Writing OKRs topics

How can I ingest Viva Goals in my Fabric Notebook.

Prabhatnath — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 13:06:36 GMT

Hello, I need some guidance on how can I ingest data from Viva Goals in my Fabric Notebook. Any guidance or steps will be helpful.

Thanks,

Prabhat

Initiatives have to keep same metric format as Key Results

MilVe23 — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 12:49:45 GMT

Hi everyone,

is it bug or feature that Key Results aligned to Objective can have mixed format of metric while Initiatives underneath can't? Probably hard to understand, so let's explain it like this:

Objectives' Outcome is always set as percentage of completion
Key results' Metric may be set as numeric, percentage, even currency and still may contribute to Objective above
Initiative has to keep same metric format as Key results otherwise contribution is not available to set

Example: KR set as reach 2 (number), Initiatives set with milestones as percentage completed, "Manage contributions" dialog doesn't allow to choose some of those Initiatives as they have no metric or wrong metric format.

Is that by reason and could I understand why? It is possible to combine KRs contributing to Os but why not Is to KR?

How to select the "type" of an OKR?

flytzen — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 13:15:02 GMT

In the documentation for Viva Goals it says that you can choose the "Type" of an OKR, i.e. Organizational, Team or Individual.

There is even a screenshot showing this option in the UI here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/training/modules/viva-goals-create-track-close-okrs/how-to-enter-okrs

However, when I enter an OKR, I do not get this option:

I am a global admin and have just set Viva Goals up.

I have enabled the "default organisation" and do not have any teams.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Frans

Viva Goal Tag

SurenderChawla1980 — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 15:49:01 GMT

Do you know how i can upload the tag for multiple goal in one shot via excel or CSV?

Understanding OKR permissions and privacy: not obvious parent-child logic!

jmnaud — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 21:13:40 GMT

Hi,
Wanted to share our experience and evolving understanding of OKR permissions and privacy to see if it matches with what others see and need.
Step 1 - Viva Goals provides a feature to make Objectives or Key Results "private" by setting the permissions to "Only selected people can view and align". Given we have some Key Results that expose sensitive financial results, for those KR we set the permissions to just a limited set of people. This all feels good as a little "lock" appears beside the KR.
Step 2 - Some of those private KRs are grouped under a parent Objective that we also make "Private" as everything under the Objective is private. However, some of the private KRs are grouped under Objectives that also have KRs that are public, so those parent objectives are kept "public".
Outcome: we assumed that all the KRs that we made private are indeed private. But to our surprise, this does not seem to be the case. When the private KR is child to a public Objective, then people who are NOT in the permission list can this see the KR and its result. Exactly what we wanted to avoid!

In the case of private KRs that are child to a private Objective, the general public can see the private Objective but they can not open it and see any of its child: which is good! (even though we thought they would not even see the private objective!).

So our conclusion is that to make KRs truly private they NEED to be grouped under a Private objective, not a public one. And it needs to be clear that this private Objective is actually visible to all. This is a relatively acceptable workaround once one is aware of it. However the User Interface of Viva Goals is deceptive in the way that it lets the KR creator think that its KR is private, when it actually is not.

Have others used the OKR privacy settings and see similar outcomes? Other experiences or recommendations on how to make sure private OKRs are truly private?

Is there a way to Update Actual goal via excel?

SurenderChawla1980 — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 00:02:35 GMT

I am looking one help regarding Viva Goal. We have around 1000+ goal and post import the goal for each employee i don't want to map each field and column to update the actual goal achieved. Is there a way to upload the actual achievement numbers also from excel?

Viva Goals Product Tips!

MeenaNatarajan — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 06:20:21 GMT

Hello everyone!

Welcome back to reading! February is the bridge between winter's longing and spring's promise, where hope whispers through the frost and dreams take flight on the wings of possibility. I'm excited to share some insightful product tips with you all today.

The top trends continue to remain the same - Creating/Managing OKRs, Purchasing Viva Goals licenses, Integrations and Enabling users. Let's dive into some tips to enhance your product experience.

1. Integration sync errors - Have you stumbled upon errors while syncing your data from other applications to Viva Goals? There could also be cases where the updated values do not reflect in Viva Goals. One common reason to this is the expiry of the tokens or credentials used to setup the connection. You could try to reauthenticate your connection from Account Settings > Preferences > My Integrations > click on Manage next to the desired application > Reauthenticate.

2. Export API - Have you been manually exporting the OKRs from the Viva Goals Explorer? We heard you! You will now be able to programmatically export Viva Goals data in an Explorer View via Microsoft Graph APIs. All you have to do is create an export job and fetch the content once it's successful. You can read more about it here.

