Create Custom Update Templates for Goals and Teams

In a collaborative set-up, you'll need to create updates on your progress and your team's towards an objective or a measure or project or action, so that it can be shared across with your colleagues, managers, and everyone else in the workspace. These updates will keep everyone informed of the work, provide feedback, and to remain aligned and focused on the big picture.

While we've a default template that you can fill in while posting an update on a goal or team, you can now customize them the way you need with additional fields. With these customized templates, you can now collect quality strategic context  by defining the type of information you want to collect from your team.

These customized templates are created by Admins and foster collaboration through structured updates and empowers the work that you and your team do.

You can create 

• either entity-specific update templates, i.e., an update only for Objectives or Projects or Measures or Actions or Teams. This template will then be available for the entities or teams to which they're defined.

• or, create entity-specific template attached to a certain "Goal type", i.e., Operational, strategic, functional types that you define and then apply to the relevant entities. This template will then be available for all those goals that have the relevant "type" assigned to them. See Add Goal Types: Advance Strategy Model Customization for details on how to add and assign a goal type.

• or, create entity-specific template attached to a certain "Team", i.e., Operations or Leadership or Sales team, and so on that are available in your workspace. This template will then be available for all those goals assigned to that team in which you're a team member.

How to configure scheduled update templates?

1. From the profile picture/initials, click Admin > Settings > Scheduled updates tab. Click Create new template, and on the top left Unnamed template name text box, enter the name of your template. Let's consider creating a custom template for updates made on Projects, and name it Project Updates.  We recommend that you have unique names for each template to avoid confusion while choosing it from the Post an update option later. 

2. Choose the entity for which this template is defined for. For this example, since we wish to make updates for Project, we need to choose Project from the dropdown list.

3. (Optional) Once an entity is selected, all the Types that you've defined for that type in the Admin > Strategy model tab will be listed in the Select types field. If Team is chosen as entity type, then you'll not see a Select types field as we do not define "types" for teams.

   Since we chose Project in our example, all the Types that we've created for Projects in the Strategy model in our workspace are listed. You can choose more than one type from the list.

4. (Optional) If you wish to assign a team to the entity, then you can choose a team from the Select teams field. You can choose more than one team from the list.

5. (Optional) If you wish to set a reminder in bulk to notify the owners of the goals to post updates, then you can choose a schedule or cadence of your choice from the Update schedule field. Once set, the owners will be notified both in-app and via mail on the day of the update prompting them to post updates. The date by which the update is due is also displayed on the Updates tab in the goals' sidebar.

   Note that, this does not trigger reminder notifications for teams to post updates.

   

6. Click icon to add a rich text editor section and start building the template. As and when you build the template, you can see an instant preview of it on the right side.

   1. Label - This refers to the section or a heading in your update. Give it a suitable title. For example, Blockers, Key accomplishments, What went well, and so on.

   2. Sub label - This gives the context to your section or label and is optional. Give a brief description of what needs to go in this section. For example, "Give details about thing the team did well", "Give 2-3 top challenges that you faced", and so on.

   3. Required - Select this check box if you wish to have this section mandatory. You'll see the label with an asterisk mark beside it, if required is chosen.

   If you wish to add more sections to your template, click the icon and repeat the above steps. You can add up to 10 sections in the template.

7. Click the icon to add the progress snapshot section with a default label and sub label, which you can modify as required.

    

1. Toggle the Enable this template on save, if you wish to make this template available for posting updates as soon as it is saved. If this option is not toggled, then on saving the template, this'll be in disabled status and will not be available for posting updates.

2. Once done, click Save the template.

All the custom templates that're created will be listed in the Admin > Update templates tab. You can search (by entity type or enabled/disabled status) and view the list of any existing templates that are created..

How to post updates with this custom template?

Once the template is enabled, wherever the Post an update is available, the templates will automatically be listed as an option, i.e., in the Updates tab of the goals' sidebar and in the Teams' Home and Update pages.

In the My upcoming goals and the My upcoming work sections of the Home page, you'll see the Update reminder against those goals that you own.

If you had set a update cadence in the Update schedule dropdown while creating a custom template or set it from the Set schedule or Update reminder section in the goals' sidebar, then the owners will be notified both in-app and via mail on the day of the update. This works only for the goals and not for the teams.

When you click Update beside the objective here in the mail, it'll take you to the Updates tab in the relevant objective's sidebar.

Click Post an update and choose the update template that you created. Though for a specific entity, all the relevant templates will be available, there're some rules which defines the availability of templates in the Recommended and Others options.

