Apply Time Horizons to Goals

Anyone who is an Admin or with edit permissions on the plan or the goal can apply time horizons to their goals.

Once time horizons are added in your workspace from Admin > Time horizons, you can quickly assign those to your goals. By having time horizons at the plan level, we can quickly create any new goals that default to that horizon or display only those goals on or within that timelines thereby increasing visibility and reducing visual noise.

The date and progress filters acts as a lens to the plans by filtering goals outside of those selections and lets you to focus on priorities.

Time horizons in planner

No date filters applied:

When a new objective is now added in the Planner, the default date logic will be:

  • If there are no time horizons, then the start date will default to today and the end date will default to the end of calendar year (31st December).

  • If there're horizons set up, then the due dates will default to the soonest ending time horizon. For example, if you're adding a new objective on 25 Oct, 2023, then the soonest ending horizon will be Q4 2023 (Oct 01, 2023 - Dec 31, 2023) and these dates will be assigned to it.

If you wish to manually assign the goal to a time horizon, click the date picker (in the Planner or Sidebar) in the goals of your plans and it'll show the time horizons added to your workspace in the Horizons tab. And, you can quickly select and apply those to your goals. The Custom tab will allow precise dates to be set with the standard date picker.

Once a horizon is assigned to an objective, any success criteria created will inherit the horizon or dates from the objective. If desired, you can override these by choosing precise dates from the standard date picker in the "Custom" tab.

The date picker shows the time horizons in ascending order that end after today’s date. Click Show past horizons or do a search to show the historical time horizons that end prior to today’s date.

Date filters applied at the planner level:

Choose a relevant horizon from the Horizons tab or a specific date range from the Custom tab and click Apply to apply date filters at the plan level. Click Clear filters to remove date filters.

Date filters in planner

When you apply date filters, then

  • If you're adding a new objective, then its dates will default to the date filter applied. For example, if the date filter is set to Q1 2024 (Jan 01, 2024 - Mar 31, 2024), then the new objective will automatically have the start date as Jan 01, 2024 and end date as Mar 31, 2024.

  • Only those goals that fall on or within that date or horizon range would be displayed. For example, if the date filter is set to Q4 2023 (Oct 01, 2023 - Dec 31, 2023), then all the objectives, measures, projects and actions that have their start or end date on or within or even partially overlapping this time period will be displayed.

    • If the action's due date is outside the date range but the parent objective falls within the range, then the planner will display only the objective and not the action.

    • If the goal has the start date as Jul 17, 2023 but the end date as Oct 15, 2023, it'll be displayed since the end date is within the Q4 2023 range.

    • If the goal's start date is Dec 31, 2023, even that'll be displayed since it still falls on the horizon's range.

    • Even if the goals have specific dates set up from the Custom tab, if their dates fall within the Q4 2023 range, then they'll also be displayed.

    • If the filter is set to specific dates from the Custom tab, for example Sep 15, 2023 - Oct 31, 2023, then all the goals falling in that range, irrespective of time horizon or custom date set up, will be displayed. In this case, any goals whose standard date picker falls within this range or any goals set to horizons that overlap with this period like, Q3 2023 (Jul 01, 2023 - Sep 30, 2023), Q4 2023 (Oct 01, 2023 - Dec 31, 2023), 2023 Calendar year (Jan 01, 2023 - Dec 31, 2023), H2 2023 (Jun 01, 2023 - Dec 31, 2023), FY 23-24 (Apr 01, 2023 - Mar 31, 2023) will all be displayed.

  • You'll see the filtered goals even when you move away from the page or log out and re-login. You'll need to clear the filters to see all the goals in that plan. Also, if you share the plan URL with the filters applied, then they'll see the same filtered view of the plan.

For easy understanding, attaching an image with the filtering logic. In this case, the filter applied is FY 23-24 (July 01, 2023 - June 30, 2024).Time horizon date filter(1)

Date filters and Unaligned objectives:

Sometimes, you would have noticed an objective showing up under Unaligned objectives banner in the Planner page. This happens mostly when you try removing a shared objective and its contribution is reset. Now, you can move this objective to the relevant focus area or objective and this banner will go off.

