Bulk Assigning Goals

Rather than assigning a goal to each person one at a time, you can hand out copies to a whole group of employees in a single pass - across teams, not just your own. This article covers how bulk assign works, how subgoals are handled, and where to look if something doesn't go as expected.

This feature was previously called "Cascade." If you still hear that name around the office, it's the same thing.

How bulk assign works

When you bulk assign a goal, each person you select gets their own independent copy of that goal - not a shared goal that everyone sees at once. That means:

• Editing one person's copy afterward doesn't change anyone else's
• You can individualize a copy later - different due date, different description, whatever's needed -without affecting the original or anyone else's version

Starting an assignment

There are two ways in:

• From a goal's ⋮ actions menu, choose Assign

• On an unassigned goal's row, click the inline Assign link that appears in the Assignee area (this only shows up when a goal has no one assigned yet)

💡 Restricted Admin note: If you're a Restricted Admin, Assign is only available on goals that belong to your own team. On goals outside your team, the row shows a "View only" tag and the actions menu greys out everything except View details.

Choosing how to assign

After starting an assignment, a dialog titled "Assign goal copy" opens, asking "Which assigning method best suits your needs?" with two options:

• Assign to the same review cycle (Most common) - pick employees and assign the goal into the same review cycle. The system either adds it to their existing open review or creates a new one for them.
• Search and assign to open reviews (the former "Cascade" function) -  filter across employees who have varying open reviews, using criteria like process, review state, or hire date, then assign.

Each option has its own Continue button.

💡 Tip: Use "Same review cycle" for the common case - everyone's in the same cycle. Reach for "Search and assign to open reviews" when you're assigning across employees on different or staggered review cycles, which is common at the org-wide level.

The Assign Goal screen

Both methods lead to a full-page Assign Goal screen (not a small drawer), with a Back to goals link and the goal's name at the top.

What you'll see:

• A search box to find people by name (and by manager name, in the same-review-cycle method)
• An Employee Group filter - as an Admin, this can span teams, not just your own
• A More filters button, which shows a count badge once filters are applied
• A table of employees with a checkbox per row, plus columns for Employee, Manager, Review cycle, Review state, and Archive date - a Review state can carry a warning tag (e.g. "Scoring") to flag that the employee's review is already further along
• Pagination at the bottom
• Cancel and Assign goal buttons - Assign goal stays disabled until at least one person is checked

Tick who should get the goal (the header checkbox selects everyone on the current page at once), then click Assign goal.

Using filters to narrow the list

Click More filters to open a Filters drawer where you build one or more rules. Each rule has a Category, an operator (like "Is"), and one or more values shown as removable chips.

Categories include things like Review state, Review template, Review type, Process, Group, Indirect manager, Hired date (before/after), and Archive date (before/after).

Use Add filter to stack more rules, Reset to clear them, or Close to go back to the list.

If your search or filters don't match anyone, the table shows: "We didn't find any employees. Try removing filters or double-check your search for typos," with a Reset filters button.

After assigning

A confirmation dialog titled "Goal assigned!" appears, telling you how many employees received the goal (e.g. "7 employees") and noting that each will get their own copy and be notified shortly. It shows the goal with the assignees' avatars (with a "+N" overflow for larger groups), its subgoal count, and due date. There's a reminder that you can edit and individualize any assignee's copy afterward — from the goals list, or from their review. Click Close to dismiss it.

If something goes wrong, you'll see: "Error — Something went wrong while assigning this goal. Try again in a moment," and nothing is assigned.

What happens to subgoals when you bulk assign

If the goal you're assigning has subgoals, they come along automatically as part of each person's copy - there's no separate step to assign subgoals.

Important: subgoals currently can't have a different assignee than their parent goal. Whoever gets the goal gets its subgoals too, exactly as they are. (Independent subgoal assignees and automatic progress roll-up to the parent goal are both on the roadmap, but not available yet.)

💡 Support tip: If someone asks how to "bulk assign a subgoal" on its own, the answer is: they can't - assign the parent goal, and its subgoals travel with it. This applies at every level (Admin, Manager, and Restricted Admin alike).

Quick reference