If the entity or goal has a Type assigned to it, you'll see

• Under Recommended:

  • All the relevant goal templates that matches the Type and the Team that you're a member of or if you're an Admin in the workspace.

  • All the relevant goal templates that matches the Type but do not have any teams assigned to it.

• Under Others, all those goal templates that do not match the above criteria (For example, if the "types" are matching but you're not a team member of the assigned team), and the Standard template (This'll open up the usual or default one with the Title, Update and the Progress bar.).

If the entity or goal does not have a Type assigned to it, you'll see

• Under Recommended:

  • All the relevant goal templates that do not have the Type chosen but you're a team member to the assigned Team.

  • All the relevant goal templates that do not have the Type or Team assigned.

• Under Others, all those goal templates that do not have a Type assigned and also do not match the above criteria, and the Standard template.

In our example, we created templates for Projects, and you can see from the below screenshot the available template options in the Updates tab of the Projects' sidebar.

Once you write down the updates, and click Post update, your update will be posted on the Updates tab of the relevant entity's sidebar and in the Home pages. The goals' progress or team updates are intended to be a snapshot of a goal or team's progress or update at a moment in time. As such, the update is frozen at the time of posting and you can look back and get an insight or understanding of a goal or team's status at a moment in time when compared to the present.

In the case of Team updates, if you're an Admin or a member of the team to which the template is assigned, then you'll see that template under Recommended. If there're no teams assigned to the team template, then you'll see those templates under Others along with the Standard template. However, no notifications are triggered for posting team updates.

How to manage the custom update templates?

All the custom templates that're created will be listed in the Admin > Update templates tab.

Click the three dots against the template, and click

• Edit- to edit the template.

• Disable or Enable - to enable or disable a template. If a template is disabled, they'll not be available to post updates.

• Clone - to duplicate a template.

• Delete - to delete a template permanently from the workspace.

Alternately, you can also do these from inside the template by clicking the three dots against the template name.

You can reorder or delete the sections inside a template - click Edit against the template name.

• Click the (drag and drop) icon to move or reorder the section within a template.

• Hover the mouse over a section, and click the Trash icon to delete them from the template.

How to report on specific update templates in Reports?

Update templates are commonly used to collect a specific set of information to support a regular meeting or reporting cycle. Thus, it is important to be able to report on the last update for a group of goals at once, and often just the updates using one specific template. You can view the Last Update for any goal using the Discover table in Reports. When you select this column, it will display the most recent update posted for every goal in the table.

After selecting this column, you can hover over the column title and click on the three dot icon that appears to go to Update Settings.

From there, you can select the specific update template you want to filter for:

Once saved, you will see the latest update that has been posted using that specific update template.

FAQs

Who can post these updates on custom templates?

Anyone who is an Admin or had edit permissions on a goal or a member of a team can post goal or team updates using the custom templates.

What happens if a template that is in use is disabled or deleted?

The existing updates that're posted using that template will still be available, and you can still edit the update using that template. However,

• if deleted, the template is permanently removed from the workspace and you need to create it from scratch, if needed.

• if disabled, then this template will not be available any more as an option when posting updates.

Can you set up multiple reminders on one template?

No, you can only set up one reminder for one template but you could set up multiple reminders with multiple templates.

What happens when there are two templates for one type of goal eg. one monthly and one quarterly reminder?

If both the reminders fall on the same date, then the owner will receive only one email. However, if the reminders are on different dates, then the owners will receive two emails on those two dates.

When to post updates?

Updates are posted at a team level or at a goal level to do a check-in or provide an insight to everyone into what's happening. It can be a weekly or monthly check-in of a team, or something about the progress or performance of a goal that you wish to notify everyone on.
Depending on your choice of updating the progress on a goal or team, 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.
Based on the cadence that you set in the Update schedule dropdown while creating a custom template or set it from the Set schedule or Update reminder section in the goals' sidebar, the owner of the entity will receive notifications both in-app and mail to remind them to make progress updates.

Where can these posted updates be seen?

The updates posted on the goals can be seen in

• Updates tab of the goals' sidebar

• Recent updates section of the Home page (When All is chosen in the filter)

• Last updates column of the Objectives, Initiatives or Measures table in the Reports.

The updates posted at a team level can be seen in

• Recent updates section of the Home page (When Team updates are chosen in the filter)

• Teams' Home page.

• Updates page of the Teams.

Who can delete these updates?

Only the author of the updates can edit or delete these updates.

Will my updates get affected if I choose a template that's not available under "Recommended"?

No, irrespective of the template that you choose for posting your updates, all the updates will be available.