Using the Plan Builder

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Why Use the Plan Builder

The purpose of the screen is to help you brainstorm, visualize, and create your execution plan. Create a blueprint for the year and see where you may have resource constraints or time challenges with your top Annual Priorities. Having this visual will help you identify and negotiate those potential obstacles as a team before the year starts.

How to Use the Plan Builder

1. Go to Annual Planning Tools in the Execution Menu
2. Click the Plan Builder Tab
3. Click the + in the top right to add ideas for draft Annual Priorities. You can add them manually or use the stepper to generate draft goals with Rhythm Intelligence.
   1. If you use Rhythm Intelligence, you can choose elements of your strategy, Annual Focus, and past goal performance to enhance the suggested goals with your specific company information.
   2. Using Rhythm Intelligence will create draft Annual Priorities complete with suggestions for Red-Yellow-Green success criteria and draft Quarter Priorities as well.
   3. If you add goals manually, you can also bring any incomplete goals from last year into the canvas and extend the dates so you can continue working on them in the new year.
4. Once you've created draft annual goals, discuss and agree on the top 3-5 ideas in the list. You can drag and drop to reorder the items and click the card to open the side panel to edit and assign owners.
5. Use the arrow to expand each draft Annual Priority. You will see a card for one draft Quarter Priority for the team in each quarter of the year. Each draft Quarter Priority also has been broken down into two child Quarter Priorities. Click the card to open the side panel for each Quarter Priority to edit it and assign owners.
   
   Remember: You should be mapping out the draft Quarter Priorities you'll need to execute to achieve the Annual Priorities successfully. 
6. Use the + to add more draft Quarter Priorities for each Annual Priority, either manually or using Rhythm Intelligence suggestions. 
7. Identify time constraints and quarters that are overloaded with too much work using the counts at the top of the screen. Drag and drop draft Quarter Priorities to move them to a different quarter.
   
   

Publishing Priorities

Once you've refined your draft goals on the canvas, you can easily click to Publish the draft priorities. Publishing the priorities will create real goals that link to the Annual and Quarter Plan Dashboards and each other following the hierarchy you set in the Plan Builder.

Once priorities are published, the Plan Builder and priorities will remain in sync (editing priorities in other screens will update the card on the Plan Builder, and editing the cards on the canvas will update the published priorities).

1. Click the Publish button at the top right of the screen. Follow the steps to select the quarter with the priorities you want to publish, uncheck the boxes for any priorities you're not ready to publish, and click to publish.
2. You can also convert any Draft Priorities to goals individually by clicking the More Actions button   and choosing "Publish." You can easily Create a Task from here as well.

You can click on the cards for published priorities on the Plan Builder to see the associated priorities. You can click on those priorities to work on the details.

Unpublishing / Deleting Priorities

Draft Priorities:

For priorities that have not been published, you can use the More Actions button to delete the drafts. Deleting a parent priority on the canvas will delete all of the draft child goals underneath it.

You will not be able to delete a draft goal if there are any published goals underneath it. You'll need to unpublish the priorities before deleting the drafts.

Published Priorities:

You can unpublish priorities on the Plan Builder using the More Actions button. Unpublishing a priority will return the cards in the Plan Builder back to the draft state. The goals that were generated when you published the draft will be DELETED.

If a published priority has a status update (Red Yellow Green status or Projected, Actual, Variance values), Unpublishing it will not delete the associated priority, but it will no longer be synced to the draft priority in the Plan Builder.