Widget - Upcoming targets

The upcoming targets widget is the very best widget for monitoring target dates.

Firstly you can read here about how to set up automated targets.

The upcoming targets widget scans all active jobs in the Glide system, it looks at all incomplete stages (being the current stage the job is on and and stages below the current stage on the job card (i.e. stages with a higher order value)), and picks out the earliest target date.

This is the 'Next target date' for the job and this date is also visible as a column on the jobs grid. We find that reporting only 1 target date per job helps the widget to remain concise.

Data:

The widget shows information about jobs, it will only include jobs that have a target date on a stage that has yet to be completed. This is why we always recommend ensuring there is always at least 1 target date on an incomplete stage. It shows the following information:

Client shows the client name, hyperlinked to the client card.
Sub-system shows the name of the workflow system.
Target shows the milestone achieved text of the stage that the target date is on. Essentially this is what you need to do by the target date.
Days shows the number of days to go before the target date. Where the target date has passed a negative number shows the number of days overdue.

The results are ordered by the number of days to go with the earliest target date first.

This widget is a list and so can be resized using the + and - icons, this allows you to make the list longer or shorter.

This widget has the i filter (top right corner) which can be used to filter the results, read about the options here.

Tips:

The main target date tip is to ensure that at least 1 target date always exists per job, on any stage that has yet to be completed. Doing so will ensure that every single active job you have appears in this widget. For example you might do the following:
- On job creation set a date for the 1st stage (perhaps this is 'request info') - this might be 'Job date + 50 working days'
- Once the info has been received the above target date will no longer be on a stage that is incomplete. To avoid the job dropping out of this widget we need to trigger a new target when the stage is completed, options might be:
Remember that you can use our turnaround monitor to report upon the actual turnaround time, for example 'how long on average does it take to get from books in to completion, or 'how long on average does it take to get from management accounts period end to agreeing the final figures'. Therefore when setting target dates you should use these simply to help the end user know what jobs to prioritise next, not to set out an intended target which may have long past (e.g. if a client takes forever to bring books in, is there a benefit to having a target to start job by 30 days after period end?)