Coda Tutorial for Planning & OKRs

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1. Build a basic OKR doc

1.1 Creating the basic OKR doc

Every great doc starts with a great foundation.

Let’s lay the foundation for a superb OKR doc. Starting with a blank doc, we are going to build two tables (one for your teams objectives and one for the key results); then, we’ll create ways for your team to view these OKRs and track progress. We are creating two tables instead of one, because that allows us to later add columns/properties that are specific to objectives, and ones that are specific to key results.

You’ll start with a blank doc and by the end of 1.1 you’ll get something that looks like this:

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⭐ What you’ll get

A foundational OKR doc with an objectives table and a key results table.

💼 What you’ll use

Tables

Relations

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1. Create a new doc and build your table of objectives.

Before you get started building your OKR doc, you’ll need the doc. Go to

coda.io⁠

and click +Blank doc in the top right. Or you can type

coda.new⁠

directly into your browser. Either way, you’ll be welcomed with the magic promise of a blinking cursor.

Where it says “Untitled doc” in the top left, type the name of your doc. OKRs is good; plus, you can always change it later! Choose an icon if you want!

With your new doc open, it’s time to build out your OKR structure.

There are going to be multiple key results for each objective in your OKR doc, so the best way to build that is to create separate tables for objectives and key results. Both of these will live on the same page.

We’ll start with the objectives table.

Create a new table by using the slash command and type “/table” into the canvas of your doc and then select Table (or you can select Insert in the top right of the screen and drag in a new table). If the New table dialog box pops up, select Start blank.

Name the table Objectives.

Double click into the column headers to rename them. Name your columns:

Change the Name column to Objective

Change the name of the last column - the Notes column - to Guidance. This column is a Canvas column type; it’s where you can include a detailed writeup (including text, images, tables, videos, and more) about your Objective.

Delete Column 2 and Column 3 by right clicking the column header and selecting Delete in the dropdown

Fill a few rows in our Objective table with objectives

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2. Build your table for key results.

Follow the same steps above to create your key results table.

Create a second table by using the slash command and type “/table” into the canvas of your doc and then select Table. If the New table dialog box pops up, select Start blank.

Name the table Key results

Rename and add columns.

Rename Name to Key result

Rename Column 2 to Driver

Change this to a People column type by right clicking on the column header

Hover over Column type → People → People

Tip: With a people column, you can easily notify Drivers of updates or send email reminders directly from the doc. We’ll talk more about this in

4.1 Continuous status updates⁠

Rename Column 3 to Status

Change this to a Select List column type

Column type → Select List → New

Set the column options to Red, Orange, Yellow, and Green; set the format colors to match the color name.

If you scroll down in the same window, there is an option to set value for new rows; set this to green.

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Rename Notes to Progress

Change this to a Progress Bar column type

Column type → Number → Progress

You can slide the progress bar directly in the column to set specific values.

Right click on the column header; then click Column options.

Scroll down and set the value for new rows to 0

Now, put some data into your Key results table.

Add a few key results to your Key result column.

Assign yourself as a driver to a couple of rows in your Driver column.

Update statuses, make some red, some green.

Adjust a few progress bars in your Progress column

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Tip: Use Column options in the column header to change the slider’s increments (from one to five, for instance).

3. Connect your Key results table to the Objectives table.

At this point, your key results are not yet linked with your objectives. We will fix that next. With Coda, you can tie different tables of data together. We are going to connect your key results (the table we made in step two) with your objectives table (that we made in step one).

Add a column in the Key results table and call it Objective.

Set that column type to be a Relation.

Choose Objective for the table you want to connect to.

Now each key result can be associated with an objective

In the pop-up, do 2 things

Under Create linked relation click the Create column button; we’ll come back to this later, but know this is adding a column to your Objectives table for the relevant key result.

Toggle off Allow multiple selections. Doing this means that every key result can only be linked to a single objective.

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Adding objective to key result table.gif

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Pick the objective for each of your key results.

For the purposes of this build make sure every objective is assigned to at least one key result.

Then click Options on the top right of the table and select group → group by objective.

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Tip: You can learn more about relations by checking out

this video.⁠

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4. Summarize the key results under the objectives.

Go back to your Objectives table. There should now be a Key results column populated with the connected key results. If there is not, you probably forgot to click Create column button in the previous step (you can fix that by right clicking the Objective column in your Key results table, select Column options, and then click the Create column button).

Let’s put that linked relationship to good use, and calculate the average progress for all key results under each objective:

Add a column.

In the popup dialog, select Key results → Progress → Average.

You’ve just added an always-up-to-date key result average for each objective!

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Key result average porgress by objective.png

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Name the column Average KR progress.

Right click into the column header.

Choose Column type → Number → Progress.

Go back to you Key results table and adjust a few progress bars. Watch your average status update on your Objectives table automatically.

5. Name your page.

Because everything in one Coda doc can be connected, keeping your Objectives and Key results table on a separate database page allows you to reference those tables and see the data how you choose, while keeping a wholistic view of your data behind the scenes. A recipe for successful scale!

Double-click on Untitled page on the left panel and enter Database.

Pick an icon for your Database page.

Above Database, click Add icon.

Choose the icon of your liking.

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Tip: You can upload custom icons if that’s how you roll 🗞️.

Now what?

In the next step, you will finish building out the structure of your doc. Check it out here.

1.2 Adding org structure to the doc⁠

Gallery

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