Set and track goals

Goals let you record what someone is working towards and track how it is going, separate from review cycles.

Before you get started

Goals is available to accounts with the Performance add-on.

Account owners and account managers can create and manage any goal in the account. Managers need the Goals permission to work with their direct reports' goals. Employees and contractors can create, update and archive their own.

Goals people create for themselves are visible to you, so the organisation list is the whole picture rather than only the goals set from the top.

Create a goal

Go to Organisation, then Goals.
Select Add goal.
Enter a Name. This is what appears in the list, so make it the outcome rather than the activity.
Add a Description if it needs one. This is optional.
Set the Period start and Period end. Both are required.
Choose an Owner. This is the person the goal belongs to, not the person creating it.
Select Add.

Every goal starts at Not started and 0%. You cannot set a starting status, and that is deliberate: the first progress update is what puts a real status on it.

Record progress

Progress is a history rather than a single field, so each update is kept and the goal shows the most recent one.

Open the goal from the list.
Select Update progress.
Drag the Progress slider to the percentage complete.
Choose a Status: Not started, On track, At risk, Completed or Cancelled. This is required.
Add a note if there is something worth explaining. This is optional.
Select Save.

The Progress updates section then lists every update, newest first, with who made it, the status they set, when, the percentage they moved it to and any note.

The note is the part people read later. A percentage says how far along something is; a note says why it moved, or why it did not.

Edit or archive a goal

Open the goal and use the menu in the top right.

Edit changes the name, description, period and owner. It cannot change the status, because status only moves through a progress update.
Archive removes the goal.

Archiving a goal removes it from the list for good. It cannot take new progress updates, it does not appear under any filter, and there is no way to bring it back. Archiving a person also archives the goals they own, and restoring that person does not restore their goals.

Find a goal

The goals list has three controls, which matter once an account has more than a screenful.

Search matches on the goal name.
Filters narrow by Period (any, previous, current or future) and by Status (any, open or closed). Closed means Completed and Cancelled, so open is everything still live.
Display sorts by default order, goal name, period, owner, status or progress, ascending or descending, and groups by owner or status.

You're All Done!

You can now create goals, record progress against them and find them again as the list grows.

If you have any questions, please reach out to our support team at help@worknice.com or through the help section in Worknice.