Goals can be an important part to any organization. Not only do they provide employees with something tangible, their progress can be easily measured as they are working through to their end goal. In some organizations, goals can be used for compensation or bonuses.

Some examples of goals might include:

1. A salesperson might have targets for a certain amount of ‘won’ opportunities where ‘in-progress’ and ‘won’ opportunities are tracked against the target value. For example, if Connie’s goal is 25 ‘won’ opportunities this month, Microsoft Dynamics 365 would track all of the open opportunities currently assigned to Connie (in-progress) and all of her opportunities that were closed as ‘won’ (actual) and apply it to her goal.
2. A Customer service rep might have targets for a certain amount of ‘resolved’ cases where ‘in-progress’ and ‘resolved’ cases are tracked against the target value. For example, Mark’s goal is to “resolve” 400 cases this month, Microsoft Dynamics 365 would track all the open cases currently assigned to him (in-progress) and all of his cases that were closed as ‘resolved’ (actual) and apply it to his goal.
3. A sales department has an overall goal, which is a parent goal of each sale person’s individual goal. Parent goals can be calculated as a “rollup” of its child goals. For example, Connie and Alan are both sale representatives with their own individual goals. If Connie’s sales team consists of her, Alan, and Don and their team goal is to sell $10,000 worth of products within the next month, that is the parent goal of all of their individual goals combined.
4. Goal targets for activity record types, such as followed-up phone calls or appointments booked, and then compared against completed activities.

Goals

Goals are generally much more specific than goal metrics. They are defined for a specific user or team. When a goal is created, it’s always based on a specific goal metric, and the specific time period that you want to track the progress for is also defined.

Additionally, goal records have three numeric values which can be used together to track progress against goals.

• Target – Entered manually.
• Actual – Calculated and defined by the Actual Rollup field specified in the underlying goal metric.
• In-Progress – Calculated and defined by the In-Progress Rollup field specified in the underlying goal metric.

Out-of-the-box, Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales includes three pre-defined goal metric records to base goals on and to view as examples of how to configure goal metrics. These are:

Creating goals

After you have defined the specific goal metrics that you want to track, you can create your actual goal records for users and teams. Goals can be created from the app settings in the Sales Hub App.
When defining a goal, you will need to provide the following information:

• Name – Name that describes the goal.
• Parent Goal – If this goal is a child goal of another goal, select that goal as a parent goal.
• Goal Metric – Choose how the goal will be tracked by selecting a metric for the goal. (If you select a parent goal for this goal, you can’t select a goal metric. It is automatically populated from the parent goal.)
• Goal Owner – Select the user or team responsible for meeting the goal.

Each goal will have time period information where you will define whether the goal period is a fiscal period or a custom period.

• If Goal Period Type is Fiscal Period, select a fiscal period and fiscal year for which the goal is tracked.
• If Goal Period Type is Custom Period, select a date in the From and To fields to define a custom period for which the goal is tracked.

The Actuals tab shows the actual value achieved toward the target as of the last rolled-up date:

• Actual (Money) – If the goal metric uses Money as the Amount Data Type, this field shows the total amount of money achieved towards the goal as of the last rolled-up date.
• In-progress (Money) – If the goal metric uses Money as the Amount Data Type, this field shows the amount of money achieved toward the goal since the last time the actuals were calculated.
• Percentage Achieved – If the goal metric is Decimal or Integer, this field shows the percentage of the goal that is complete as of the last rolled-up date.
• Last Rolled Up Date – This field shows the last date and time that the actuals were recalculated.

On the Goal Criteria tab, define the criteria that will be used for rolling up the actuals data against the goal.

• Roll Up Only From Child Goals – If you want to limit the data used for the roll up to only child goals, select Yes. To allow other data to be used for the roll ups, select No.
• Record Set for Rollup – If you want to limit the records that can be included in the roll up to only those records owned by the goal owner, select Owned by goal owner. To allow all records to be included in the roll up data, select All.