Getting Started with Goals

Thursday July 20, 2023-11 min read

Introduction

The Goals app is an individualized growth-tracking tool that encourages productivity and professional development through planned-out objectives. With Goals, you can manage your and your team’s short and long-term objectives while keeping track of every detail along the way. This guide will show you how to get started with Goals, including how to add, view or edit, start and end a goal – and more.

Let’s get started

To open Goals, select “People” from the main navigation bar and click “Goals”.

Upon opening the app, you’ll see a list of goals linked to you. This could be goals that have been assigned to you, goals that you created for another person, or goals that have been created by another person where you have been given access. If no goals are linked to you, this section will appear blank. Let’s go over each tab and the purpose each serves.

Browse – This is the default tab whenever you open the Goals app. It displays a list view of all goals pertaining to you.

Board view – This is a Kanban visual of the goals from the Browse tab which provides a helpful view of goal progression.

Insights – This tab is used to analyzing your goal data. You can configure highly-customizable queries for gaining valuable, measurable components of your goal-tracking such as average goal-completion time, number of goals completed by each employee, or completion rate of your team’s goals.

How to add a new goal

You can create goals for yourself or for someone else. To add a new goal, click the “+” button at the top of the app screen.

Doing so will bring up a screen for adding in new goal information. Let’s go over the different fields.

Goal Type – You can categorize your goal by indicating a goal type. You can create your own types depending on the type of goal. For example, you could create a type called “Productivity” which would pertain to goals involving increased work output.

Assignee – This is who receives the goal and is responsible for completing it. Assignees cannot see a goal assigned to them while the goal draft mode. The goal must have a status of active.

Author – This is the person responsible for writing the goal.

Title – The title of the goal should be a clear-cut, achievable objective.

Privacy setting – You can control the privacy of the goal by clicking one of the boxes under this setting. Private goals are only accessible to you, the author of the goal, and the goal members.

Due date – The due date is meant to set a concrete expectation for when the goal should be complete. All parties associated with the goal will get notified leading up to the due date, as well as the day that goal is completed.

Members – If you are added as a member to a particular goal, you will have access to that goal and will be able to track the assignee’s progress.

Description – The description of a goal should provide details of the objective, set expectations for success and include metrics where possible.

After filling out the desired fields, click “Submit” and the new goal will be created.

How to view or edit a goal

Once you have created a goal, you can view its details by clicking on it from the “Browse” tab. A flyout will appear where you’ll be able to modify the different fields of the goal.

To make any edits, you must be the author or a member of the goal. If you have this access, you’re able to make changes to the goal and Appward will handle the rest with its smooth auto-saving feature. Let’s go over the additional fields within the goal details.

Status – This determines the current state of the goal. Each newly created goal starts in draft mode. This indicates that the goal has not yet been assigned to the proper person. Once the status is changed to “Active”, the goal is considered assigned and the assignee will be able to see it. After the assignee has completed the goal, you can change the status from “Active” to “Complete”.

Age of goal – This is how long the goal has been active in days.

Days until due – This is how long the assignee has until the goal is due.

Assigned, due and completion dates – In order, these are the date that the goal was assigned, the date that the goal is supposed to be completed by, and the date that the goal has been completed.

Review ID, date and title – Goals can be created as part of a review in the Reviews app. Whether they are performance or probationary, reviews will commonly provide new objectives to the reviewee. If applicable, you can link a new goal to a review and that review information will appear in the goal details.

How to start and end a goal

To start a goal, adjust the status of the goal to “Active”. This is done by clicking the “Active” caption of the progress bar in the goal’s details. This will trigger Appward to begin tracking the number of days spent on the goal. For a more detailed estimate of the time spent on a goal, you can use the time logging feature by going into the “Timelog” tab and pressing the “Start” button.

This will track hours, minutes, and seconds.

Note: The time log will not automatically stop once the goal status has been moved to complete. To stop it, click the “Stop” button in the “Timelog” tab.

Once a goal has been completed, adjust the status of the goal to “Complete”. This will bring up the option of notifying the assignee as well as any members that the goal has been completed. A completion date will now appear from the main list for that record:

How to copy, archive or delete a goal

Let’s go over some different things you can do with a goal record.

Copy – If you want to duplicate a goal without having to rewrite the whole thing, you can copy it by going into its details and clicking the “Copy” button in the top right corner.

Archive – To remove a goal from your list of goals with the option of bringing it back as a record, you can archive it with the “Archive” button in the top right corner.

Delete – To remove a goal completely, you can delete it by clicking the “Delete” button from the top right corner.

How to follow or get reminders for a goal

Follows – In many apps, you can “follow” records which will notify you of changes to that record. In the Goals app, you can follow a goal to be notified whenever there has been a progress change and/or a new goal created. To follow a goal, go into the goal’s details and click the “Follow” button in the top-right corner. From the popup that appears, you can select exactly what you’d like to be notified of.

Reminders – You can get reminded of a goal in the form of a notification by clicking “Reminders” in the goal’s details. A popup will appear to add a reminder where you can select the person who will get the reminder, the date that the reminder will get sent and the message to send with the reminder.

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