Description
Goals are the core building blocks of the Planner. Each goal represents a specific, trackable objective within a focus area — something concrete that needs to be achieved, with an owner and a timeline.
Why Goals Matter
Goals turn strategy into action. A focus area says "we care about customer experience"; a goal says "reduce average response time to under 4 hours by Q3." Goals have owners, dates, and statuses — so there's no ambiguity about who's doing what by when.
Goal Lifecycle
Goals move through a simple lifecycle:
Draft — The goal has been created but not yet activated. It's in planning mode. You can edit all fields freely.
Active — The goal is live and being tracked. Active goals appear in dashboards, reports, and Gantt charts.
You choose the status when creating a goal: Save as Draft or Activate Goal. You can change the status later.
Goal Fields
Field | Required? | Description |
Title | Yes | The name of the goal. |
Description | No | A detailed explanation of what the goal aims to achieve. |
Focus Area | Yes | The strategic theme this goal belongs to. |
Template | Yes | The goal template from the Template Hierarchy. |
Start Date | No | When work on the goal begins. Defaults to today. |
Due Date | No | When the goal should be completed. Defaults to 1 month from today. |
Owner | No | The person responsible for the goal. |
How Goals Relate to Focus Areas
Every goal belongs to exactly one focus area.
Focus areas group goals by strategic theme.
You can move goals between focus areas by editing them.
Goals appear as a tree structure within their focus area, supporting parent-child hierarchies.
Restrictions
A Template Hierarchy must be configured on the plan before you can create goals.
Goal titles must be unique within a focus area.
Only users with edit permissions can create or modify goals.
Important: If you click "Add Goal" and see a validation message about template mappings, you need to set up the Template Hierarchy first. See the Template Hierarchy article for instructions.
Further Information
Create a New Goal — Step-by-step goal creation.
Goal Hierarchy (Parent and Child Goals) — Building goal trees.
Create and Manage Focus Areas — Organising goals into themes.