Configuring Strategy and Goals
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Summary of Configuring Strategy and Goals
The Strategy and Goals feature in the Strategic Planning Workspace allows ServiceNow customers to create and manage goals on a flexible board without mandatory setup. Unlike portfolio plan goals, Strategy and Goals do not require goals to be created at specific entity levels or have assigned entity fields filled out to be visible. All goals matching selected filters or entities display on the board, enabling immediate use without prerequisites.
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Optional Configuration
While no configuration is required to start using Strategy and Goals, several optional administrative tasks can be performed to tailor the system to your organization’s needs:
- Legacy Goal Data Migration: If your organization has legacy goals and strategies stored in older tables, you can migrate this data into the new framework by running a scheduled job. This enables seamless management of existing goals within the new boards.
- Display Limit Adjustment: The default maximum number of goals shown on the Goals page is 250. You can change this limit by updating the
snalignws.goalhierarchy.maxrecordssystem property to better fit your volume of goals. - Customizing Labels: To align terminology with your organization’s language, you can rename the Goal and Target tables (for example, changing “Goal” to “Objective” and “Target” to “Key Result”).
- Assigned Entities Configuration: Goals can be defined without assigned entities or associated with default entities like Business Unit, Department, Company, Product Model, Value Stream, Initiative, and Strategic Program. You can extend the assigned entities by configuring additional tables, enabling boards focused on different organizational levels or structures.
- Goal Preferences Setup: Configure preferences such as calendar type for goal setting, weighted average calculations for progress, and deletion behaviors for goals and targets to fit your governance and reporting standards.
- Reminders for Target Actuals: Automate notifications to target owners and contributors to update actual progress data before due dates, based on each target’s check-in frequency, ensuring timely tracking.
- Goal Insights Generation: Enable an AI-driven insights scheduled job that automatically analyzes and generates insights for selected goals at defined intervals, enhancing strategic decision-making.
Practical Benefits
This flexible and configurable approach lets ServiceNow customers quickly adopt Strategy and Goals for enterprise strategic planning while providing options to customize and automate processes as organizational needs evolve. The visibility of all relevant goals on boards and automated insights and reminders improve goal tracking, accountability, and strategic alignment across the enterprise.
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.