Add Actions to your Objectives

An Action in Cascade is a specific activity that someone is doing to work towards the completion or realization of an Objective. For example, if your objective is "Scale digital advertising", then your action will be "Hire a marketing expert to scale the digital world". Another example, if your objective is "Ensure satisfied customers and long-term customer loyalty", the action or task will be "Ensure customer distribution experience". You can also have a couple of actions nested under Projects.

You can add a new action:

• From the relevant Objective's sidebar, click + Add success criteria > New action to add an action in the Sidebar view.

• From the Planner page, click + icon under the relevant Objective, and click New action to add an action inline. You can then fill in the details from the Edit action Sidebar.

• From the Success criteria tab of the relevant Objective's Goal hub page, click + icon and click New action. This'll add the action inline, and you can later edit it from its sidebar to add more context.

Name and Description:

• Name your Action something that specifies what actions or tasks you are going to do to achieve the outcome that you wish for. Though there's no character limitation, keep the title concise and use the Description field to provide additional context with rich text, bullets, embedded links and videos.

Due dates:

• Set a Start date and End date, which will set a timeline for your action. The dates will default to the due dates of the parent objective and it is recommended to set the dates not exceeding the range of the dates of the parent objective. Based on the due dates, Cascade calculates the expected progress/target for the action, thereby determining its health. Also, its not a best practice to set the same dates for start & end dates as it would affect the expected progress calculation and thereby the health.

Owners and Collaborators:

• The Owners field automatically defaults to the one who creates the action, and if you wish to change, click the owner profile icon, and from the drop-down list, choose the user you wish to assign the ownership to. Please note that, while you can assign ownership to Viewers, their role does not let them to do anything on the action but just review and leave comments on them.

• From the Collaborator area, you can add or manage collaborators, who will be able to work on the actions. Like the name suggests, they collaborate on the actions, i.e., add or edit actions, add the existing users in the workspace to the actions, change owners, due dates and targets, add risks and relationships and so on. However, if you wish to restrict their access only to the goals that they collaborate on, then you can assign them can view access from the Share modal. See Plan Permissions for details.

Tracking actions' progress:

By default, we set the tracking as Manually when an action is created. However, you can also track an action via milestones, checklists or by integrating with Jira or other applications. Choose the tracking type to determine how you wish to track the progress of your action.

• Manually: Use this option if you wish to track your action manually. You can just scoot the manual slider to update the progress from a 0% to 100%.

• Milestones - Define milestones if your tasks or items need to be in a particular order, weighted or prioritized differently than other items and are time bound. By definition, a milestone represents a percentage of an Action to be completed that has been connected to a specific date. Click Add milestones. By default, Cascade will create three Milestones for an Action, but you can add extra, if you want. Hover the mouse between the milestones to add one from the + icon. The health and progress is tracked based on the dates, and the values in percentage (though it is not mandatory to fill in these fields, it is important to have this data to track progress.). You can scoot the slider in the progress bar to update progress of milestones. Click the X icon to remove a milestone or click Remove milestones to remove all the milestones.

• Checklists- Use checklists if you wish to complete your tasks in no particular order where every task or item is weighed equally. By definition, a checklist represents an activity or a group of activities or tasks to be completed by a specific date in no particular order. You can have a couple of checklist items to be completed on the same date, and you can also back-date your checklist items (the date range must be within the parent objective). Click Add items. By default, Cascade will create two Checklist items for an Action, but you can add extra, if you want. The health and progress is tracked based on the completion of the items - select the check-box of the item you completed, and the progress gets updated. The overdue items will be highlighted in red. Click Add item to add any checklist item at a later point in time. You cannot manually scoot the progress bar to update progress on checklist items. Click the X icon to remove a milestone or click Remove all items to remove all the checklist items.

