Generate Reports

Though charts, graphs, etc. are visually appealing, almost everyone needs to have a "report" to understand and communicate the progress. It's like, "never forget your roots."

Reports are narratives that reflect on the progress made which are not only strategic-focused, but can also be function-based. These create experiences that assist in the process of reviewing and evaluating progress by observing in-detail raw data of the past, and turning them into actionable narratives. This is done by helping you not only have the flexibility to create the structure of your reports but also by providing the ease to use frameworks to create insights. These reports are tailor-made and ready for regular review meetings at any time with not much burden on preparing data.

Three key use cases for reports are:

• Business analysis (inward) around a certain set of initiatives (a team's, a project's, a departments) to assess opportunities, challenges, and risks;

• Strategy reports (upward) to communicate upward to include strategic updates, timelines, resources, and required support/resources;

• Performance reports (outward) around individuals, teams, or projects to communicate downward/outward - for partners, customers, vendors, suppliers, other teams.

Other advanced use cases for reports are board meetings, strategic evaluations/analyses to set goals, and more.

Click Reports from the left navigation menu, and click Create Report. You can do this action from the Reports page as well by clicking + New Report at the top-right, this will open a pop-up window in which you will name your report, and click Save. An intuitive copy of the report appears, which you can edit as per your needs.

In case of Essentials or Enterprise+ tiers, you'll have the option to set access permissions for the report at the time of its creation itself. See Report Permissions to know about access control and privacy settings.

By default, whoever creates the report becomes its Owner, however, they can be changed from the report's Settings. Refer Report Settings article to know more on settings, changing ownership, and access permissions for reports.

Choose your page setup:

When creating a new report or editing an existing one, you can switch from Portrait to Landscape mode in the Page setup section. From edit mode, click the Page setup button on the top left. From here, you can select between Portrait and Landscape orientation. Consider the following when choosing between Portrait and Landscape formats:

Landscape: best suited for reports you will be sharing directly with other Cascade users or viewing/presenting from Cascade (maximizes width for widgets and tables) or reports that you wish to export to PDF/print in Landscape format.
Portrait: best suited for reports you plan to export to a PDF or print to share, that you want to distribute on Portrait format (A4 paper size)

Context with headlines and notes:

• Click into the Headline text box or insert icon to give a headline to your report. You can choose different styles for headlines from the drop-down list - till three levels are supported. Also, you can align them to appear on the left, center or right.

• Click into the Notes text box or insert icon to add narratives about the report with different styles - till three levels are supported, align them left, right or center, add ordered or unordered bullets to display details, or highlight them in bold, italics or underline format. Also, you can insert URL links to add external references.

Choose the relevant table for reporting:

• Click Edit this table to open the data source for the report or insert icon to generate a report. You can either choose the Objectives table, Teams table, Initiatives table, Measures table, Progress table, or Discover table depending on what you want to report on. While the Objectives table reports on the performance of objectives and its associated success criteria in plans, focus areas, and teams assigned to those plans, the Teams table reports on the performance of the team and its members, the Initiatives table reports on the performance of individual users or owners, the Measures table reports on the performance of measures in your workspace, the Progress table reports on the progress made by the objectives and its success criteria over time, and the Discover table reports on anything that you wish for.

  • Click Teams in "Teams table", Owners in "Initiatives table", Measures in "Measures table", or Plans or Focus Areas in the "Progress table", or Teams, Plans or Focus Areas in "Objectives table" to select the Team(s), the Plan(s) associated with it, and the Focus Area(s) of those plan(s). You can click Clear All to clear the selected data, and re-select the required ones. Once selected, click Apply.

  • Select the date or the days range for which you need the report for. In the case of "Teams table", "Measures table", and "Initiatives table", you can edit the date range from the Edit Table Settings by clicking Change against Time Range to select your desired date range. Click Clear All to clear the selected values, and re-select. Click Go Back to go back to your previous data source. Once you're done with the selections, click Apply.

• • Select the table columns that you need in the report, apply filters, or group the data and display the report as needed. Details of these settings are explained in the upcoming articles in this section.

• Or, just click (Discover widget) and you'll see a table displayed with the details of all the objectives, measures, projects and actions in your workspace. See "Discover View" for details.

Logos and chart visualizations:

• Click the (Image) icon to add the logo or an image to your report. While the logo will be displayed in your reports or presentations and can adapt to any size, the height is mostly fixated at 64px. Though you can add images of any format, it would appear best if uploaded in JPG, JPEG or PNG formats.

• Click the (Chart) icon and choose the type of widget that you need to generate. For example, you can click to choose a pie chart which'll show the count of objectives grouped by health within focus area/plan/team/owner, depending on the data source that you choose from the list. Give a title to the widget to display the pie chart. If you've two pie charts, you can very well drag and place them next to each other. See Add Charts to your Reports for details.

