2072032 - How to Cascade Goals and Link Goals? - Goal Management

This article provides information on the Cascade Goal button and the Link Goal feature.

Image/data in this KBA is from SAP internal systems, sample data, or demo systems. Any resemblance to real data is purely coincidental.

SAP SuccessFactors Goal Management

Goal aligning is the process of promoting the visibility of business goals up, down, and across the organization.

Why align goals?

Creating this organizational line-of-sight can allow managers to track progress and adapt their departmental goals to changing needs. Employees can feel confident knowing that their activities and roles are in sync with the company strategy. Goal aligning promotes productivity and fosters a sense of united purpose.

How do you align goals?

Aligning goals can work in both directions, meaning managers can assign goals down to their direct reports, and direct reports can link goals up to managers. Either method will improve visibility and results.

When you want to align goals downward, it's called cascading. When you want to associate two similar goals with each other, it's called linking.

NOTE: You cannot cascade or align goals across different goal plan templates! If users need to align or cascade goals to one another, they must use the same goal plan template.

In a manager only implementation: Manager is unable to cascade goals to users. In a manger only implementation, employees without direct reports are not able to logon to the application. Goal plans are not available to these employees and a manager cannot cascade goals to the employees. In other words, you cannot cascade goals down to users who do not have a goal plan.

In this scenario if a manager wants to be able to view the list of goals for employees who have no direct reports, you can import a goal plan association for Employees without direct reports. Then disable goal creation notification.

Managing Goal Data

• The customer administrator and end users are responsible for managing, adding, deleting, editing, importing, all goal data.
• SAP Cloud Product Support does not perform any customer data management.
• Due to data security policies, any changes to a customer's data needs to be performed by the customer administrators or their end users.  

Linking a Goal Versus Aligning a Goal - What is the Difference?

• Linking and cascading are two different ways to align goals within your team. You can use the method most convenient to you.
• Linking goals requires two existing goals, so both you and the other person must already have similar goals. Linking creates a connection between the two goals.
• Cascading only requires one goal, typically yours. You can assign (or forward) your goal to another person, which automatically creates a similar goal for that person. In this way, you also develop a connection between your goal and the other person's newly assigned goal.

Cascading: copying a user’s goal content and pasting it as another user's goal (with an option to edit content before pasting);

Linking: simply adding a link icon between two existing goals of different people without transfer of content.

Visually, linking and cascading results appear the same – a named arrow connecting two goals (NOTE: a colored arrow is one of two UI options for alignment display). However:

For cascading: The color of the arrow determines whether the goal is an original (parent) or a copy (child). Blue arrow indicates that the goal is copied/linked from. Yellow arrow indicates that the goal is copied/linked to; NOTE: the cascador will always be a parent, regardless of the hierarchical relationship between the players.

For Linking: Whoever is higher in the direct reporting hierarchy will always appear as the original/parent (blue arrow). If the system cannot establish the reporting relationship between users, the linker will be the original.

NOTE: In SuccessFactors TGM UI display/methodology in the updated PMV12 version an Alert message is given as shows below in the image:

NOTE: A goal can have only a single Alignment Up but multiple Alignments Down.

Cascade Push a Goal to a Direct report

• This means sending your goal down to a user lower in the hierarchy.
• You can specify which goal details can become editable when an employee cascades a goal to others.
• This option gives you control over which read-only details remain read only when the goal gets cascaded.
• The manager requires the create and cascade-push permission on the goal plan XML in order to be able to cascade to the direct reports.
• It is also required the private-access permission, if cascaded goal is created as private/personal, for managers to be able to see the cascaded goal for their Direct Reports.
• Ensure that the manager has permission to access the affected direct report's goal plan in RBP.

Cascading a goal means to copy one of your goals to another person, such as a direct report. You can assign the same goal to multiple people and you can modify the goal before assigning it to make it more appropriate.

