Configuring Strategy and Goals
Summarize
Summary of Configuring Strategy and Goals
The Strategy and Goals feature in the Strategic Planning Workspace requires no mandatory configuration to start using. It allows you to create and manage goals on a board without prerequisites or limitations, making all goals visible based on applied filters or selected entities. This differs from portfolio plan goals, which have more restrictive requirements for visibility.
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Optional Configuration
While not required, administrators can customize the Strategy and Goals experience to better align with organizational needs through several optional configurations:
- Migrate Legacy Goals Data: Run a scheduled job to migrate existing goals from legacy tables (such as Goal, Enterprise Strategy) into the new Goal Framework tables, enabling continued management and board creation with existing data.
- Set Display Limit for Goals: Adjust the default maximum of 250 goals displayed on the Goals page by configuring the snalignws.goalhierarchy.maxrecords system property, to control performance and usability.
- Customize Goal and Target Labels: Rename the Goal and Target tables to reflect your organization's terminology (e.g., changing Goal to Objective and Target to Key Result) for clearer communication.
- Configure Assigned Entities: Define goals at any organizational level, either with or without assigned entities. You can create boards filtered by specific goal fields or assigned entities, including default entities like Business Unit, Department, Company, etc. Additional assigned entities can be configured as needed.
- Configure Goal Preferences: Set preferences such as calendar type for goal setting, weighted average calculations for progress tracking, and deletion rules for goals and targets to tailor goal management.
- Configure Reminders for Target Actuals: Automatically notify target owners and contributors to update progress before due dates, based on defined check-in frequencies, ensuring timely updates.
- Configure Goal Insights Generation: Enable and schedule the Goal insights generation job to produce AI-driven insights for selected goals, enhancing strategic decision-making.
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
These configurations enable you to personalize goal management in Strategic Planning Workspace, streamline goal tracking, and maintain alignment across organizational units. The ability to migrate legacy data preserves historical context, while customizable labels and assigned entities improve clarity and relevance. Automated reminders and AI-generated insights support proactive management and informed strategy execution.
Strategy and Goals in Strategic Planning Workspace requires no mandatory configuration to get started.
Unlike portfolio plan goals, you can create and manage goals on a board without prerequisites or limitations. For example, portfolio plan goals do not display if they are not created at the lens entity level or if the assigned entity fields are empty. In Strategy and Goals, all goals that match the applied filter criteria or selected entity are visible on the board. For details, see Managing boards in Strategic Planning Workspace and Managing strategy and goals using boards.
Optional configuration for Strategy and Goals
- Migrate legacy goals data
- If your organization uses the legacy goal and strategy tables (Goal, Enterprise Strategy, Business Unit Strategy, and Strategic Objective), you can migrate the existing data to the new tables by running a scheduled job. After migration, you can create boards and manage your existing goals and strategic priories. For details, see Migrate existing goals data to Goal Framework tables.
- Set display limit for goals
- By default, 250 goals are displayed in the Goals page. To modify this limit, configure the value in the sn_align_ws.goal_hierarchy.max_records system property. For details, see Set display limit for goals and targets in Strategic Planning.
- Customize goal and target labels
- You can customize the labels for the Goal [sn_gf_goal] and Target [sn_gf_goal_target] tables to match your organization's terminology. For example, you can rename Goal to Objective and Target to Key Result. For details, see Customize label for Goal and Target tables.
- Configure assigned entities
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You can define goals at any level in your organization without assigning them to a specific entity. Using advanced filter criteria when creating a board, you can manage a specific set of goals based on any goal field value. For example, you can create a board to manage goals that belong to the Chatbot team.
You can also create boards for your goals based on assigned entities. The default assigned entities are Business Unit [business_unit], Department [cmn_department], Company [core_company], Product Model [cmdb_model], Value Stream [cmn_value_stream], Initiative [sn_align_core_initiative], and Strategic Program [sn_align_core_program].
To create boards based on assigned entities other than the defaults, create an entry in the assigned entity configuration. For details, see Configure a table for an assigned entity.
- Configure goal preferences
- Configure goal preferences including the calendar type for goal setting, weighted average calculation for goal progress, and deletion settings for goals and targets. For details, see Configure goal preferences.
- Configure reminders for target actuals
- Configure reminders to automatically notify target owners and contributors to update actuals for their targets before the due date, based on the check-in frequency defined for each target. For details, see Configure reminders for target actuals.
- Configure Goal insights generation
- Activate the Goal insights generation scheduled job and configure the filter criteria to automatically generate AI-driven insights for a defined set of goals at a scheduled frequency. For details, see Goal insights generation job.