the subject line and body text to match your organization's tone. The email always includes the unique survey link for each respondent.

Reminder Configuration

Reminders are sent only to contacts who have not yet completed the survey. You can configure reminders during campaign creation or after launch. See the Reminder Emails section for details on single vs. recurring reminders.

Launching and Monitoring

After launch, the campaign detail page shows real-time progress: total responses, response rate percentage, and individual respondent status. You can send manual reminders or close the campaign early from this view.

Manual Send Reminder

For active campaigns, the campaign detail page includes a Send Reminder button that immediately sends a reminder email to all respondents who have not yet completed their survey. This is useful when a campaign is approaching its close date or after a team meeting where you want to prompt completion. Manual reminders work independently of the automated reminder schedule and are logged in the audit trail.

Email Delivery Statuses

Each respondent's email status is tracked individually:

• Sent — Invitation email was dispatched successfully.
• Delivered — Email was accepted by the recipient's mail server.
• Opened — Recipient opened the email (when tracking is available).
• Bounced — Email could not be delivered (invalid address, full mailbox, etc.).
• Completed — Respondent has submitted their survey response.

Team Campaigns

What Are Team Campaigns?

A team campaign groups multiple subjects (team members) together under one umbrella campaign. Instead of creating individual 360° campaigns for each person, you set up one team campaign and assign subjects and their respective contact groups in a single flow. When launched, Timbre automatically creates individual child campaigns for each subject.

Creating a Team Campaign

1. Navigate to Campaigns and click Create Campaign.
2. Select Team Campaign as the campaign type.
3. Set the campaign name and overall settings (close date, reminders).
4. Select questions that will apply to all subjects in the team.
5. Add subjects to the team from your user list.
6. Assign contact groups to each subject individually.
7. Review and launch.

Assigning Contact Groups Per Subject

Each subject in a team campaign can have different contact groups assigned to them. For example, a manager might be evaluated by their direct reports, while a peer might be evaluated by other team members. You can also deselect individual contacts within each group on a per-subject basis.

Launching

When you launch a team campaign, Timbre automatically creates individual child campaigns for each subject. Each child campaign inherits the questions, email settings, and reminder configuration from the parent team campaign. Survey invitations are sent to the appropriate contacts for each subject.

Monitoring Team Campaign Progress

The team campaign detail page shows aggregate progress across all subjects, as well as per-subject breakdowns. You can see:

• Overall response rate across all subjects.
• Per-subject response rates and statuses.
• Which subjects have completed their review cycles.
• Drill down into any individual child campaign for detailed tracking.

Reminder Emails

Single Reminders (Default)

By default, campaigns use single reminders. A single reminder is sent once to non-respondents after the number of days you specify (e.g., 3 days after launch). This is a one-time nudge.

Recurring Reminders

Recurring reminders are sent repeatedly at a set interval until the contact responds or the campaign closes. The default interval is every 2 days. This is useful for campaigns where high response rates are critical.

Rotating Email Templates

When recurring reminders are enabled, Timbre automatically rotates through 3 different email template variations. This prevents recipients from seeing the same reminder text repeatedly, which helps maintain engagement and avoid "reminder fatigue."

Setting Reminder Mode Per Campaign

You can configure the reminder mode during campaign creation in the Email step of the wizard, or update it after launch from the campaign settings. Choose between:

• Single: One reminder after N days.
• Recurring: Repeated reminders every N days with rotating templates.

Bulk Campaign Editing

Selecting Campaigns

On the Campaigns list page, use the checkboxes next to each campaign row to select the campaigns you want to edit. Use the header checkbox to select or deselect all visible campaigns. A blue selection bar appears showing the count and an Edit Settings button.

Available Bulk Settings

The bulk edit panel lets you update the following fields across all selected campaigns. Only fill in fields you want to change — empty fields are left unchanged:

• Close Date: Update the close date for all selected campaigns.
• Reminder Days: Set the number of days after launch to send reminders.
• Reminder Mode: Switch between Single and Recurring reminder modes.
• Reminder Interval: Set the interval between recurring reminders (only visible when Recurring mode is selected).

Pulse & eNPS Surveys

Creating Pulse Campaigns

Pulse surveys are shorter, more frequent surveys designed to measure team health and engagement over time. To create a pulse campaign, select Pulse as the campaign type in the wizard. Pulse campaigns typically use fewer questions (3-5) and target broader groups.

eNPS Scoring

Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) is calculated from 1-10 scale questions. Respondents are categorized as:

• Promoters (9-10): Highly satisfied, likely to recommend.
• Passives (7-8): Neutral, neither positive nor negative.
• Detractors (1-6): Dissatisfied, potentially at risk.

The eNPS score is calculated as: % Promoters - % Detractors, yielding a score from -100 to +100.

Recurring Schedules

Pulse campaigns can be set up on recurring schedules to automatically launch at regular intervals (weekly, monthly, quarterly). See the Campaign Schedules section for details.

Department-Level Analysis

Pulse survey results can be broken down by department, allowing you to compare engagement and sentiment across different teams. This requires subjects to have departments assigned in their profiles.

Reports

Timbre offers a comprehensive suite of reports to help you understand feedback data at every level. All reports are accessible from the Reports section in the sidebar.

Campaign Report

The campaign report provides a complete view of a single campaign's results:

• Response rates: Overall and per-respondent completion tracking.
• Scale averages: Mean scores for each scale question with distribution charts.
• Score distributions: See how ratings are spread across the scale.
• Free text responses: All open-ended feedback, anonymized.