3. Users Deleted in Entra - Did you know? When users are deleted from Microsoft Entra ID, they're not deleted/deactivated in Viva Goals immediately. In Entra, when a user is deleted, it is in a soft-deleted phase for a 30-day period. During this period, the admin has the possibility to retrieve the account. If the account isn't retrieved for 30 days, it's then permanently deleted from Entra, and we get an update to delete/deactivate the same in Viva Goals.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. I'll come back with new tips next month.

Linking Initiatives to Key Results

SollyEng — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 04:50:17 GMT

I am trying to link specific initiatives to specific Key Results. Anyone that can assist please?

Predefine items differently - based on user's credentials

MilVe23 — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 06:42:13 GMT

Hi all,

I have provocative idea coming through my mind during these days. Every time when you select hierarchy icon ("Add child item") on some of the items (Objective, Key Result, Initiative), new creation dialogue is predefined with data from origin item.

I can imagine it should be more helpful and intuitive to respect the user who is creating new item instead. So if I select an item I wanna contribute to (OKR), it will be most probably me who will be an Owner, to be Check-in owner and my Team to be pre-set on new item, isn't it?

By default now all these three are set same as they're on the item I clicked on "Add child item" upon.

My thinking process is, that first I select OKR I want to contribute to and then I create my own one. With current approach I start with "+ Objective" (new Objective) and with alignment I have to search for relevant OKR. It's easy if there are few OKRS and somewhere around (Company, level above, team), but with more OKRs respectively with cross-functional contribution it's more and more tricky as the dialog for "Alignment" is as it is. Or ... if I use "Add new item", I have to change all three fields shown above.
Would be great to have an option per user to switch from current to mentioned above, as I can expect not everyone has the same thinking process or procedure to build the OKR structure in Viva Goals. Is that feasible, do you think?

Share your thoughts, comments? Did I miss something while adopting Viva Goals for our company? 😉

Viva Goals Product Tips!

MeenaNatarajan — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 10:25:38 GMT

Happy New Year!

January, a chapter of new beginnings, a canvas for fresh dreams, and a month to paint the year with vibrant possibilities. Embrace the journey ahead!

I'm excited to come back with some fresh product tips this month. The top trends continue to remain the same - Creating/Managing OKRs, Purchasing Viva Goals licenses, Integrations and Enabling users. Let's dive into the tips:

Zapier Integration - Viva Goals support integration with industry-leading tools and platforms you use every day. However, for the few applications that are not supported, we do have an alternate method. Our integration with Zapier will allow you to connect Viva Goals with all the tools you use every day. With the Zapier integration, you can automate the check-ins in Viva Goals when an event occurs in the other tool. You can check this doc for more details.
Email notifications - Are you not receiving emails like check-in reminders, explorer exports, summary updates from Goals? Here's something you can check - by default all emails from Goals are sent to the UPN ID of the user profile in Entra ID. If your UPN doesn't have an inbox associated with it, you'd not be receiving the emails from us. We've seen cases where customers want to route the emails to the alias field in Entra ID instead of the UPN. If that's your requirement, you can contact the support team and they'll help you fix this.
Approval Workflow - We're seeing customers mention that they're missing the option to change the approval workflow status for their OKRs. This happens when you're in a view with multiple time periods. The workflow status has to be updated individually for each entity and each time period. When multiple time periods are selected, you'll not see the option to change the status.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. I'll come back with new tips next month.

Viva Goals Product Tips!

MeenaNatarajan — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 17:28:57 GMT

Happy Friday and welcome back!

As the calendar gracefully turns its pages to December, I find myself reflecting on the journey of the past months and the anticipation of what lies ahead. In the spirit of the season, I wanted to take a moment to extend my warmest wishes to you.

I repeat - for those who are seeing this post for the first time - this is Meena, a Senior Program Manager from the Viva Goals team. I've been part of the product for close to 3 years. If you're looking for some tips and tricks that would make your experience with Viva Goals smoother, and more efficient, let's get started.

The top trends continue to remain the same - Creating/Managing OKRs, Purchasing Viva Goals licenses, Integrations, and Enabling users. However, I have some new tips that would help you use Viva Goals efficiently:

1. Inviting Entra Groups to Org/Team as Members - Instead of adding/inviting the users individually to your Viva Goals instance, you can create or invite existing Entra groups as members of your org and teams. Provisioning and de-provisioning of users in the Entra groups is also reflected in Viva Goals accordingly. Earlier, we didn't support adding M365 groups as members of the team but this is also supported now. You can read more about this topic here.

2. OKR creation permissions - Have you been looking for a way to manage which team members can create OKRs for your team? If you've not already figured it out, there's a way to restrict/allow team members to do this. From the team's page, expand the 3 dots icon and look for the team settings. More information is available here.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. I'll come back with new tips next month.

