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.

For paid accounts, you can access a plan only if you're  an "Admin", or someone with view/edit permissions. While with just "can view" permission, one can only view the plan and its components and leave comments from the Sidebar, with a "can edit" permission, you can change plan name, assign team, assign or change custom fields template, add or manage just about everything in the Planner page. See Plan Permissions for details.

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

New planner page-1

Only Admins and those with edit permissions can execute the below tasks on a plan.

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,

      • add or change the description,

      • 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. Click the three dots against the focus area and click Edit to edit the name of your focus area and add description, 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.

Apply date and progress filters to display goals that fall on or within the date range or horizon and focus on non-completed goals (progress less than 100%). See Date filters in Plans for details.

If you've assigned due dates to the focus areas, then these date filters will also be applicable to the focus areas. However, if there're objectives that're within the date range but the focus area is outside the range, then the focus area will still be available to house those objectives. In these cases, the best practice would be to move those objectives under current or upcoming focus areas to work and achieve those desirable outcomes.

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 Pencil20Icon2-1 (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 three dots against the goal and click

  • Edit to edit its details from its sidebar.

  • Explore20icon(Open goal hub) to view their progress in the goal hub,

  • Alignment20icon1(View alignment) to view their alignment in the Alignment page.

  • Delete to delete it permanently from the plan and workspace.

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.

If you delete an Objective, then its associated projects, measures and actions will get deleted, and the contributing objective will be unlinked. Only after you delete the objectives under a Focus Area, can you delete and remove that focus area from the plan.

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.

Or, use the Description text box in the Plan settings window to enter those details with the rich text editor.

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.

My objective is showing up under Unaligned objectives banner.

This might be happen at times when you try to remove a shared objective from a child plan that also has shared focus areas with the parent plan.

To fix this, click Move from the three dots against the objective and choose the relevant plan and focus area or objective to move it under. Or, edit this objective from its sidebar, and under the Contributes to section, choose a relevant plan, focus area or objective. 

In case, its contribution is not fixed and there is a date filter applied which is outside the range of this unaligned objective, then you'll just see the banner but not the objective itself. To fix this, you need to

  1. Clear the date filter to show all the objectives in that plan.

  2. Click the objective showing up under Unaligned objectives, and click Move from the three dots across it. Alternatively, you can edit the objective from its sidebar, and go to the Contributes to section.

  3. Choose the relevant plan and focus area or an objective to move it under, and click Save.

You'll now notice the Unaligned objectives banner gone.