An assessment written six months into a role should read differently from one written a year later, after real attention has been paid — and evidence is what makes that possible: a running record of things that happened, logged as they happen instead of reconstructed from memory the night before a review.
Either the employee or their manager can log an entry, at any time. It doesn't need a review open, and most entries are written well outside one.
Logging an entry
An entry is short by design: what happened, which framework dimensions it relates to (optional — some things don't map to a single one), and the date, fixed to when it was logged rather than editable afterward. Entries are author-owned. You can edit or delete your own and can't touch anyone else's, in either direction.
Sharing an entry
Every entry is shared by default, meaning the other person can read it right away, attributed to you. There's also a "don't share it yet" option, for when you want to get the wording right first, or you're not sure it's worth raising.
An unshared entry is yours alone until you share it. The other person sees nothing — not the entry, not a count, not a hint that one exists. Both sides get the same drafting room: your manager can hold a note back from you exactly as you can from them.
Citing an unshared entry as evidence in an assessment shares it, permanently, from that point on. There's a confirmation step before that happens, because it's a one-way door — removing the citation afterward doesn't put the entry back into draft.
Deleting an entry
Deleting removes it from the log for both of you, but it doesn't reach backward: if a closed review quoted or referenced that entry, that text stays as it was. Deleting the source doesn't rewrite history already recorded.
Where it shows up
Evidence surfaces in two places: your own record's evidence tab, and inline while writing an assessment, where you can cite an existing entry instead of writing the same thing twice. That second use is the one that matters most. See Assessments for when a rating requires evidence, and why.