Private Objectives

nyesw2285 — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 06:37:53 GMT

Hi,

Trying to set up some sensitive objective as came across

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/viva/goals/private-objectives-key-results

This is exactly the functionality I am looking for, however, the documentation does not cover where is the feature to be enabled. I have gone to goals admin and organization settings under viva goals but no dice.

Viva Goals - Product Tips!

MeenaNatarajan — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 14:24:32 GMT

Happy Monday!

As the holiday season approaches and the weather changes, I'm back with some helpful tips for November. I repeat - for those who are seeing this post for the first time - this is Meena, a Senior Program Manager from the Viva Goals team. I've been part of the product for close to 3 yrs. If you're looking for some tips and tricks that would make your experience with Viva Goals smoother, and more efficient, let's get started.

There's not much change in the top trends, our customers are mostly interested in Creating/Managing OKRs, Purchasing Viva Goals licenses, Integrations, and Enabling users. Below are some tips that would help you use Viva Goals more effectively:

1. Auditing - Global admins can audit activities on Viva Goals by searching the audit section of the Microsoft compliance portal. In the MAC portal, users with the 'Audit Log Reader' role will be able to access the audit logs. This is useful when you want to find the users who performed actions like adding/deleting users/OKRs/teams.

The list of user and admin activities in Viva Goals that are logged for auditing can be seen at Viva Goals Activities.

2. Integrations - When trying to setup the Jira On Prem integration, if your org is using SAML SSO based authentication to access Jira On Prem, the same SSO credentials cannot be used to complete the setup. We recommend that you use a username/password based Jira account and its credentials to complete the integration. This is required only for the connection setup. You can find this covered here.

3. License Management - Are you already using Microsoft Entra Groups for managing licenses? With Microsoft Entra groups, you can grant access and permissions to a group of users instead of for each individual user. When groups are used, only members of those groups can access the resource. You can assign a Viva Goals license to the Microsoft Entra groups and these groups can be invited as users to your Viva Goals org. You can read more about it ⁠here.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. I'll come back with new tips next month.

Any way to align organization key result to team objective ?

laurentC80520 — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 09:27:41 GMT

Hello,

I found very sad that you do not have a possibility to automate the alignment of key result and child objective.

Example :

I set up an organization objective with key result assigned to team 1

Team 1 created an objective to respond to organization key result. Since you cannot align child objective to organization key result, we have to do it manually. Is there a better way to do it ?

Supporting Key Results that are Integers, especially when the goal is 1.

jmnaud — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 21:02:50 GMT

We are starting an OKR methodology implementation at our company and have chosen Viva Goals as the OKR Management tool.

One challenge we have is that some of our Key Results are Achieved/Not Achieved types and that does not seem to be supported by Viva Goals (it was in some of the other tools we have looked into).

As an example, we would have an objective that states we are going to be best in our industry by year-end for data security practices. And one of the Key Results supporting that Objective is that we get at least one recognized certification by a 3rd party as we have none today. So we have a metric: number of certifications, that we want to go from 0 to 1. However, because the KR is a floating number, the people doing check-in can write that the current value is something like 0.7. What they mean is that they feel they have done 70% of the work for getting a certification. But what we would like is for the value to stay at 0 until we get the certification as it depends on external stakeholders (the auditors) and even if we feel we have done 70% of the work (or even 95% of the work), it is very possible that we will never get the certification.

While we can tell OKR owners to leave it at 0 until achieved, it would be easier to manage if we could create KR where it is explicitly stated that the metric is an Integer and that floating value are not allowed for check-ins.

Anybody else has this need? What were your solutions? Any plan to bring a feature like this in Viva Goals?

Viva Goals - Product Tips!

MeenaNatarajan — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 11:55:03 GMT

Happy Friday!

It feels great to come back this month with some fresh product tips. For those who are seeing this post for the first time - this is Meena, a Senior Program Manager from the Viva Goals team. I've been part of the product for close to 3 years. If you're looking for some tips and tricks that would make your experience with Viva Goals smoother, and more efficient, let's get started.

Like the previous months, our customers have been talking about Creating/Managing OKRs, Purchasing Viva Goals licenses, and Integrations. We're seeing more queries around Explorer and Dashboards as well. Highlighted below are some key points to note when using these features in Viva Goals:

1. Explorer - The filters in the explorer are applied only to the top-level objectives by default. On expanding the objectives, you'd still see the key results that do not match your filters. This is the behavior by design. If you want to see a flat view of all the objectives and key results that only match your filter, you must the flat list view. This gives you an expanded list of OKRs that only meet your filter criteria:

You can read more about the Explorer here.

