How do I use the Planner?

The Planner is super easy and intuitive to use.

Click Plans and Teams > All plans from the left navigation pane. This will list all the plans you've access to. You can either search these plans via the search bar, or click the star beside any given plan to make it a favorite that will appear at the top of the list. You can also add a plan to your favorites by clicking the star next to the plan’s title at the very top of the screen.

Here’s a quick glance at what the Planner page looks like.

Planner edit view:

As you can see, this is the most important page since the Planner is the heartbeat of Cascade! It contains all the parts that's needed for you to work on your strategy! You can:

• click into the name of your plan text box to change its name,
• click the three dots against the plan name to
  • view the plan's alignment (See View the Alignment of your Plans for details.)
  • click the Plan settings, and
    • change the plan's name,
    • assign or change or remove the parent plan,
    • assign or change or remove the assigned team,
    • apply or remove custom fields and templates created in the workspace.
• click Delete to delete the plan. Only the plan's owner, collaborator, admin, or those with edit permissions can delete the plan!
• click Share to share your plan, just type in the mail addresses and give view/edit permissions. See Plan Permissions for details.
• And, if the plan is not assigned to a team, you can click Assign to team, and choose the team from the list. Or if you see a team against the Assigned team, you can click on it to view the team's details.

Plan Details

You can have a quick look at your Focus Areas and Objectives. You can edit the name of your focus area by clicking on the text, or add a new focus area or choose an existing focus area, expand and collapse its view. Once you delete all the objectives under a focus area, you can then remove it from the plan by clicking on the three dots, and select Remove from the plan. Click the three dots to explore the focus area from the Plans and Teams > All focus areas page!

Click on Objectives to get more information, and a full range of editing ability through the Sidebar. Expand the Objective to see the success criteria associated with it. Hover the mouse over an objective, action, project, or measure, and

• click the (Edit title) to inline-edit their title. You can also edit the owner and the dates inline by clicking on the owner icon and due date fields!
• click the (Open goal hub) to view their progress in the goal hub,
• or, click the (View alignment) to view their alignment in the Alignment page.

Click on Projects/Actions/Measures/Contributing Objectives to view or edit them in the Sidebar, or Add Tracking if you have not added the tracking mechanism to it, and add it from the Sidebar as well. When you add the projects/actions/measures/contributing objectives inline, you'll see the option of selecting them from the drop-down!

Hover the mouse over the progress bar to know the actual and expected progress. If you need to quickly update the progress of an action or measure, just click and drag the progress bar. Remember that if you had chosen Checklists as your tracking option for actions, then you'll not be able to manually slide the progress bar from here!

You can add any of the plan details from this page by clicking the + (plus) icons, and choosing the relevant entity.

Click the three dots against any of the plan details to edit them in the Sidebar, or delete them.

Timeline view:

Click the Timeline tab to look at how the different parts of your plan (objective, measure, project, action) are distributed across timelines (by their due dates) in a Gantt chart view. See The 'Timeline' View for details.

FAQs

Can I delete the plans or its components?

Yes, you can! But keep in mind that deleting anything (be it a plan, or focus area, or objective) is permanent, and you cannot retrieve it!

Either from the Sidebar, or from the Planner page, click the three dots against their names, and click Delete.

Where can I enter the mission statement and values?

Earlier, we had a Plan Principles area in this page where the vision, mission, and the values were defined. However, you can add these now in the Teams pages for your whole company. Navigate to Plans and Teams > Teams page, and add the vision, mission and values!

Earlier there were icons to edit, comment, and explore. I do not see it now!

Yes, the planner has got a facelift to reduce some noise, and drive more focus on the plan details as such! You can still hover your mouse over the space to see edit and explore icons! However, if you need to enter a comment, you need to do so from the sidebar!