User Report

The user report aggregates results across all campaigns for a single subject. It shows trends over time, highlighting how scores have improved or declined across review cycles. This is the go-to report for individual development conversations.

Comparison Report

Compare results across multiple campaigns side by side. Use this to benchmark performance across different time periods or between different subjects.

Department Report

Aggregate feedback data at the department level. See average scores, response rates, and trends for each department. Useful for identifying which teams are thriving and which may need additional support.

AI Insights

Timbre's AI analysis engine generates narrative insights from your campaign data. AI Insights include:

• Tone profile analysis of free text feedback.
• Statistically significant findings from scale data.
• Actionable recommendations based on patterns in the data.
• Strength and growth area identification.

Rankings Report

The rankings report shows how subjects compare to each other across shared questions. Use this to identify top performers and those who may benefit from additional coaching.

Culture Reports Hub

The Culture Reports Hub is a centralized dashboard that aggregates data across all campaign types to give you a holistic view of organizational culture health, including eNPS trends, department comparisons, and participation metrics.

Exporting

Most reports can be exported for offline analysis or sharing:

• CSV: Raw data export for use in spreadsheets or other tools.
• PDF: Formatted report suitable for printing or sharing with stakeholders.

White-Label Branding

Customizing Brand Colors

Navigate to Settings > Branding to customize your organization's brand colors. You can set:

• Primary color: Used for buttons, links, and interactive elements.
• Sidebar background: Customize the navigation sidebar color.
• Additional accents: Fine-tune secondary colors for a cohesive look.

Color changes are applied in real-time across the entire platform for all users in your organization.

Logo Upload

Upload your company logo to replace the Timbre logo throughout the platform. Supported formats include PNG, JPG, and SVG. The logo appears in the sidebar, login page, and email headers. Uploaded images are automatically converted to PNG format for maximum compatibility across email clients.

Email Branding

All outgoing emails (survey invitations, reminders, digests) automatically use your custom branding. Your logo and brand colors are applied to email templates so recipients see a consistent brand experience.

Tier Requirements

Branding customization requires the Growth or Enterprise plan. The Core tier uses default Timbre branding. Visit the Pricing page to compare tiers.

Daily Digest Emails

What Are Digests?

Daily digest emails are summary notifications sent to admins each morning. They provide a quick overview of campaign activity from the previous day, so you can stay informed without logging into the platform.

Per-Campaign Toggle

Digests can be enabled or disabled on a per-campaign basis. When creating or editing a campaign, toggle the digest option to control whether that campaign's activity is included in the daily email.

What's Included in the Digest

Each daily digest email includes:

• New responses received in the past 24 hours.
• Updated response rates for active campaigns.
• Campaigns approaching their close date.
• Any email delivery issues (bounces).

Campaign Schedules

Setting Up Recurring Schedules

Campaign schedules allow you to automate the launch of recurring surveys. This is particularly useful for pulse surveys and regular check-ins. To set up a schedule:

1. Create a campaign as usual through the wizard.
2. In the campaign settings, enable Recurring Schedule.
3. Set the frequency (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly).
4. Set the start date for the first occurrence.
5. The system will automatically launch new instances of the campaign at the scheduled intervals.

Automatic Launch

Scheduled campaigns are launched automatically at 8:00 AM on the scheduled date. Each new instance uses the same questions, respondents, and email settings as the original campaign. You can view all scheduled and past instances from the campaign detail page.

Account & Settings

Company Settings

Client Admins can manage company-wide settings from Settings in the sidebar. This includes:

• Company name and subdomain.
• Default campaign settings.
• Branding customization (Growth/Enterprise tiers).
• User limits and seat management.

User Preferences

Individual users can update their own profile information (name, email, password) from their account settings. Notification preferences, including daily digest opt-in, are also managed here.

Billing

Timbre uses Stripe for billing management. Client Admins can access billing from Settings > Billing to:

• View current plan and tier (Core or Growth).
• Update payment methods.
• Change billing interval (monthly or annual).
• Adjust seat count as your team grows.
• View invoice history.

Seat-based pricing is volume-banded: the per-seat cost decreases as your team size increases. Visit the Pricing page for current rates.

Troubleshooting

Email Delivery Issues

If survey invitations are not being received by respondents:

• Check the email status on the campaign detail page. Look for "Bounced" status, which indicates an invalid email address.
• Ask recipients to check their spam or junk folders. Add your company's Timbre subdomain to their safe sender list.
• Verify the contact's email address is correct in the contact group.
• For persistent delivery issues, contact support with the campaign ID and affected email addresses.

Login Problems

• Forgot password: Use the "Forgot Password" link on the login page to receive a password reset email.
• Wrong subdomain: Make sure you are accessing the correct company subdomain (e.g., yourcompany.timbre.top). Logging in from the wrong subdomain will fail.
• Account deactivated: If your account has been deactivated by an administrator, you will not be able to log in. Contact your company's Client Admin.

Survey Link Issues

• Link expired: Survey links become inactive once the campaign is closed. Check the campaign close date.
• Already submitted: Each survey link can only be used once. If a respondent has already submitted their response, they will see a confirmation message instead of the survey.
• Link not working: Ensure the full URL was copied correctly. Some email clients may break long URLs across lines.