With the Goals view, you can easily define and structure your organization's goals and subgoals, assign projects, keep track of details like responsibilities or departments, and see the progress of your objectives.
- General
- Add Goals
- Edit Goals
- Filter Goals
- Delete Goals
- Add, Edit, and Delete Subgoals
- How to Assign Projects to a Goal
- Goals in Other Views
General
Required User Rights
To add, edit, and delete goals, you need the Manage Goals right. Go to Manage > User Groups > Administrative Rights and select Manage Goals.
To assign one or more projects to a goal, you need Edit rights for the Goal field in your user group under Project Field Rights. The Manage Goals right is not required for this.
Under Manage > Customizable Navigation, you can define which user groups have access to the Goals view and which do not. For more information on how to configure the left sidebar, see the article Manage Customizable Navigation.
Where to Find
In the left-hand sidebar, click Goals to open the view:
To define which goals are displayed, select the desired Date Range and Portfolio in the header at the top of your screen. For more information on how to filter goals, see below.
You can arrange goals in the desired order using drag and drop.
Subgoals can be prioritized via drag and drop in the details view of each goal; the prioritization of subgoals will then be reflected in the goals overview.
Goals are Global
Goals are global and therefore the same across all scenarios. As projects are scenario-dependent, the projects assigned to a goal may differ in different scenarios.
Overview
This view displays your goals as cards with key details:
- Name: required field; the name of the goal is always displayed.
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Start and Finish: in the bottom right corner of the card, you will see the time period defined for the goal.
- Year-based goals are displayed as a single year (e.g., "2024")
- Half-year goals show the corresponding half-year (e.g., "H1 2024")
- Quarterly goals are displayed with the respective quarter (e.g., "Q1 2024")
- Monthly goals use an abbreviation of the month (e.g., "Mar 2024")
- All other periods are displayed with start and end dates
- Number of Projects: the sum of all projects that have been assigned to both the parent goal and all of its subgoals in the bottom right corner of the card. Only projects above the Cut-Off Line are considered.
- Status: if defined, the current status of the goal appears in the top right corner of the card.
- OBS Unit: all OBS units assigned to the goal are displayed in the bottom right corner of the card.
- Percentage of Completion: shows the current percentage of completion based on the allocations and actual time worked of the assigned projects; if there is a start and finish date, a gray line marks the current date. The color of the bar corresponds to the color of the respective goal.
- Subgoals: if defined, subgoals can be expanded and displayed using the arrow icon in the bottom left corner of the card.
To add information to the cards, open the details view of the respective goal and fill in the missing fields.
Add Goals
To create a new goal, click Add Goal in the toolbar.
The details view will open, where you can name the goal and optionally add more information:
An overview of all fields with explanations can be found below in the sections General, Details, and Status.
Edit Goals
You can easily edit existing goals in the details view. To do this, move your mouse over a goal in your goals overview and click the square icon behind the goal’s name to open the details view:
General
- Name: required field; Click the field to enter a custom name. We recommend keeping the name short to ensure good readability in other views (e.g., the Roadmap).
- Color: Meisterplan automatically assigns a color to the goal. You can change it by clicking the colored square at the end of the field.
- Start and Finish: You can set a start date and/or a finish date for each goal. The dates will be displayed in the goals overview. You can filter goals based on the date range.
- Description
Details
- Goal owner: Assign a responsible person to each goal.
- OBS: Using the Organizational Breakdown Structure (OBS), you can define, for example, which department and location a goal belongs to. If you assign OBS units, you can filter goals based on specific OBS units using a portfolio's Projects and Goals View Filter.
Status
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Percentage of Completion: shows the current completion rate of a goal in percentage. The percentage is calculated by dividing the sum of the actual time worked of all assigned projects by the sum of the planned allocations of all projects. If no actual time worked is available, the sum of the past allocations is used instead.
- Today Line: If there is a start and a finish date, the today line will be displayed on the bar in relation to the dates.