In case, its contribution is not fixed and there is a date filter applied which is outside the range of this unaligned objective, then you'll just see the banner but not the objective itself. Now,

  1. Clear the date filter to show all the objectives in that plan.

  2. Click the objective showing up under Unaligned objectives, and click Move from the three dots across it. Alternatively, you can edit the objective from its sidebar, and go to the Contributes to section.

  3. Choose the relevant plan and focus area or an objective to move it under, and click Save.

You'll now notice the Unaligned objectives banner gone.

Progress filter:

The option Hide completed in the planner lets you to filter and display goals based on their progress. The "completed" in Hide completed refers to the completion of a goal, i.e., the progress percentage being equal to greater than 100% thereby reaching the target that's set.

Progress filter

When no date filters are applied, and

  • when you do not select Hide completed, then all the goals will be displayed in the plan.

  • if the Hide completed option is selected, then irrespective of the due dates, all those goals that have their progress percentage greater than or equal to 100% (Achieved or Exceeded health labels) will be hidden from the planner.

When date filters are applied and

  • if the Hide completed option is not selected, then all the goals that fall on or within that date range or horizon will be displayed irrespective of their progress.

  • if the Hide completed option is selected, then only those goals that fall on or within that date range or horizon and have their progress percentage less than 100% will be displayed. In other words, goals that're completed (progress percentage is equal to or greater than 100%) on or within this time range will be hidden.

This "Hide completed" filter is applicable only for progress percentage completion for the goals and does not have any effect on the "Done" status of actions or projects.

A few points to note:

  • Each time horizon must be manually defined, and are independent of one another (i.e., no default, repeating or nested horizons)

  • You can apply only one horizon to a goal at a time.

  • Also, you cannot set horizons to goals in bulk.

  • If you had set dates to your goals already in your workspace, once you add horizons, you need to then manually reassign those goals to these new horizons, as required.

  • These new horizons will not be available downstream in reports or dashboards at this point in time.

  • When you've applied date filter, then they'll see the filtered view of the plan until the filter is cleared. If this plan URL is shared with anyone, they'll also see the same filtered view of the plan.

FAQs

How does the date filtering impact health?

There is no impact of date filters on the health of goals. The date filters simply control the visibility of goals in a plan. However, the health of focus area and objectives on the plan always reflects all the nested or associated goals (regardless of whether they are shown in the UI).

The project that I'm working on is "Done", but when I select "Hide completed" option, the project is not hidden from the Planner.

Only if the project's progress is greater than or equal to 100%, will it be hidden from the planner when you select the Hide completed option. The status of actions and projects do not have any impact on this progress filter.

I'm seeing different dates in the entities where time horizons are applied while my team member who created it is seeing the correct horizon.

This might be because of the different time zones that you and your team member are in. Sometimes you might also see a warning "Dates must fall within the date range of the parent" if the user that created the goal is in a different time zone to the user viewing them. It is all relative to the time zone of the user logging in, and will reflect differently if they travel to the other side of the world.

To be more clear, here is an example - When a user creates a new time horizon, the start time is set to 00:00 in their local time and the end time is set to 23:59 in their local time.
This means that when you create the 2024 time horizon, it'll take a start date of 1/1/24 at 00:00 EST and an end date of 12/31/24 at 23:59 EST. And when this time horizon is applied to a goal, you'll see the correct dates.
Any user that logs in will see this date/time converted into their local time zone. If a user logging in that is on Pacific Time (PST) will see a start date of 12/31/23 on that goal. This is because 1/1/24 at 00:00 EST is 12/31/23 at 21:00 PST. The PST user will actually see the date as one day off because you created it in your timezone, which they fall a few hours behind.
However, this same user in PST would see the same end date. This is because 12/31/24 EST at 23:59 is 12/31/24 PST at 20:59. They will see the same day, because it still converts to the same day in their local time. Any user in EST will however see the same dates as you.

Please note that this is an intended behavior and we're looking to implement a global workspace setting for the user to set the timezone to solve this issue.