Add Actions to your Objectives

In Cascade, an Action is the crucial link between your high-level objectives or part of a larger project and the work that makes them happen. Think of an Action as the specific, tangible activity that directly contributes to achieving your desired outcome. By adding an action, you're not just creating a task; you're creating a clear, trackable path toward success.

How to Add a New Action

Adding an action is designed to be seamless, no matter where you are in your workspace.

1. From the Objective's Sidebar: Select your objective, then click + Add success criteria > Action. This is the most common way to add a new action.

2. From the Planner: On your Planner page, click the + icon beneath the relevant objective, then select Action.

3. From the Goal Hub: Navigate to your objective's Goal Hub, click the Success criteria tab, and then click the + icon > Action.
   
   
   

Once you've added the action, you can fill in key details:

• Title, Tag, Description: Give your action a clear, concise name. If your organization uses tags to specify the type of action, select from the dropdown options. Use the description field to add rich context, like links, notes, or additional instructions, ensuring everyone understands the purpose.

• Timeframe: Set a start and end date. This creates a realistic timeline and helps you manage your progress effectively.

• Owner: Assign an owner to ensure accountability and clear ownership of the task.

• Collaborator: You can add or manage collaborators. By adding collaborators to an action, you ensure that everyone who needs to contribute has the ability to work on the action.

   

Tracking Progress for an Action:

Cascade offers flexible tracking options that give you the control and visibility you need to drive results. Select the tracking type to match the complexity of your action.  By default, when an action is created the action is manually tracked.

Open the Sidebar and select the tracking settings by hovering over the tracking:

• Manually: Manual tracking allows you to update your progress from 0%-100% using a simple slider. This is a subjective method for reflecting on how far along you are.

• Milestones: Define milestones if your items need to be in a consecutive order, weighted or prioritized differently than other items and are time bound.  Milestones represents a percentage of an Action to be completed that has been connected to a specific date. The health and progress is tracked based on the completion of the milestone items.

  • Click Add milestones. Hover the mouse between the milestones to add one from the + icon. You'll need to input the percent, name and date. You can move the slider in the progress bar to update progress of milestones. 

    

• Checklists: Use checklists if you wish to complete your tasks in no particular order where every task or item is weighed equally. Checking off each item provides a tangible sense of accomplishment and drives progress.

  • Click +Add to add a checklist item and a due date. 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. 

    

Expected Progress for "Manually" tracked actions:

• Under Expected Progress 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.

• If the Send update reminders based on the expected progress schedule check-box is selected, then the owner of the action will receive notifications both in-app and mail to remind them to make progress updates. See Set-up Reminders for Goal Updates for details.

Update Schedule for actions tracked by "Milestones" or "Checklists":

• From the Schedule dropdown list, set a period or day(s) to determine when you'll update the progress of your actions (not depending on the due date of the milestone or checklist item)

• Based on the cadence that you set, the owner of the action will receive notifications both in-app and mail to remind them to make progress updates. See Set-up Reminders for Goal Updates for details.

 

Tracking progress "manually"	Tracking progress with "milestones"	Tracking progress with "checklists"

Health of Actions

The health of actions is calculated using the base formula: Actual Progress / Expected Progress

The expected progress for an action is informed by one of three options:

• The due dates of the associated checklist items. 

• The due dates of the associated milestones.

• The calculated spread of progress based on update schedules for manually tracked actions. i.e., if the update schedule is once per month, and the action spans one year, the expected progress will be about 8% a month (100% / 12 months = 8.3% progress per month)

Move an Action

• Click Move from the three dots against the action title, choose the relevant objective within the same plan or a different plan, and click Confirm. The action will now be displayed as a success criteria under the chosen objective. 

 

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FAQs

I apply statuses to Actions?
Yes, if enabled. To learn how to apply statues and its implications on health, refer to Add a Status to an Objective 

When should I use a checklist or milestone?
Checklists work well for simple tasks that are weighed equally and are not date bound. These give you the flexibility to do things out of order if you need to and can be quickly checked off as they are completed. Milestones are best used for larger projects/initiatives where each task or item needs to be completed in a specific order and the individual tasks requires sizing/estimation

If you wish to track each sub items or sub tasks by assigning different owners, then our recommendation would be to create a project with actions and assigning those actions to different owners.

What is the purple dot in the progress chart for a milestone?

When updating a milestone, the purple line represents the date the milestone has been completed. The purple dot corresponds line by line. In this image, the first 3 milestones have been complete, resulting in 3 dots representing the dates of completion.    

Can I assign a viewer as an owner for an Action?
Please note that, while you can assign ownership to Viewers, their role does not let them to do anything on the action but just review and leave comments on them.

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.

Can I change action into an objective?
Yes. Click the three dots beside its title, and click Convert. Choose objective and click Confirm. Remember that you'll not be able to convert the action if it has made some progress. Also, any updates, comments, risks, relationships or custom fields that were added to it will not be retained in the conversion..

I want the actions to be updated on a quarterly basis.
From the Update Schedule or Expected Progress (for manually tracked actions) 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. Once that's set, you'll be notified that the update is due.

Where can I see the actions assigned to me?
You'll see all the actions that you own and collaborate in the My work section of your Home page.