  

• Integrations - You may be tracking your various tasks across a number of tools, like Jira, Trello, and so on. Our smart integrations will allow you to connect to any app to bring your data from almost anywhere, and visualize them all in one place, here in Cascade. Using Zapier and Power Automate integrations with Cascade gives you the freedom and flexibility to connect your SaaS tools with ease, so you can plan, manage, and track all your goals in one place. See Collaborate and Automate with Integrations for details.

Expected Progress for "Manually" tracked actions:

• Under Expected Progress area, set a period or day(s) to determine when you will update the progress. 

• Depending on your choice of updating the progress on an action, you can choose weekly, monthly, quarterly, biannually, or annually, and based on this, you can further select the day of your choice to make updates. This data is required to calculate the expected progress.

• If the Send update reminders based on the expected progress schedule check-box is selected, then the owner of the action will receive notifications both in-app and mail to remind them to make progress updates. See Set-up Reminders for Goal Updates for details.

• Note that the only to change the expected progress of your actions is to change the due dates or update schedule.

Update Schedule for actions tracked by "Milestones" or "Checklists":

• From the Schedule dropdown list, set a period or day(s) to determine when you'll update the progress of your actions. 

• Based on the cadence that you set, the owner of the action will receive notifications both in-app and mail to remind them to make progress updates. See Set-up Reminders for Goal Updates for details.

Strategic Contribution:

• Contributes to area will show the plan and the objective or project your action belongs to. Click Edit and choose the relevant objective or project from the list if you wish to move the action either under a different objective or project of the same or different plan.

• Or, click Move from the three dots against the action title, choose the relevant objective or project within the same plan or a different plan, and click Confirm. The action will now be displayed as a success criteria under the chosen objective or project.

When you save the Action, you’ll have a progress bar that tracks the progress and health of the action.

• Hover the mouse over the progress bar to know about the actual progress, milestone details, and expected progress.

• In case of manual or milestone tracking, you'll see a manual slider that you can scoot around to track your progress. Every time you update that progress, you’ll get the chance to attach a quick and concise update as well, which will also get displayed in the Updates tab. And, if you wish to give a detailed update, you can do it from the Updates tab.

• If you're using checklists for tracking, then you need to update the checklist items to track the progress, and in this case, you'll not see the manual slider. The over-due items will be highlighted.

All those actions assigned to you will be listed under the My upcoming work section of your Home page. You can view them in a single execution view from the Kanban board to prioritize your work and execute seamlessly. See the article on The 'Kanban' Board for more details.

Tracking progress "manually"	Tracking progress with "milestones"	Tracking progress with "checklists"

Health of Actions

The health of actions is calculated using the base formula: Actual Progress / Expected Progress

The expected progress for an action is informed by one of three options:

• The due dates of the associated checklist items. When a date of a Checklist item is not defined, then the end date of the parent Action is considered for expected progress calculation purposes.

• The due dates of the associated milestones.

• The calculated spread of progress based on update schedules (i.e., if the update schedule is once per month, and the action spans one year, the expected progress will be about 8% a month (100% / 12 months = 8.3% progress per month)

Once you input the data that informs the expected progress, Cascade will perform the health calculation behind the scenes and display the health according to the set ranges.

Edit Action from its Sidebar:

When you edit an action from its sidebar, you can provide additional context that you wish to add on to the action. These can be:

• (Essentials and Enterprise+ only) Tags added to the actions to define their category of work. See Add Goal Tags: Advance Strategy Model Customization for details.

• (Essentials and Enterprise+ only) Custom fields defined for the actions and saved in a template. You can populate data against those from here. See Apply Templates with Custom Fields to Plans for details.

• (All tiers) Risks added to the action along with its impact, likelihood, and mitigations. See Add Risks for details.

• (Essentials and Enterprise+ only) Relationships between actions, or objectives, measures, and projects. See Add Relationships for details.

See the article on Sidebar for more insights into the functionalities offered within it.

FAQs

Can I add custom fields to actions?

