Goals & OKRs app

The Goals & OKRs app by Scoro lets you set quarterly and annual objectives and break each one into measurable key results with their own owners and target dates. This gives leaders, operations managers, and team leads one shared place to see what the company is working toward, who owns it, and whether it's on track. It replaces goals kept in slide decks, spreadsheets, and documents that are rarely opened once the quarter is underway.

This article walks you through how the Goals & OKRs app works and how to activate, configure, and use it.

1. How the Goals & OKRs app works

An objective is a high-level statement of what you want to achieve in a given period, for example, "Grow qualified inbound leads".

A key result is a specific, measurable outcome that shows whether the objective is being achieved, for example, "Paid campaigns launched and performing".

The Goals & OKRs app by Scoro lets you set quarterly and yearly objectives, break each one into key results, and track both with owners, target dates, and statuses.

The Goals & OKRs module has two tabs:

• Board view, where you create and manage objectives;
• Key results board, where you can see and create key results.

Objectives and key results are separate records, each with its own owner, target date, and status, so you can follow progress at the level of detail you need. You update the status (Draft, On track, At risk, Off track, or Completed) yourself as work moves forward – the app doesn't calculate progress on its own.

Every team member can interact with the app according to their role:

• Leaders and operations managers can set company and team objectives, review their status, and keep the overall picture up to date.
• Objective and key result owners can keep the status of the items they're responsible for up to date as work progresses.
• Site administrators can set up who can access the app, adjust the statuses and tags to match your team's terminology, and add new years to the Year field.

1.1. Key benefits of the Goals & OKRs app

Key benefits of the Goals & OKRs app:

• One structure for every objective: Every objective and key result carries an owner, target date, quarter, year, status, and tags, so goals look the same across teams instead of living in different slide decks and spreadsheets.
• Clear ownership at every level: Objectives and key results each have their own owner, so accountability is visible from the company-level objective down to the individual measurable outcome.
• Progress that's easy to read: Statuses such as On track, At risk, and Off track show where each objective and key result stands, so leaders can spot what needs attention without chasing updates.
• Company, team, and individual goals in one place: Tag each objective and key result as Company, Team, or Individual, so goals at different levels stay easy to tell apart.

1.2. Key things to remember about the Goals & OKRs app

• You need to change objective and key result statuses manually; the app has no built-in automations for this.
• Objectives and key results live in their own module – Goals & OKRs – and aren't connected to projects, tasks, quotes, or other records on your site. If you need to capture extra details, you can create custom fields.
• Objectives and key results are created separately. To make sure a key result is connected to its parent objective, add it from the objective's detailed view – see this section.
• The Year field in the objective and key result modify views includes options for years up to and including 2030. To plan further ahead, a site administrator needs to add the new years – see this section for step-by-step instructions.
• The app doesn't include any pre-configured notifications. You can set up the notifications your team needs with triggers and actions.

2. Activating the app

Site administrators can activate the Goals & OKRs app:

• From the Scoro App Store – click the Get this app button;
• From your Scoro site – go to Settings > Administration > Plan, add-ons and billing, click the Configure plan button (if your site's on the new pricing plan) or the Manage add-ons button (if your site's on a legacy plan), and enable the Goals & OKRs app. See the Plan, add-ons and billing article for step-by-step instructions on managing your add-ons.

Once activated, the Goals & OKRs app will appear on your site menu, and you can start configuring it. At first, it's accessible only to the site administrator who activated it, so the first step is to give other users access by managing the app permissions.

3. Configuring the app

Before your team starts setting goals, we recommend that a site administrator does the following:

• Manage the app permissions
• Customize the app statuses and tags
• Add more year options

3.1. Manage the app permissions

When you activate the Goals & OKRs app, it grants full permissions to the permission set of the site admin who enabled it. To customize the app permissions for other permission sets:

1. Go to Settings > Administration > Permission sets and click the Modules and actions button for the permission set you want to modify.
2. Scroll down to the Apps section and enable the primary Goals & OKRs permission, which grants access to the Goals & OKRs module. Then, enable the necessary sub-permissions that control what users with this permission set can do:
   • Add and modify entries – lets users create and modify their own objectives and key results (if they have access to the Key results board).
   • View entries of other users – lets users view objectives and key results (if they have access to the Key results board) created by other site users.
   • Modify entries of other users – lets users modify objectives and key results (if they have access to the Key results board) created by other users.
   • Delete entries – lets users delete objectives and key results (if they have access to the Key results board).
   • Key results – lets users access the Key results board tab in the Goals & OKRs module. Users without this sub-permission won't see the tab.