2. Dashboard - When embedding external links to your dashboard widget, ensure you're generating embeddable URLs from other applications like PowerBI, SharePoint, Word, etc. Copy-pasting the URLs directly from the applications' web pages might not always work. More on the custom embed feature can be found here.

3. Trial and Paid subscriptions - Have you wondered what happens to your Viva Goals data if you're unable to purchase a Viva Goals subscription before the trial expiry? We follow a 90-day data retention policy - all your data will be retained for 90 days from the trial expiry. If you purchase a subscription before the end of this retention period (90 days), the data will be available as it was. You can read more about our policies here.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. I'll come back with new tips next month.

Happy Weekend!

[Updated] Objectives alignment and exporting OKRs as admin

mohammedzaki — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 09:49:42 GMT

Dear All,

Good day, faced the following issues, will be grateful for your support and opinion:

- I'm facing an issue while trying to align or edit the alignment for an objective or key results, some of the Objectives are not listed in the search dialog so I couldn't find them to align to, the permissions was set as "Specific People can view and align" and I'm the creator and the owner and even set explicit permission to align. The only way to get this done is to change the objective permissions to "Anyone can view and align".

- Is it possible for a system admin to export all the OKRs although the permissions on some of them are restricted to specific people (Admin not among them) ?

- For the exported OKRs, the owner and Creator are in display name not in Email, we are intending to using the exported data to integrate with other solutions, can we export people info in email format like the import template ?

- in the exported file, if there are more than 1 check-in, those extra checking go to new untitles columns to the right instead of being concatenated to check-in column.

Regards,

Mohame

Viva Goals - Product Tips!

MeenaNatarajan — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 14:13:42 GMT

Hi everyone!

We're excited to meet you all again with some product tips. For those who are seeing this post for the first time - this is Meena, a Senior Program Manager from the Viva Goals team. I've been part of the product for the past 2+ years. We thought you might appreciate some quick and handy product tips to enhance your everyday experience with Viva Goals.

Last month, our customers have been mostly talking about Creating/Managing OKRs, Purchasing Viva Goals licenses, Trial Expiries/Extensions, Integrations, and Admin Configurations. Below are a few tips if you have questions about the same features:

Managing team members - Have you been looking to manage the team members from within the Admin > Members section? If yes, that's not the right place to do it. You can view all members of a team (individual members and groups) by navigating to the team page and selecting team members from the options on the top right corner of the page. From there, you can add members to the team, and promote team admins. Here's where you can read more about this.
OKR Contributions - Wondering why your child objectives and projects are not contributing to the progress of the parent objective? Child objectives and projects won't contribute to the objective by default and contributions will always have to be manually changed. You can check out our article here for more information.
Parent objective not closed though child KRs are closed - Did you also come across this? Yes, this is the behavior by design. The parent objectives have to be closed manually as they don't close automatically upon closure of the child KRs.

Thanks for reading and have a great day! We'll come back with new tips next month.

Viva Goals - Product Tips

MeenaNatarajan — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 13:16:58 GMT

Hello everyone!

This is Meena, a Senior Program Manager from the Viva Goals team. I've been part of the product for the past 2+ years. It should be quite interesting to know what our customers talk more about in Viva Goals. We also thought you might appreciate some quick and handy product tips to enhance your everyday experience with Viva Goals.

The majority of our customer interactions have been around Creating/Managing OKRs, Purchasing Viva Goals licenses, Trial Expiries/Extensions, Integrations, and License Management. Here are some quick tips if you're stumbling upon similar scenarios:

Roll over unfinished objectives - When you close an OKR at the end of your time period, you have the ability to choose between closing or continuing working on the same OKR in the next time period. It also gives you options to preserve or reset the current progress. If you'd like to continue the progress from where you left, you can reset it or choose to preserve the existing start and target values. You can read more about cloning here.
Self-Serve and Admin Led Trials - If you are an individual who'd like to sign up for Viva Goals self-serve trial on your org's existing Microsoft 365 tenant using your business credentials, you can visit https://goals.microsoft.com/ and click “Start Trial”. If you are a tenant admin who wants to sign up for a trial for your org, you can do it from here - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-viva/goals or from the MAC portal.
Integrations - If you don't find the applications you'd like to link your OKRs to, you can reach out to your Viva Goals admin or your tenant admin and have them enable the integrations for your tenant. More details on this is available here.

We're excited to share similar tips with you on a monthly basis. Watch out for more updates next month.

Should Title become deselected (in Customize Columns) how do you reselect it?

kljthomas — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 09:09:23 GMT

In View Options / Customize Columns it is somehow possible to deselect Title, and then there is no way to reselect it because it's ghosted (can't be toggled.) Is there anyway to remedy that, e.g. is there a way to revert user settings?