Yes. You can define custom fields for actions and apply that template to the plan. But this will apply the custom fields to all the actions in that plan.

When to define milestones and checklists for actions?

Checklists work well for simple tasks that are weighed equally and are not date bound. These give you the flexibility to do things out of order if you need to and can be quickly checked off as they are completed. Milestones are best used for larger projects/initiatives where each task or item needs to be completed in a specific order and the individual tasks requires sizing/estimation, i.e., when one item is weighted more heavily than the others towards the overall completion.

If you wish to track each sub items or sub tasks by assigning different owners, then our recommendation would be to create a project with actions and assigning those actions to different owners.

I want actions to be called as tasks, is that possible?

Yes, you can customize the alias name the way you want. But only the users with Admin privileges have access to change that from Admin > Strategy model.

How to put an initiative on hold? Or, actions on hold?

Though you can change the status of the action to On hold from its sidebar, it'll not have any impact on its progress or health as the status information is just contextual right now.

However, if you do not want this action or initiative to affect the progress or health of its objective, then you can apply weights and exclude this action from aggregating to the objective's progress. See Add Weights to define the Progress of your Objectives to learn how to add weighting to the success criteria.

Can I add multiple tags to the same action?

No, you cannot choose multiple tags.

Will I be notified based on the date set in my checklists?

If you've set the proper cadence in the Update schedule list to reflect the date in your checklist item, then you'll be notified that an update is due.

Can I change action into an objective or project?

Yes. Click the three dots beside its title, and click Convert. Choose objective or project and click Confirm. Remember that you'll not be able to convert the action if it has made some progress. Also, any updates, comments, risks, relationships or custom fields that were added to it will not be retained in the conversion.

Are actions under projects different from the actions under objectives?

Yes. While actions nested under the projects contribute to the health of the projects, those under objectives contribute towards the objective's health.

I want the actions to be updated on a quarterly basis.

From the Update Schedule or Expected Progress (in manually tracked actions) section, choose the Period as Quarterly and also select the day in which you're most likely to update progress. Depending on your choice of updating the progress on an action, you can choose weekly, monthly, quarterly, biannually, or annually, and based on this, you can further select the day of your choice to make updates. Once that's set, you'll be notified that the update is due.

Where can I see the actions assigned to me?

You'll see all the actions that you own and collaborate in the My upcoming work section of your Home page. Click Go to Kanban board in that section to view them in a Kanban board.

I moved the card of my action to "Wont do", but it still shows up as "On Track".

Health and status are two different entities. The status in the Kanban board is not dependent on the health of your action. If you do not make any updates to that action, its health will subsequently change to "Behind" or "At risk" with time, but the status in Kanban board as well as in the sidebar will remain at "Wont do" till you move the card to some other status.

How do I move an action under an objective to a project?

Click Move from the three dots against the action title, choose the relevant objective or project within the same plan or a different plan, and click Confirm. The action will now be displayed as a success criteria under the chosen objective or project.

Alternatively, edit the action from its sidebar, and in the Contributes to section, you'll see that the objective is displayed. Click Edit against the objective, and from the dropdown, select Project and choose the relevant project from the list and click Save. The action will be moved from the objective to the chosen project. You can also choose a project in a different plan, if you know the details.

In case of moving an action from a project to an objective, you need to select Objective from the dropdown and choose the relevant objective.

Where can I see the updates made on an action?

Build an Objectives table in a Report, and select Last update as one of the table columns, and you'll see all the quick updates made while updating progress (scoot the progress bar manually in the Details tab) and also the detailed updates made from the Updates tab.

Where to see the Actions or Initiatives that was deleted?

While you can see the actions or initiatives that were deleted from the objective's goal hub's Activity tab, there is no way of restoring the deleted actions.

Can the Actions have the same start and end date?

Though you can set the same dates, its not a best practice to do so as it'll affect the expected progress calculation and thereby its health too. Instead, you can create checklists or milestones and set the date as you wish to that item.