DocumentationWorkfront

Create goals

Last update: Tue Oct 17 2023 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

CREATED FOR:

  • Beginner
  • User

In Workfront Goals, executives and corporate leadership teams can see the progress of the entire organization at each level, down to the individual. Workfront Goals provides the visibility to get key actionable insights to advance the highest priorities, identify objectives that are at risk, diagnose problems in real time, and proactively course correct.

Workfront Goals also allows individual contributors to see how their work contributes to the big picture. Work is more meaningful when individuals can see where their work matters.

There are 3 ways to create goals with Workfront:

Create a goal from scratch

Here are some things to consider when creating goals from scratch:

  • Everyone in the organization should select the same timeframes when creating similar goals or goals that are aligned.
  • The status of the new goal is always in Draft status until you activate it by adding an activity, a project, or a result.

In this video, you will learn how to:

  • Navigate the Goals List section to add a new goal

https://video.tv.adobe.com/v/335191/?quality=12&learn=on

Transcript
When first navigating into the Workfront Goals area, you’re brought to the goal list. You can change the view of goals from personal, team, group, company, or all goals that you have access to. You can filter by the time period on the goal, the status, the progress, or the goal owner. But let’s start by adding a new goal. The first goal that we’re going to add is a goal called Achieve Operational Excellence.
By default, the owner of the goal is always going to be the person inputting the goal, but if you click into the list, it will search for all names, teams, groups, or the company.
The description field is where you can add clarification around what does achieve operational excellence mean. Either additional paragraphs of information, or possibly links to pages, websites, videos, etc. Let’s go ahead and save this goal, and once it saves, you’ll notice that it is in a draft status. To activate this goal, we’ll need to add at least one result or one activity.

Copy an existing goal

Let’s say it’s the end of a quarter and you want to recreate an existing goal for the next period. Or maybe you didn’t complete the goal and need to extend into the next time period. What is the best option to create that goal? You’ll want to copy and modify an existing goal.

Copying an existing goal also is useful if multiple team members have similar goals and you need to create one goal for each of them.

Here are a few things to consider before copying goals:

  • All of the information from the original goal will be copied, with the exception of the goal period.
  • You can copy results of an existing goal and they will transfer to the new goal.
  • Copied results are assigned to the same owner, by default.
  • You cannot copy progress of the existing goal to a new goal.
  • You cannot copy the activities of a goal when you copy a goal.

How to copy a goal

  1. Click a goal name to open the Goal Details panel.

  2. Click the 3-dot icon next to the goal name, then select Copy.

  3. Update any of the following information for the copied goal:

    • Goal name—This is the name of the new goal. The default is “Copy of” followed by the name of the original goal.
    • Period—The time period during which you want to achieve the goal. Select a time period from the drop-down menu or click Define custom dates to indicate a custom time period. The default period is always the current quarter.
    • Owner—The owner of the goal. This can be a user, team, group, or company. The default is the owner of the original goal.
    • Description—Additional information about the goal.

  4. Check the Copy results box if the original goal had results added to it and you want to copy them to the new goal. The results of the copied goal have the same owner, names, and measured values as the results of the original goal.

  5. Click Copy goal. The copied goal is saved with a status of Draft.

    An image of the Goal Details panel in Workfront Goals with the Copy option

  6. Click the 3-dot icon, then select Activate, which updates the goal status to Active. The goal must have an associated activity or result in order to “activate.”

If you copied a goal that was not completed in a previous time period and want to continue working on it in the following time period, do the following:

  1. Go to the original goal in the Goal List.
  2. Add an update to the goal to indicate it was copied and a more current goal was created.
  3. Close the original goal to preserve the progress made during its original time period. Click the 3-dot icon next to the goal name and select Close from the menu.
  4. Update the Initial value of the new result to match the Target value of the previous result, so your new goal progress starts calculating from the point achieved in the previous period.

Convert a result or activity to a goal

The final option for creating goals in Workfront Goals is by converting the results and/or activities of an existing goal into another goal. The converted result/activity becomes a child goal to the original goal.

You might do this when a result/activity is larger in scope than anticipated and it would be beneficial to convert the result/activity into an actual goal itself. Think of this as a bottom-to-top approach of aligning goals.

Here are some things to keep in mind before you convert a result or activity into a goal:

  • The converted result or activity becomes the child goal of the original goal, and the two goals become aligned.
  • The newly created goal becomes the single progress indicator for the original goal, if there are no additional results or activities on the original goal. You must add results and activities to the child goal to be able to track progress on it.
  • Converting a result or activity to a goal is irreversible. Once converted, the new child goal can never become a result or activity for the parent goal again.

In this video, you will learn how to:

  • Add an activity and convert it to an aligned goal

https://video.tv.adobe.com/v/335192/?quality=12&learn=on

Transcript
To add an activity to a goal, start by clicking in on the goal in the goal list.
This will open the goal.
Now click on the progress indicators and select a new progress indicator of activity.
Type in the activity name and you can change the activity owner if you want.
And click on Create Activity.
The new activity appears in the progress indicators list. You can update the progress of the activity, when needed right here by clicking on the actual progress and typing in a number.
If you want to convert the activity to a goal, first select it, then click on the convert icon and now you’re brought here, to where you’re creating a new goal. You can change the period, change the goal owner, write a description and when you save it, this has now become a new goal with a status of draft and these two goals have become aligned.
Remember that converting a result or an activity to a goal is not reversible. Once converted, the new child goal can never become a result or activity for the parent goal again.
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