Coda Tutorial for Planning & OKRs

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4. Drive execution

4.1 Continuous status updates

Friendly reminders for status updates.

When we created the Key Results table, we made sure it has a Driver column to mark who is responsible for keeping the KR up-to-date. In this section, we will be building a page to send a friendly reminder to OKR drivers that haven’t updated their active OKRs after a certain amount of days.

We are using Slack for those reminders, but this process can also be done using Gmail or other integrations.

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⭐ What you’ll get

Automated reminders sent to OKR drivers.

💼 What you’ll use

Coda automations

Coda Slack Pack

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1. Install and connect the Slack Pack

If you have locked the document as part of the last section in the tutorial, remember you need to unlock the document by clicking the lock 🔒 icon in the top right of the Coda screen.

On any page, type “/slack” and select Slack (under the More Packs header) from the drop-down menu.

You’ll then see a preview with all kinds of helpful info on the Slack Pack. Click Add to doc in the upper right.

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A Slack account will need to be associated with the Pack.

Click Insert in the top right.

Then Packs→Slack (under installed packs).

Click on Settings tab.

Under Private account, you can either select an existing Slack account (if you’ve signed into Slack in Coda before) or add a new account. Go through the authentication flow if you are adding a new account.

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Tip: Because we are setting up your Slack account as private account for this doc, Slack messages will be sent as coming from you. And you are the only person who can send slack messages from your account from this document. That prevents other users from impersonating you.

You will need to set the read permission level to determine who can view the data pulled from Slack.

Our suggestion is to go with No one. This prevents this doc from pulling information from Slack. You can always edit the read permission level later (but for the purposes of this tutorial, that will not be needed, and in fact for a document you share potentially with many people, not recommended).

You will need to set the write permission level to determine who can perform actions in Slack from within Coda. This allows whoever you grant permission to the ability to modify your Slack instance (such as create a post in Slack).

Our suggestion is to go with “Only you.” You can always edit the write permission level later (but for the purpose of this tutorial, that will not be needed).

2. Calculate the date of the last progress update.

Before sending slack messages, let’s calculate the information we need to trigger those messages.

On your database page:

Add a column to the Key results table and name it Last progress update.

The Key Results table is on the Database page (even though you could also work an any of its many views in the document). If you wonder where that page is, we were hiding it in an earlier part of the tutorial — You can show hidden pages with the three dot menu next to your doc title in the top left of your doc.

On the Key Results table, click on “+” on the right hand side to add a column.

Double click into the column header to rename the new column to be Last progress update.

In the drop down for the Last progress update column, select Calculate.

Set Calculate From to be Row property and the Property to be Modified on.

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3. Calculate days since last update.

Add a column to Key Results and name it Days since last update.

On the Key Results table, click on “+” on the right hand side to add a column.

Double click into the column header to rename the new column to be Days since last update.

Change the Days since last update column to a Duration column type.

In the drop down for the Days since last update column, select Calculate.

Set the Calculate From to be Last progress update and the Property to be Modified on.

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4. Slack reminders.

Add a column to Key Results and name it Slack driver email.

On the Key Results table, click on “+” on the right hand side to add a column.

Double click into the column header to rename the new column to be Slack driver email.

Change the column type to Email.

Right click on the column header.

Select Column type→People→Email.

In the dropdown for Driver Email, select Calculate

Set Calculate From to be Driver and for Property, select Emails

This automatically pulls the unique email from the Driver column

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Add a column to Key results and name it Send slack reminders.

On the Key Results table, click on “+” on the right hand side to add a column.

Double click into the column header to rename the new column to be Send slack reminders.

Change the Send slack reminders column to a button column type. Buttons in Coda allow you to take actions like sending slacks or emails.

In the button pop-up dialog, in the On Click drop down, select Packs → Slack → Post message.

Keep the Mode set to Private. The account you set up for the Slack pack earlier should already be set under Your Account.

Under Content, input the message content you wish to send; such as, “Your KR has not been updated for a while!”. If you feel bold, you can customize this message with a formula, for example to mention the specific KR that misses updates.

Under Channel or Email, type select Slack driver email.

Under Results Column, select “+ New Column” a new column will be automatically created for you. Update the name of the newly created column to have “Results” as the name.

Now by clicking the button you would automatically send a slack message to the driver. Set yourself as the driver of a key result and try it out.

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Tip: If you want to send a custom message, try our

Compose column⁠

5. Create an Automation to press your new buttons automatically.

Click on the Gear icon (aka Document settings) on the top, right corner.

Select the Automations tab.

Click on + Add rule.

Click the name of the Rule at the top to rename it to Send weekly progress reminders.

In Step 1, under When select Time-based and then set the frequency you wish the reminder slack to be sent out.

For example, if you wish to have the slack reminder sent every Wednesday at 2pm PDT.

Click the Week button, click W for Repeat On, and 2:00 PM for Time.

Tip: If you want to be more aggressive about the update reminders and send a reminder immediately if an OKR has not been updated for 2 weeks, set this to daily not weekly.

In Step 2, under Then, select Push buttons→Key results→Send slack reminders.

You can test your automation with Test rule.

If any of your teammates are set as a driver, they will get a slack message.

Whenever you are ready, enable the automation by turning it On via the On/Off toggle at the top right corner.

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Tip: Want to use Gmail or Outlook instead of Slack? There’s a Pack for that. Just add the respective Pack to your doc and follow the same flow as the Slack reminders.

6. Safeguarding your automation.

Now that we have the automation setup, you’ll want to have a disable condition for your button. This way the message isn’t being sent to everyone all the time.

Open back up the column options:

Scroll down the dialog box to Advanced. Expand the section by hitting arrow icon on the right.

Under Disable If, click + Add condition and enter “Days since last update”.

Select “is less than” in the dropdown menu.

In the textbox write “14” which will autocomplete to 14 days.

The button will be disabled if the KR has been updated in the past 14 days. You can adjust the number 14 to whatever number of days you wish to ensure the KR progress is updated on your timeline.

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You also don’t want to send update requests to completed projects. Let’s set one more disable condition.

Under Disable If, click + Add condition and enter “Progress” then “is equal to” and put 100 in the textbox.

Update the And right above the newly added condition to be an Or.

That means, if the KR is at 100 (and thus complete) or has been updated in less than 14 days, we disable the button and thus do not send a slack.

If a KR is 100% done the button will be disabled by this change, this will prevent any Driver from getting an update request for a KR that is complete.

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Now what?

Like a good breadbox, the reminders created in this step will keep your teams’ OKRs from getting stale...speaking of, I better go update mine now!

Crazy about Packs? Might we suggest

Jira OKR scoring⁠

as a next stop in your learning journey.

Ready to continue on your planning-execution adventure?

4.2 Create OKR dashboards⁠

is where you want to go.

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