OKR integrations: how to connect your goals to your tools

You may have mastered the art of having 37 tabs open in your browser, but context-switch is still a massive tax on productivity.

Unfortunately, this is a classic problem with OKRs reporting:

• Open the spreadsheet
• Look at the key result
• Figure out which dashboard/report/spreadsheet/tool contains the data
• Go there
• Get the number

Cool, now you can finally start thinking about what that number means. Write your update and then repeat this process another 5-7 times.

Wouldn’t it be easier if your spreadsheet had the data ready for review as soon as you open it?

Then all your energy can go into strategic thinking rather than remembering where things are. On top of that, you can get back to doing the work you love faster.

Spreadsheets and docs can’t do this, but fortunately you can get that exact experience with Tability. Furthermore, you can go beyond simple data connectors as there are 4 different types of integrations to consider:

1. Connecting OKRs to your data (what we’ve just mentioned)
2. Connecting OKRs to your projects and initiatives
3. Connecting OKRs to your communication tool (Slack, MS Teams)
4. Connecting OKRs to your docs/knowledge bases (where people write specs, reports, etc…)

This guide will show you how to do all of these things.

Connecting OKRs to your data

Say that you have to run a couple of SQL queries, then open up HubSpot, Salesforce and ChartMogul to get data for your weekly check-ins. That’s a lot of hoops to go through to write simple status updates.

The better approach is to connect your key results to their respective data source, and let Tability gather the current value of your metrics for you. Once connected, Tability will be able to fetch data from your check-ins form and perform daily syncs on your behalf.

There are 4 different approaches that you can take to link your key result to a data source.

Using native data connectors

Tability has a set of native integrations including Salesforce, HubSpot, BigQuery, PostgreSQL, etc, that you can get access to. It’s the easiest way to add a data source to your key results as it just works out of the box.

How to connect OKRs using the native data connectors:

1. Go to your Tability account
2. Make sure that your tool is connected to your Tability workspace (in the integrations settings)
3. Click on a key result to open its detail panel
4. Click on Connect a data source
5. Follow the steps to add your tool as a data source

And voilà! From now on, you won’t need to open up a second tab to do your key result updates. And on top of that, you can start getting daily progress notifications in your inbox when our bot Tabby performs progress syncs on your behalf.

As of now, Tability’s native connectors include:

• Amplitude
• Asana
• BigQuery
• Chargebee
• ChartMogul
• Favro
• GitHub
• GitLab
• Google Sheet
• Help Scout
• HubSpot
• Jira
• Monday
• MariaDB
• MySQL
• PagerDuty
• PostgreSQL
• Salesforce
• Sentry
• Tableau
• Trello

Head over to Tability’s integration guides to see how you can connect each tool to Tability.

Using Zapier

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If the platform that you’re using is not part of the list of native integrations, you can use Zapier to get access to 1,000+ apps that can be used to automate check-ins. Unlike the native connectors you will not be able to pull metrics data in the check-in form, but you can use that integration to create check-ins whenever an action occurs in another tool.

For instance you can:

• Create a new check-in when a new user is added to Intercom
• Create a new check-in whenever a new lead is marked as interested in Lemlist
• Create a new check-in when a new release is published in Github

Check out the Zapier integration guide to see how you can automate progress updates with Zapier.

Using custom code and the API

Another option to sync data is to build your own integration by leveraging Tability’s public API. This is the right approach if you have complex queries that require the combination of data coming from multiple sources, or if you want to have full control on the context surrounding the check-in.

With the API you can not only indicate the progress value, but you can also control the confidence level and commentary attached to the check-in.

Check out the Public API guide to see how you can get started.

Last resort: link to the data URL

There will be occasions where none of the above options work. You will still have to open up your browser and navigate to the right screen or dashboard to get the metric that you need to report on.

Well, we also thought that this could be made easier by having a quick link allowing you to open up the right dashboard in 1-click.

1. Go to your Tability account
2. Click on a key result to open up its detail panel
3. Click on Connect a data source
4. Select Link in the available data sources
5. Add the URL to the relevant dashboard

After saving you’ll notice that the link is displayed at the top of the check-in form, making it really easy to jump to the right dashboard.

Connecting OKRs to projects and initiatives (Jira, ClickUp, Linear, Asana, etc)

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The more you can connect outcomes to outputs, the easier it will be to resolve bottlenecks and stay focused on the work that matters. But, in order to do so you need to bring your OKRs as close as possible to your initiatives.

Most teams now use project management tools like Jira, ClickUp, Linear, etc with good reason. These tools have everything they need to organise backlogs and track the completion of individual tasks.

On the other hand, Tability has everything that you need to set OKRs and track progress during the quarter. And on top of that, you can connect your project management platform to start adding tasks and projects into Tability – and keep everything in sync.

This offers several advantages:

• Teams can keep working in their preferred project management tool.
• Leadership can see exactly what is being worked on for each of the OKRs.
• No duplicated effort - you can use your project management tool as the source of truth for initiatives.
• Teams can easily see what their work contributes to

Check out the pages below to learn more about the integrations:

• OKRs for Asana
• OKRs for ClickUp
• OKRs for Jira
• OKRs for Linear

Connecting OKRs to Slack

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The more clicks people need to do to get to their goals, the more likely they are to forget them. Not because they don’t care, but because there’s too much friction between them and their priorities.

A simple way to fix that is to let Tability push OKR reminders and progress digests directly to people via Slack DMs and channel messages. With that approach you remove all the friction. Folks no longer have to keep everything in their head at all times – they can focus on the work in front of them and trust that Tability will help them re-align with their OKRs on a weekly basis.

Less stress. More focus.

How to connect Tability to Slack

1. Go to your Tability account
2. Open up the integration settings page
3. Connect to your Slack workspace

That’s it – Tability will automatically sync user accounts and start sending reminders to people that own key results. You can also add a slack channel to an OKR plan, and Tability will publish a weekly progress digest in that channel.

Learn more about the OKR integration for Slack.

Embed OKR dashboards in your docs and knowledge bases

This last integration is here to help with the same problem mentioned in the Slack integration. The more you can show goals where people are already working, the easier it will be to keep OKRs at the top of everyone’s mind.

The process to embed OKR dashboards in Confluence and Notion is simple:

1. Open up Tability
2. Go to your OKR plan, or open up a specific key result
3. Click on Share
4. Select the Notion or Confluence tab
5. Follow the instructions

Once you’re done you will be able to display the embedded dashboard right in the context of your team updates, vision doc, or mission statement.

What’s next

That’s it for the integrations! Don’t hesitate to check our OKR planning guide for more tips to simplify your implementation and reclaim your productivity.