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!

From the Objective sidebar, click Add actions. The Add actions sidebar opens. Or, you can add an action inline, and then add the details from the Edit action Sidebar.

• Name your Action something that specifies what actions or tasks you are going to do.
• Set a Start Date and End Date, which will set a timeline for your action. Remember that the dates cannot exceed the range of the parent objective!
• Add further context about the action in Description to provide more narrative with rich text, bullets, embedded links and videos.
• From the Collaborator area, you can add or manage collaborators, who will be able to work on the action.
• Expand the Tracking area - An Action is tracked manually, via milestones, checklists, or by integrating with Jira and other applications. With a "manually" option, you can just use the slider to drag from a 0% to 100%.
  • Milestones - 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. 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.). Click the X icon to remove a milestone or click Remove milestones to remove all the milestones.
  • Checklists- A checklist represents an activity or a group of activities or tasks to be completed by a specific date. 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. Click the X icon to remove a milestone or click  Remove all items to remove all the checklist items.
• (Appears only if "manually" option is chosen to track actions) Under Update schedule 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. To know more on this, see The Goal Hub.
• Contributes to area will show the objective and the project your action belongs to. You can edit this by clicking on the text - you can either move them under a different objective of the same plan, or under an objective of a different plan, or under a project of the same objective and plan. Remember that it will list only those objectives and projects that fall within the date range of the parent objective.

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 comment as well. 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"

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!

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.

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 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!

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 View all 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?

Edit the action from its sidebar, and in the Contributes to section, against Project, choose the 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!