Goals
A goal is an outcome you want to reach, such as a target for a quarter. You link the work that serves it, and Orbit derives progress from that work. This page is for goal owners and for members who link their work to goals.
Goals need a signed-in person. API tokens and agent sessions cannot use them.
What a goal holds
Section titled “What a goal holds”| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Name and description | What the goal is |
| Owner | The person who manages the goal. A new goal starts with you as owner. |
| Audience | Who can see it: private, a project, or the whole site |
| Status | Planned, active, on track, at risk, off track, paused, completed, abandoned or archived |
| Target date | When you want to reach it |
| Outcome score | A number from 0 to 1 that you assess by hand, or empty |
The outcome score is your own judgement. It is separate from the progress Orbit derives from linked work.
Create a goal and link work
Section titled “Create a goal and link work”- Create the goal. Choose the audience and, for a project goal, the project.
- Link work items and projects to it. A goal holds at most 500 links.
- Post updates as the work moves. An update has text and can also change the status, the outcome score and the target date.
Updates are kept and cannot be edited or deleted afterwards. A work item shows the goals it is linked to, either directly or through its project.
How progress is derived
Section titled “How progress is derived”Progress counts the work behind the goal: the linked work items together with all work in the linked projects, without duplicates. A work item counts once however many ways it is linked.
- Done means the work item’s status is in the Done category. Work counts as remaining otherwise.
- The goal shows the total, the done count, the percentage and the time it was computed.
- A goal with no work has no percentage. It does not show zero.
- When you list a goal’s work, you can narrow it with a JQL query and show all, done or remaining work.
The audience of a goal never adds work to it. Only links do.
Who sees what
Section titled “Who sees what”Progress is computed for the person looking, with their own visibility. Work that you may not read is not counted for you. It does not appear as a placeholder, and no hidden total is shown.
- A private goal can be read by its owner and by site administrators.
- A project goal needs access to that project, even for its owner.
- A site goal is open to eligible accounts on the site. Only a site administrator can publish a goal to the whole site.
- Project viewers and archived projects are read-only, including for a retained owner.
Owners and authorized administrators manage goals.
Edits and conflicts
Section titled “Edits and conflicts”Every change names the version you read. If someone saved first, the change is refused with goal_version_conflict and you read the goal again. If a change to the owner or the audience takes away your own access, the change is saved. The goal then no longer opens for you. Writes that wait too long answer 503 goal_operation_timeout, and you can try again.
Page size
Section titled “Page size”The goal directory returns up to 100 goals per page, 30 by default. A goal’s linked work returns up to 200 work items per page.