1. From your Goal Plan, select the checkbox of the goal you want to assign. You can select more than one at a time.
2. Click Cascade Selected from the top of the page.  A popup window opens to Step 1 of the wizard.
3. In Step 1, select the checkboxes of the people to whom you want to assign the goal. You can select more than one person. Then click Next.  Alternately, if you don't see the person you want on the page, click the Find Other Employees link to search for the person.
4. Optional:  In Step 2, make any changes to the goal details that can make the goal more relevant to the assignee. For example, modify the Task list or change the due date.
5. When you're finished, click Cascade. The goal is cascaded and you're returned to your Goal Plan page.

TIP:  You can track your cascaded goals on the Goal Plan by turning on the Aligned-Down option from the Display Options area.

• Define who has permission to cascade goals to another user.
• Make sure that the role has been given a permission to the user's goal plan in order to cascade a goal.
• If no roles are listed, the [Cascade to Others] button will not appear when you are looking at your own goal plan.

 <permission for="cascade-push">
  <description>You can only cascade your goals up or down your reporting chain or to direct peers.</description>
  <role-name>EM+</role-name>
  <role-name>ED+</role-name>
  <role-name>EMD</role-name>
 </permission> Cascade Push

NOTE: If you grant permission to the EX (Matrix Manager), this button will appear for all users. Employees without matrix reports will not be able to select any users, but they will still see the Cascade button. (TGM-3511)

Cascade Pull Goal

• This means to pull someone else's goal who is above you in the hierarchy down to your own goal plan.
• Define who has permission to cascade goals from another user’s goal plan.
  If no roles are listed, the [Cascade to My Plan] button will not appear when you look at another user’s goal plan.

 <permission for="cascade-pull">
  <description>Anyone may cascade a goal from anyone.</description>
  <role-name>*</role-name>
 </permission>
 Cascade Pull

Link Goal - Align To

• This means to link one of your existing goals to someone else's goal in your hierarchy (up or down).
• When the user is linking to a lower-level user's goal, user can select multiple goals by checking the checkbox
• When the user is linking to a higher-level user's goal, user can only select one goal by checking the checkbox

Linking your goal to another person's goal

When you have a goal that is similar to another person's goal, you can link the two goals. For example, you may want to link one of your goals to a similar one developed by your manager. To link a goal, you can use the Link Goal wizard to help you through the process. Linking goals requires two existing goals.  To do so:

1. From your Goal Plan, find the goal you want to link.
2. In the Action column, click the chain link.  A popup window opens to Step 1 of the wizard.
3. In Step 1, select the checkboxes of the person to whom you want to link goals, and click Next.  Alternately, if you don't see the person you want on the page, click the Find Other User link to search for the person.
4. In Step 2, you'll see a list of the goals from your selected person's Goal Plan. You can only see the goals to which you can link, meaning private goals don't appear on the list. Select the goal you want, and click Next.
5. In Step 3, confirm the goal connection.  If it's correct, click Link. The goals are linked and you're returned to your Goal Plan page.

Define who has permission to align someone else’s goal to a goal of your own.

If no roles are listed the [Align To] button will not appear when you mouse underneath a goal in someone else’s goal plan.

  <permission for="cascade-align">
    <description><![CDATA[
         No-one may align a goal to anyone else's goals.
      ]]></description>
  </permission>

TIP: When using the Align function, it is also used in conjunction with permissions to Unalign Parent - (unalign-parent) and Unalign Child (unalign-child).

Group Goals 1.0 and 2.0

• A Group Goal is one goal that can be applied to a set of people equally.
• A Group Goal differs from the existing Personal business goals because a Group Goal always remains a single goal shared by the people in the defined group.
• It can never be copied or cascaded to other people.
  

Support matrix/project-based goal alignment

• Goals can be cascaded from manager to direct reports, or from project managers to project members.
• Cascading permissions can also be configured, examples include anyone can cascade a goal to anyone in the hierarchy, or goals can only be cascaded only from users higher in the organizational hierarchy.

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