Tables in Reports allow you to surface progress details, contextual updates, and/or attributes for a particular group of goals that you care about. Tables are commonly used to build upon summary charts, visuals, and narrative context in Reports, enabling viewers to dive further into the details.
The Discover table in Reports is an incredibly powerful tool for surfacing the data and information you want to see for a group of goals. The ways in which you can slice and dice the Discover table to gain insights are endless, so we have designed a couple great templates for different strategy reports/meetings to get you started:
- Strategy table: Best suited for summarizing your entire strategy, showing all goal layers from top to bottom for a particular plan and planning cycle
- Goal Owners table: Best suited for team meetings or 1-1s, showing the progress and recent updates for the actions and measures owned by specific individuals
- Measures table: Best suited for reviewing progress on the quantitative success criteria in your strategy, showing targets, actuals, and progress trends for the measures in your plan
- Risks table: Best suited for regular risk reviews to get ahead of potential blockers to executing your strategy, highlighting the number of risks and risk details for goals in your plan
All of these templates are set up with default filters, columns, and groupings that we’ve seen work well for our customers. However, look at these templates as a starting point with many possibilities! We know every company is a little bit different and certain data might be important to include for different meetings. After you create your table, you can customize it further. Add or remove columns, adjust your groupings, update filters, or change the view type to find the perfect table for you!
Grouping Data in Discover tables
Grouping data brings related goals together as you’re scrolling through and reviewing them within a table. You can group your data by clicking on “+ Group By” and selecting from the list:
We offer several group by options in tables, including:
● Primary Plan● Focus Area
● Owner
● Collaborators
● Team
● Health
● Tag
● Any drop down custom field (more details on custom fields here)
When you switch from Strategy view to List view, the settings will not be retained and the goals will not appear grouped.
Different group by options are useful for different types of strategy reviews or reports you may want to send. We recommend creating a few tables using the templates listed above to see the possibilities, and customizing from there!
List vs. Strategy View in Discover tables
We also offer two main views in the Discover table: List view and Strategy view.
List view shows all the entries in the table as individual rows, with no hierarchy or nesting. This is valuable when you are reviewing a list of similar entities, or want to focus on just one layer of your strategy. A great use case for the List View would be for a monthly financial review, where you want to show the progress of all your Measures without needing to show their full vertical alignment.
Strategy view shows all the entries in the table with clear nesting and vertical hierarchy. Just like in the Planner, you’ll be able to see the nesting and alignment of every item in your strategy and how it all rolls up. This view is very helpful when reporting on the overall progress of Objectives, while wanting to maintain the ability to quickly toggle to expand them out and see all the Actions and Measures that contribute to its progress below.
Timeline view in Discover tables
We also offer a timeline view in Discover tables. Simply toggle from the Table to Timeline option to view your goals on a timeline, color coded by the current Health for each goal:
Filtering Data in Discover tables
Getting the exact data you wish to see helps cut through the noise and create focused tables. You can apply as many filters as you need by selecting your top level data sources for the Strategy view, or filtering for specific fields in the List view.
The whole point of the Strategy view is to show the layers and hierarchy of your goals. To create a Strategy view table, you have to select which plan(s), focus area(s), or parent objective(s) you want to report upon. Once you’ve selected those data sources, the table will show you all the layers of your plan branching down from those top level selections:
Once you’ve selected your data source in the Strategy view, or anytime from the List view, you can choose which types of goals you wish to display. This is done in the Display section by selecting or deselecting goal types (they will all be selected by default):
Finally, you can filter by a variety of different fields in both the Strategy and List views. Filtering is not just limited to the default fields in Cascade, but includes any custom fields you’ve created as well! This includes drop down, text, and numeric custom fields. All filter options will differ based on the field type (i.e. minimum and maximum filters for numeric fields, vs. is and is not filters for drop down fields).
The full list of filters is shown below:
● Owner of the goal
● Collaborators on the goal
● Team assigned to the plan in which the goal resides
● Health of the goal
● Progress of the goal (as a % of completion) towards its target
● Target for the goal (always 100% completion for objectives and actions, customizable for measures)
● Actual value of the goal
● Expected progress of the goal (Note: for objectives, projects and "maintain" measures, there is no concept of expected progress)
● Progress Change (visit the Progress change columns in Discover Table article for more information)
● Progress Change (WoW) shows the change in progress from today vs. one week ago
● Progress Change (MoM) shows the change in progress from today vs. one month ago
● Progress Change (QoQ) shows the change in progress from today vs. one quarter ago
● Progress Change (YoY) shows the change in progress from today vs. one year ago
● Tag added to the goal
● Status of the goal (only available for Actions, Projects, and Objectives)
● Start date of the goal
● End date of the goal
● Update due on date (the date when the next update is due, driven by the cadence set in the Reminder schedule of the goal's sidebar)
● Update posted date (the date when the most recent update was posted for the goal)
● Last update shows the most recent full update posted for the goal (Includes updates from the ‘Post a quick update’ prompt while updating progress manually, or from a more detailed update posted from the Updates tab in the sidebar. This column can also be filtered for a particular update template (learn more about custom update templates and schedules here)
● Contributes to displays the parent of the goal (for objectives, this will be the Focus area or objective they contribute to and for success criteria, it'll display the parent objective(s))
● Parent plan shows the primary plan in which the goal resides
● Parent objective shows the objective a nested objective, project, action, or measure sits under
● Parent project shows the project an action sits under
● Description shows the full text Description (if populated) for a goal in the sidebar
● # Open Risks displays the current count of open risks against the goal
● Open Risks displays the title, description, and severity of the open risks against the goal (sorted by severity, highest to lowest if there are multiple open risks for a given goal)
● Focus Areas lists all the Focus Areas a goal sits within across plans
● Any custom fields you’ve created will also be available to include as columns (includes drop down, text, and numeric custom fields)