The basics to WHAT, WHY, WHERE, and HOW for native connections in Cascade.
Once you have a plan and team in Cascade, you can start tracking the progress of your strategic execution.
The most powerful way to do this is through integrations. Integrations are what brings your strategy to life and let you focus on execution. They'll allow you to:
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connect day to day work with high level goals
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connect key metrics to the correct areas of your strategy
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connect the work of every team with the vision of the business
Integrations will connect to elements of Cascade at the success criteria level - that means Actions and Measures. Cascade will pull data from whatever you connect it to in order to update the progress values of those actions and measures, then automatically roll that progress up to summarize everything at an objective level. Since everything will be centralized, this also lets you leverage Cascade's powerful reporting tools to report on all pieces of work, since it's all plugged in.
What are native connections?
Native connections are the powerful tools that let us plug a secondary program into Cascade. There are two main types of native connections - metric connections and collaboration connections.
Metric connections funnel data into Cascade. They can be connected to an action, measure, or metric in the metric library. The connection will pull data from the secondary platform and use it to update the progress of an action, measure, or metric. This automates the tracking of that goal, eliminating double data entry and ensuring that your strategy in Cascade is up to date and providing accurate, relevant information. It also ensures that your teams can maintain their current workflow and continue using the tools they love, while leveraging all of the advantages Cascade provides by being a single source of truth.
Currently, these include: Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Salesforce, and Jira (for actions).
Collaboration connections allow you to push your strategy from Cascade into another tool, enabling seamless and efficient collaboration between teams. These connections include options for pushing notifications through other channels like Slack, or pushing strategy content (like objectives or actions) into platforms like Outlook so that work can be managed externally.
Currently, these include: Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Outlook, and Slack.
Why use native connections?
Native connections are the core function that makes Cascade so powerful. By leveraging connections, you guarantee that your teams can still use the tools and processes that work best for them, while empowering the entire business with the incredible advantages created when all of your data and strategy is in the same place.
When you set up your Cascade workspace for success, you'll be able to view live updates on your metrics and goals from one place, no matter where the individual work is being managed. This means you can report on everything happening across the org, ensure your strategy is progressing how you want it to, and be sure that your teams are efficiently working towards the right priorities.
Where can you leverage native connections?
There are multiple places in your Cascade workspace where native connections can be used to improve the value that Cascade adds to your business.
These can be broken down into two key areas:
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Connections to individual goals to automate progress tracking
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Connections into other tools your team uses to guarantee that the whole team is getting the most value from Cascade
How do you set up native connections?
Metric Connections
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Google Sheets - this connection can hook into a measure to automate progress tracking. It is a great connection to push the information typically stored in a spreadsheet into Cascade, like budget or financial info.
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Microsoft Excel - this connection can hook into a measure to automate progress tracking. It is a great connection to push the information typically stored in a spreadsheet into Cascade, like budget or financial info.
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Salesforce - this connection can hook into a measure to automate progress tracking. It is the perfect connection to use to automate the tracking of sales performance.
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Jira - this integration can connect to an action to automate progress tracking. This is a great way for Cascade to automatically track the work of epics being managed in Jira.
Collaboration Connections
These connections allow your team to interact with their work from Cascade in the tools they are already using. Find links below to on how to set these up.