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Microsoft Viva Goals aligns you to your organization’s strategic priorities and unites teams around mission and purpose.   

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In this article: 

Get started with Viva Goals

Viva Goals navigation

Collaborate: How OKRs align through your company

Create objectives, key results, and projects  

Check-in and track results 

Close, score, and reflect

Get started with Viva Goals  

  • Navigate Viva Goals.

  • Discover how your objectives, key results, and projects align through the company.

  • Create objectives, key results, and projects.

  • Check-in and update your progress.

  • Score, reflect, and close.

Viva Goals navigation 

Your default view in Viva Goals is “My OKRs.” This page can be broken down into three main areas: 

  1. Left-hand navigation menu

  2. Time-period selector

  3. Central content

Left-hand navigation menu

This menu is your launching pad that will take you to the various locations within Viva Goals.  

  • Search: Search within Viva Goals.

  • Notifications: Activity reminders that require your attention.

  • My OKRs: List of OKRs assigned to you.

  • My Teams: List of OKRs assigned to the group(s) that you are a member of.

  • My Company: List of Company’s OKRs.

  • Username: Modify your account settings profile settings, view the privacy statement, and logout.

Time-period selector

The time- period selector enables you to filter views based on your timelines. Choose from active, upcoming, and previous time periods and toggle a setting to view multiple time periods at once.

 

Central Content

Based on your selections from the left-hand navigation menu and the time period selector, different sets of OKR information will appear in the center of the page. 

Collaborate: How OKRs align through your company 

OKRs are divided into companywide goals and team goals. 

  • Company OKRs are the effort of the entire business and represent the goals that everyone else will collaborate with.

  • Team OKRs are group efforts that roll up to the company level OKRs. Teams can have multiples groups and sublevels represented like department, team, project group, or working unit.

To discover the alignment of an objective, key result, or project you have two options: 

  • View the expandable list of nested goals

  • View the details of a single goal to discover its alignment to the highest level

View nested OKRs 

  1. Select My Company.

  2. Select Go to current period under the time period selector.

  3. Identify the goal you would like to view.

    1. Objectives are identified by the target symbol. 

    2. Key Results are identified by the speedometer symbol. 

    3. Projects are identified by the calendar symbol. 

  4. Select the chevron > symbol to the left of your goal. This will generate a drop down of objectives, key results, or projects that are contributing to the selected goal.

    1. Continue expanding the chevron icons within your nested list to expand cascading goals.

 

View the details of a single goal 

  1. Identify the goal you would like to view.

  2. Select the title of your goal you’d like to view. This will produce a panel of information.

  3. Scroll through the information panel until you reach “Alignment.”

  4. The selected goal will appear at the bottom of the list and you will be able to see how it rolls up through the other goals in your company.

 

Create objectives, key results, and projects 

To add an objective, key result, or project to Viva Goals, navigate to the company or team level goal. From here you have two options: 

  1. Select the PLUS + icon in the top right and add information in the New Objective panel.

  2. Select the Add Objective button and add a title.

PLUS + Icon 

  1. Select the PLUS + icon in the top right

  2. Fill out the New Objective Panel with the following:
     

    1. Details:

      1. Title  

      2. Type: What level this goal lives at- Company, team, or individual.

      3. Note: If you select Team, a field will appear where you can select the team that is responsible for this goal.

      4. Owner: The point person who has been assigned responsibility for this goal.

      5. When: The time period the goal will be worked on.

      6. More options: Some optional fields to add context to your goal, including; assigning a delegate, visibility, tags, and a description.

    2. Outcome: This will be automatically assigned based on the goal you have chosen to create.

    3. Progress: How to calculate success. Options include manual and automatic via rollup from key results

      1. More options: This allows you to select a person who is responsible for performing check-ins (by default this will be the owner), and allows you to add scoring guidance, if applicable.

    4. Alignment: selecting this option allows you to align your new goal with an existing goal within Viva Goals.

      1. Select Align objective

      2. Type in the name of the parent goal you want to connect with, or click into the search field and apply filters to narrow down the results

      3. Select the checkbox next to the parent goal you want to connect with

      4. Select Save

  3. Select Create to add the information the goal

Add Objective Button 

  1. Select the Add Objective button.

  2. Enter in a title.

  3. Adjust the type, owner, and time period (if applicable).

Note: Alternatively, you can create new content by hovering over an existing goal, selecting the more actions ellipses, then choosing what you would like to create. This will allow you to add a child objective, key result, or project that inherits the properties from the selected goal. 

Check-in and track results 

Updating your goals is important ensure progress is being made and to provide visibility to your team about the progress towards common goals. 

  1. Select My OKRs in your left-hand menu.

  2. Hover over to the key result or project you want to update.

  3. Select the check-in button to open the new check in panel.

  4. Enter the following information:

    1. Metric: The numeric value of the progress that has been made.

    2. Status: How you feel about your progress. Options include, not started, on track, behind, and at risk.

      1. Viva Goals will automatically assign a value based on the expected progress vs the actual progress. This status can be overwritten as needed.

    3. Add a note (optional): a text block where you can include a note about the progress that has been made.

    4. Date of check-in: automatically populates with the date. This can be edited to back date a check-in as needed.

  5. Select check-in to save

Updating your goals will automatically update the progress of the parent(s) your goals are aligned with. 

Close, score, and reflect 

Closing your OKRs and projects allows you to score and reflect on your progress to gain valuable insight when repeating the OKR cycle. 

  1. Select My OKRs in your left-hand menu.

  2. Hover over the key result or project you want to close.

  3. Select the more actions ellipses and choose “close” from the dropdown to open the “Close objective” panel.

  4. Enter the following information:

    1. Metric: The numeric value of the progress that has been made.

    2. Status: Viva Goals will automatically select close.

    3. Score: Viva Goals will recommend a score based on actual versus expected progress.

    4. Continue working on this in another time period: Choose this option if you want to keep working on this OKR in another time period and close it for this current time period.

    5. Closing Note: A summary of why how you scored your goal.

  5. Select Close to save.

A closed goal will show a grayed-out progress bar with a score on the right on your OKR home screen. Once all key results have been closed, progress will roll up and the objective will close with a score that is an average of the scores of the key results below. 

Connect and learn from experts and peers

Join the discussion and see the latest events in the Viva Goals Community.  

Learn more  

Viva Goals Quick Start in Teams

Viva Goals Quick Start for Executives

More Learning 

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