Share, present and comment to collaborate:

• Once created, the reports are auto-saved reducing your burden of doing a save operation every time. However, if you wish to revert the action that you just did, click the Undo icon. And when there's an undo, there'll always be the option to redo it - just click the Redo icon.

• Click (Share) icon to share the report with the users in your workspace. Type their email addresses, give view-edit access, and click Share. They'll receive a notification (if enabled) that a report is shared with them. Remember that, only the report creators, or the users with Admin role can give permissions. See Report Permissions for details.

  • From the Share option, under the Export section, you can export your report as a PDF and share it with the users outside your workspaces. See Export your Reports for details.

• Click (Present Report) icon to enter the presentation mode - this will open the report in a dynamic pdf view where you can analyze the data, and interact with the various components in a quick glance.

• Click the (comment) icon. This will open the Comments sidebar - leave a comment (use rich-text, align, apply styles), use "@" to tag someone/team in the workspace, and click Send. If you've enabled the notifications for "Someone mentions me" in your profile settings, then you'll receive a notification in-app/email/both. You'll also see an orange dot in the comment icon if you're mentioned but have not yet seen it. You can add comments to the reports as well.

How to edit, delete, and manage the elements in a report?

Click Edit Report on the top right. Hover the mouse over the different components like notes, table, etc., to edit them, reorder them, or just drag the corners to resize them.

Click the to open the sidebar which displays the constituents of the report. Click any of the boxes to highlight those components in the main area. Hover the mouse over these boxes, and click the trash icon to delete the relevant element from the report. You can also delete them from the main section by hovering the mouse over them, and clicking delete from the three dots (Widget options).

FAQs

When to use dashboards vs reports?

We, at Cascade, help you discover insights with our dashboards and reports that can accelerate your strategy to the next level. This allows you to make confident, informed decisions and build compelling narratives in your meetings with beautifully visualized data available at your fingertips.

While there are some similarities between reports and dashboards, they can each be better suited for specific situations. Here is a quick reference that you can use to decide whether or not you should use a dashboard or report.

• Use a report if you are wanting to communicate something. This can be for a board meeting, vendor update, or business analysis.

• Use a dashboard if you are wanting to monitor something. This can be useful for team meetings or for leadership to keep an eye on certain data sets.

Can I build a report that has only the actions or measures?

In case of measures, you can build the Measures table and filter it to display the data you wish to see.

Or, you can build a Discover View and choose the entity as Actions, Projects or Measures to build a entity-specific report.

Can I export the report or share them externally?

Yes. You can export them as a PDF at the report level and share them. You can also export the individual widgets (tables or charts) to CSV format to get the data out of Cascade and be used in some data system elsewhere. External sharing via a link in the mail will be coming soon.

Can I embed the reports in Power BI (PBI)?

Yes, you can export the widgets (table or charts) in either view or edit mode to a CSV format which can later be formatted in Power BI to build visuals of your choice.

I'm only seeing a column on risk in the report tables, where will I see the risk matrix?

If you want to see a risk matrix, go to the goal hub of an objective, measure, project or action in which the risk is added, and in the Risks tab, click Report this. You'll be redirected to the reports page with a risk matrix populated. Or, you can click the Chart icon to insert a Risk Distribution Scatter Plot and choose the relevant objective to bring up the visuals on the risk added to it.

Can I upgrade just one member of my Team to premium so that I can make more full reports? And leave the others at the free end for them to just view reports?

No, the tier benefits are at workspace level, and not at user or plan levels. If you've viewer seats left, you can add them as viewers, and they'll inherit the view access to all functionalities across the workspace. However, the report must also have a public access for others to view it.
If you need to enjoy premium benefits, we can extend your trial for a while so that you can explore all the features that the premium tier has to offer. But the best way would be to upgrade and unlock strategic insights.

Can I export the report to CSV?

Yes. Though you cannot export at the report level, you do so at the individual widget (table or chart) level. Click the three dots and click Export to CSV. The table or widget will be exported successfully in CSV format. Note that only those columns that you've made available in the table will be exported and if you wish to have any more columns, you need to first edit the table and add those before exporting them.

Will reports help with performance management?

Yes. When you say performance management, its all about

• Goal setting

• Measurable KPIs

• Targets and deadlines

• Regular updates

Now, all these are already tracked in your goals in the plans that're built. You can just build an "Initiatives table" to assess the performance of an individual or "Team table" to assess the performance of a team. Or, you can build an "Objectives table" and apply filters or group the data by team or owners, and include columns like

• Progress

• Due date

• Last update

• Health

This'll give a picture of performance as such. In addition, you can build charts like "Compare Multiple Measures by Owners" widget to track how different owners are performing against their measures. Or, you can build custom charts in dashboards with data source as Team or Owners, and visualize their progress and performance.

Or, you can just build a Discover View, filter by Owners to choose the specific person whose performance you wish to review.

Use the "Notes" widget in dashboard or "Notes" in reports to provide context and review comments.