For example, you could give team members Add and modify entries, View entries of other users, and Key results so they can maintain their own objectives and key results and see what the rest of the company is working on, and keep Modify entries of other users and Delete entries for leaders, operations managers, and site administrators.

For more information about managing user access, see our Permission sets article.

3.2. Customize the app statuses and tags

The Goals & OKRs app comes with the following default statuses for objectives and key results, which help your team see at a glance where their progress stands:

• Draft (default) – the objective or key result is still being defined and isn't active yet.
• On track – progress is going as planned.
• At risk – there's a risk of missing the target date, and it needs attention.
• Off track – progress is behind plan.
• Completed – the objective or key result has been achieved.

You can manage the objective and key result statuses – modify or delete the default statuses and create new ones – under Settings > Site settings > Statuses > Goals & OKRs.

Learn more about managing statuses.

The Goals & OKRs app includes a default Outcome type tag, which helps you tell apart objectives and key results at different levels, including:

• Company – goals for the whole organization.
• Team – goals owned by a specific team.
• Individual – goals owned by a single person.

You can add additional options to the Outcome type tag, as well as create additional tags for your Goals & OKRs app based on what your team needs.

Learn more about managing tags.

3.3. Add more year options

The Quarter and Year fields in the objective and key result modify views are custom fields. By default, the Year field includes options up to and including 2030. When you need to plan beyond that, add the new years as options:

1. Go to Settings > Site settings > Custom fields, scroll to the Goals & OKRs section, and click the Year custom field to modify it.
2. In the Options field, click the Add another button, enter the value, and press Enter. Repeat this to add all the necessary years and save the changes.

Learn more about custom fields in our Getting started with custom fields article.

4. Creating a new objective

To create a new objective:

1. Open the Goals & OKRs module from your site menu, open the Board view tab, and click the + New button.
   
2. Fill out the objective details:
   • Owner – select the user responsible for the objective. You're automatically set as the owner (as you're creating the objective), but you can change it if you're creating the objective on behalf of another site user.
   • Status – set it to On track for a new objective. If the objective details are not finalized yet, you can set the status to Draft and change it later.
   • Objective – enter a high-level statement of what you want to achieve.
   • Target date – set the deadline for achieving the objective.
   • Quarter – select the quarter the objective belongs to (for example, Q1).
   • Year – select the year the objective belongs to.
   • Tags – select all the relevant tags.
3. Once ready, click Save.

5. Adding key results to an objective

You can add key results to an objective in two ways:

• From the objective detailed view – open the Board view tab, then click the objective name to open the objective's detailed view. Scroll down to the Key results section, click the Add button, and fill out the key result details.
  
• When creating a new key result – open the Key results board tab, then click the + New button to create a new key result. Fill out its details and select the relevant objective from the Objective field.
  

For each key result, you can fill out the following details:

• Status – select the appropriate status from the available ones, which are the same as for objectives: Draft, On track, At risk, Off track, Completed. Set the status to Draft if you haven't finalized the full key result details but want to save it and return later to complete the rest.
• Key result – enter the specific metric or milestone, for example, "Paid campaigns launched and performing".
• Owner – select the user responsible for delivering this key result.
• Target date – set the deadline for the key result.
• Quarter and Year – select the timeframe the key result belongs to.
• Tags – select all the applicable tags.

6. Updating the progress of objectives and key results

There are multiple ways you can update the statuses of your objectives and key results in the Goals & OKRs app as work moves forward:

• From the board view – if you've added a row dimension to the objective or key result board view and set the Columns field to Rows, you can click and drag the objective or key result cards to the appropriate status column.
  

• From the objective or key result detailed view – click on the objective or key result name to open its detailed view, then click on the status indicator and select the appropriate status.
  

• From the objective or key result modify view – click on the objective or key result name to open its detailed view, then click the Modify button. Select the appropriate status from the Status dropdown field.

7. Customizing the objective and key result board views

You can customize both the objective board view and the key results board to your preferences: 

• Use the Columns field to select what data type is displayed as the board's columns.
• Use the Status filter to show only objectives or key results with specific statuses, and click the Filters button to access even more filters, such as Owner, Quarter, Year, Objective (available in the Key results board only), etc.
• Add a row dimension to create a matrix board view – click View > Rows and select what data type you're using for rows (Owner, Status, Creation date by month, Quarter, Year).
• Select what details are shown on the objective or key result cards – click View > Field data and select the necessary ones.