- Status: Project field; values can be edited under Manage > Custom Project Fields.
Filter Goals
In the header, you can use the Date Range to specifically display the goals and subgoals that are currently important to you. This helps you maintain a quick overview of your own projects and focus on what matters most.
To ensure that users only see the goals and subgoals relevant to their department or location, you can filter goals by OBS unis through the appropriate Portfolio.
Click Manage > Portfolios to add a new portfolio or open an existing one by clicking the pencil icon at the end of the row. In the Projects and Goals View Filter section, select the desired OBS unit from the dropdown menu to filter your portfolio, e.g., department):
When you select the configured portfolio, only the goals and subgoals whose OBS unit match the filter configuration of the portfolio will be displayed in the Goals view. If only a subgoal is included in the portfolio, the parent goal is automatically displayed as well:
Please note: filtering goals by OBS details through the portfolio is only applied in the Goals view. In project-related views, such as the Portfolio Designer, only projects are filtered through the portfolio.
Delete Goals
To delete an existing goal, click Delete Goal in the toolbar of the details view:
Along with the goal, all its subgoals and project assignments will be deleted, if applicable.
Add, Edit, and Delete Subgoals
To define your goals in more detail and break them down for each department, you can create an unlimited number of subgoals for each goal.
Add Subgoal
Open the details view of a goal and click Add Subgoal in the toolbar.
The details view of the subgoal will open, where you can assign a name to the subgoal and add additional information, similar to the details view of a parent goal:
Once you have created a subgoal, an additional section called Subgoals will appear in the details view of the parent goal. From there, you can add new subgoals and view the subgoal’s percentage of completion:
In this section, you can easily change the order of the subgoals using drag and drop.
In views in which a subgoal is displayed alone (e.g. in the project overview, in color legends or in the exported Excel), the top-level goal is displayed in parentheses behind it.
Edit Subgoals
To edit subgoals, hover over the corresponding subgoal and click on the square icon directly after the name:
Delete Subgoals
To delete an existing subgoal, click Delete Subgoal in the toolbar of the subgoal’s details view:
Along with the subgoal, all its project assignments will be deleted, if applicable.
How to Assign Projects to a Goal
Assign projects to either a goal or a subgoal to clearly show which projects contribute to which strategic objective. Please note that a project can only be assigned to one goal or one subgoal, and not to multiple goals or subgoals.
Hover over a goal in the goals overview and click on the square icon after the goal's name to open the details view. Then, select the Contributing Projects tab:
This view displays a list of all projects assigned to the goal. The following project information is displayed:
- Name: the name and the associated project key of the project.
- Start and Finish: the project start and finish dates.
- Status: Project field; values can be edited under Manage > Custom Project Fields.
- Project Manager: shows the responsible project manager.
- Approved Budget: shows the budget as specified in the Approved Budget project field.
- Percentage of Completion: shows the current completion rate of a goal in percentage. The percentage is calculated by dividing the sum of the actual time worked of all assigned projects by the sum of the planned allocations of all projects. If no actual time worked is available, the sum of the past allocations is used instead.
Please note: For the calculation of the completion rate of parent goals, all projects assigned to the parent goal and its subgoals are considered. For the calculation of the completion rate of subgoals, only the projects directly assigned to the subgoal are included in the calculation.
To assign a new project, click Add Project:
Enter the project name or project key in the search bar to assign the desired project to the goal. Please note that you can only select projects that have not yet been assigned to a goal:
Once you have confirmed your selection, the project will be assigned to the goal and immediately appear in the list of contributing projects:
Goals in Other Views
Goals and subgoals can be visualized and organized in various Meisterplan views. Depending on the view, different options are available to you.
Highlight Goals with Colors
In all views that support color schemes, you can also highlight goals using colors. This applies to the following views:
Select the Grouping
In some views, there is the option to group projects by goals and subgoals. This feature is available in the following views:
Display Goal
You can configure the Goal field in several views. These are: