Updating your goals

Once a goal is created in PerformYard, it's easy to update progress and maintain goal information, all from the Goals tab. The Goals tab has your list of “My Goals” on the left and, if you are a manager, a list for your team’s goals. At the top of the page, you'll have a search box that allows you to type a goal name. Additionally, you'll have a filter button, a Create Goal button and a Download CSV button. Beneath you'll find a list of any filters currently applied; these lists default to active goals, but you can use the filter option above to further change the filters.

In the goal list (which is sortable by clicking on the column headers), you’ll see the goal name, visual indicators for transparency/goal sharing/unread updates, assignee (which could be someone else that has shared their goal with you), due date, status and progress for the goal, which is colored according to the outlook. 

To work with a goal, click on the goal's name. You'll see the basic information of the goal at the top, including the assignee, the goal's overall target, due date, and any categories the goal falls under. On the right side, you’ll see a side panel containing a number of different options to view updates or detailed information about a goal.

Specifically, the right side panel contains three different sections that break down information about a goal in a number of ways. Below is an explanation of each:

  • Goal Progress - The Goal Progress section contains a history of goal progress updates and checklist completion records sorted by As Of date. This is a useful view if a manager wishes to see a filtered view of updates solely about how well the goal is doing.
  • Activity Stream - The Activity Stream section contains a list of all actions taken against the goal, including other actions not listed in the Goal Progress section like records of changes to the text of a goal's description, when the goal is shared with others, or when checklist items are created for a goal. Updates in this section are sorted by the date the change was made rather than the As Of date, so the sort order of information may be different than what you see in the Goal Progress section.
  • Goal Details - The Goal Details section contains a list of attributes about the goal. These include fields not displayed at the top of the page like a goal's alignment, weight, or when the goal was created.

The Options menu has a few choices for things you can do to the goal.

Within Options, you can:

  • Edit, which will allow you to change the name, description and other details of the goal.
  • Update, which will prompt you for a new value and comment, along with as-of date and outlook.*
  • Share Goal, which will bring up a list of current employees who share the goal and the ability to add more employees.
  • Duplicate, which will allow you to create a new goal using this goal’s parameters as a starting point.
  • Archive, which will remove the goal from your Active list but not mark the goal as Complete. To delete a goal it must first be archived, once archived a Delete option may appear under the Options menu.*
  • Mark as Complete, which will prompt you to enter a final value, comment and as-of date.

*While all users can archive goals, employees and/or their manager may have the permission to entirely delete a goal depending on the organization's permission settings, which are determined by your organization's administrators. Administrators can always delete goals entirely. 

A goal can be updated by selecting one of three separate sections of the page:

  • By selecting the Update Progress button under the Option dropdown
  • By selecting the Update Progress button displayed in the chart section
  • By selecting the + icon in the chart section that appears when you hover over the line graph

When updating a goal you can provide an updated value for the goal, a comment about it, an as-of date for the update and update the outlook.*

A note about the Increment Value option. This will add the number entered in the Value section to the existing value of the goal rather than replace the value. For example, if your goal is currently at 40% and are now 55% complete, you could do either:

  • Enter 55 in the Value and leave the increment value box unchecked.
  • Enter 15 in the Value and select the increment value box. This will add 15 to 40, giving you a new value of 55.

As a reminder, the Value you enter is always relative to the target and units that were set when you created the goal.

You can also click the Comment button at the top of the activity stream to make a comment in the goal history.

The checklist at the bottom allows you to create and "check off" activities that support completion of the goal. You can add as many checklist items as desired and check off completed items as progress is made.

If your goal has enabled the "Checklist updates goal progress" option, checking or unchecking a checklist item will also prompt for an update to the goal's progress to ensure that completion of checklist items also properly update's the goal's overall progress in relation to each checklist item. 

If the "Checklist updates goal progress" option is enabled, the goal progress update that appears will also suggest a new progress value that represents the ratio of complete/incomplete checklist items so that a goal's checklist progress matches the goal's overall progress. For example, if a goal has a target value of 100% and 4 checklist items, completing one checklist item will suggest that the goal's progress be updated to 25%.

*The following people should be able to remove goal progress updates: the assignee's chain of command, the assignee's contributors, anyone the goal has been shared with, and as always any billing admin/admin roles.