Overview: Goals

With Goals, you can stay up-to-date on your progress towards reaching your business objectives. Some popular use cases for Goals include tracking sales quotas, website traffic performance, and new leads generated.

Pro Tip: For additional information about the value of Goals in your business, learn more here

HOW TO

How to Access Goals

Navigate to  Goals. Click + New goal to create a new Goal.

How to use Goals

A) Metric: Select the Metric from the Metric drop-down list that you want to set a Goal for.  You can filter out metrics for a specific Data Source using the Data Source drop-down. Basic, Custom and Calculated Metrics can all have Goals set. Only 1 set of Goals can be added for each Metric in the Account.
B) Input Type: Choose whether you want to manually enter the Goal Values, or if you want to set another Metric as the Goal Value. In most cases, the Manual option is selected. 
C) Set Goal Values: Enter Goal Values for significant Date Ranges. If data is available, your performance in the previous period will be displayed next to the selected Date Range(s). This is designed to help you set realistic yet growth-oriented Goals for your company. 
Date Range options for the Goal depend on the Date Ranges available for the selected Metric. Learn more about available Date Ranges here
By default, all Goal Values are calculated proportionately against one another. To disable this functionality, click on the  lock icon to the left of the Goal Values to turn off proportionally calculated Goal Values.

Pro Tip: The lock (proportionally calculated goal values) option is available only for Metrics that starts with zero (0) every day. Metrics that are do not start with zero (0) every day at midnight do not have this option available. 

For example, Metrics that start at zero (0) every day include ''Sessions,'' ''New Leads,'' ''Tickets Opened,'' etc. Metrics that do not start at zero (0) every day include ''Conversion Rate,'' ''Bounce Rate,'' ''Account Balance,'' etc.

Please contact our Support Team via chat or email (help@databox.com) for more information. 



D) Advanced Setup: By clicking on the Advanced setup hyperlink, you'll open the Advanced setup window for the Goal.
 

Here, you can set Goals for past and future days, weeks, months, quarters, or years. In order to have a Date Range as an option in the Advanced setup window, you must have the corresponding checkbox selected in the Goal Value section. 

Pro Tip: Set your company up for long-term success by breaking down larger Goals into smaller, more managable Goals. Learn more about creating an environment where you feel in control of your company's long-term performance here

If you plan to view the Goal Metric for past Date Ranges like Last Month, Last Quarter, Last Year, etc., it's valuable to backfill this Goal information.  

E) Visualization Type: Choose whether to visualize your progress towards reaching the Goal as a Line Chart or a Progress Bar. The Line Chart visualization allows for more granular analysis and is recommended whenever available. The Progress Bar visualization is a simpler view that supports more complex Metric types. 
This field is only setting the Visualization for the Goals page. On a Databoard, you will be able to view this on any Visualization Type that supports Goal comparisons. Visualizations that support Goal comparisons include Number Blocks, Line Charts, Bar Charts, Gauges, Progress Bars, Tables, Combo Charts, Radial Progress Charts, Bubble Chart and Spider Chart. 
Learn more about Visualization Types here
F) Goal Title/ Owner: The Goal Title should reflect the purpose of the Goal. The Goal Owner should be the main contributor working towards reaching the goal, or the manager/ director of the group of contributors. 
G) Alerts: Set Alerts to automatically and proactively monitor your progress towards reaching your Goal. These Alerts can notify you when your Goal has been hit, or if after 70% of the Goal period, you're not 70% of the way towards reaching your Goal. 
These Alerts can later be edited on the Alerts page. 

How to create a Goal [Example]

  1. Navigate to the  Goals page
  2. Click  + New goal
  3. We want to set a Goal for Sessions to our website tracked in HubSpot, so we'll open the Metric drop-down, select the appropriate HubSpot Marketing Account in the Data Source drop-down, and we'll select  Sessions as the Metric  
  4. We want to manually enter our Goal Values, so we'll keep the Input Type set to Manual
  5. Since we want to set more than just monthly Goals for this Metric, we need to expand the Date Range options by clicking Add more Date Ranges. We're setting weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly Goals for this Metric, so the corresponding checkboxes should be selected on the Goal setup window. 
  6. We know that our yearly Goal is 4,000,000 Sessions, so we will start by inputting this Goal Value. Since the Goals Values for other Date Range are calculated proportionately, this will give us a good indication of what our weekly, monthly and quarterly Goals should be set at as well.
  7. Next, we'll click the  lock icon to turn off proportionately calculated Goal Values. This will allow us to set cleaner Goal Values for our weekly, monthly, and quarterly goals. 
  8. After entering Goal Values for the current week, month, and quarter, we can click on Advanced setup to set future Goal Values. This allows us to set ourselves up for long-term success, helps us stay on track towards reaching our annual Goal of 4,000,000 Sessions, and enables us to take into consideration times of the year when we may be more or less focused on this particular Goal in our planning. 

    When we're finished entering our future Goal Values, we'll click Save to close the Advanced setup window. 
  9. Next, we'll choose Visualization. Since this Goal will be valuable to view with granularity, we'll select Line Chart.
  10. This Goal is a priority for our entire Marketing Team, so we'll set the Goal Owner as our Director of Marketing, John
  11. John wants as much visibility into this Goal as possible. Therefore, we'll set both Alerts, so he will be notified when the Goal has been hit or if we're not on track towards reaching the Sessions Goal after 70% of the time.
  12. To complete the process, we'll click the green Save button

How to track your progress towards reaching a Goal on a Databoard

 
1. Open the selected Databoard in the Databox Designer or create a new Databoard. 
2. Drag and drop a visualization type that supports Goals onto your Databoard from the Visualization Library. 
Visualizations that support Goals are Number Blocks, Line Charts, Bar Charts, Gauges, Progress Bars, Tables, Compare Blocks, Intervals, Combo Charts, and Multi-Tab Charts. 
3. Select the appropriate Data Source and Metric in the righthand Property Manager. This must be the same Data Source and Metric that were selected when creating the Goal. 
4. Select Date Ranges that correspond to the Goals you set. For example, if you set a monthly Goal for the Metric then you'd need to use Date Ranges like Month to Date, This Month, etc. in order to visualize your progress towards reaching the Goal on the Databoard. 

Pro Tip: On a Chart Datablock, you will need to select the Cumulative toggle in the Property Manager  if you want to visualize Goals for longer Date Ranges. For example, if you want to view a Line Chart with "Month to Date" selected as the Date Range and compare to a Goal Value, a non-cumulative graph would allow you to compare with a daily Goal Value, while a cumulative graph would allow you to compare with a monthly Goal Value. 

5. Set the  Comparison Value to  Goal. This will change the comparison percentage on the Datablock to show your progress towards reaching the set Goal. 

Pro Tip: For Chart Datablocks, you can add a Goal line to the graph in the Additional Lines section as well. Therefore, you could have the Comparison Value set to another option, such as "Previous Period." This would make it so the comparison percentage on the Datablock is showing current performance vs the previous period, but there is also a line on the graph visually representing your progress towards reaching your Goal.