Goals & Planning Panel

Hierarchical tree view for organizing strategic work alongside your daily execution.

The Goals & Planning Panel is an overlay that appears on the left side of your Work Tracker and Timeline views. It organizes your work from big-picture strategic initiatives down to individual tasks in a hierarchical tree, with progress tracking that automatically updates as your team completes work.

What the panel shows

The panel displays your organization's work in a hierarchical tree structure with 5 configurable levels. By default, you see the top 3 levels — Initiatives, Projects, and Epics — which represent your strategic planning. This keeps high-level planning separate from the day-to-day work shown on your Work Tracker.

Progress indicators update automatically as your team closes issues and merges pull requests. When an issue gets completed, its parent Epic updates, which updates its parent Project, which updates the Initiative. You get accurate strategic visibility without manual status reporting.

The 5-level hierarchy

Level 1 — Initiatives are strategic objectives spanning multiple quarters or years, like Improve user retention or Scale platform performance.

Level 2 — Projects are large bodies of work contributing to initiatives, typically spanning several months.

Level 3 — Epics are themes of work grouping related issues around specific features that development teams can execute.

Level 4 — Issues (Stories/Tasks/Bugs) represent day-to-day development work completed in days. These appear on your Work Tracker and connect directly to repository work.

Level 5 — Sub-tasks are specific work within issues, typically measured in hours.

Customizing your hierarchy

Access Edit issue types and hierarchy to customize each hierarchy level. You can rename each level to match your organization's language — change Initiatives to Objectives or Epics to Features. You can also set default issue types for each level and toggle Level 4 and Level 5 visibility on or off.

Workspace vs company-wide views

This workspace shows only hierarchical work items from your current workspace. Most daily planning happens in this view.

Company wide displays all projects and epics across every workspace in your GitHub organization, giving leadership visibility into cross-team initiatives. Both views update in real time and share the same underlying data.

Filtering and organizing

The Filters menu at the top of the panel lets you search by name, filter by issue type (Initiative, Project, Epic), or filter by status to show open or closed items. Sort options let you organize items alphabetically or manually using the grip handle for custom ordering that persists across sessions.

Creating work in the hierarchy

Using the green + Create button (top right of screen): Click + Create, select New GitHub Issue or New Zenhub Issue, choose the issue type, and the item appears in the panel based on its type.

Using the blue + button in the panel: Click the blue + at the top of the Goals & Planning Panel, select the hierarchy level from the dropdown, and complete the creation form.

Both methods create items that immediately appear in the panel hierarchy. Add child items to any parent by expanding the parent and creating within that context.

Progress tracking

Progress indicators update automatically based on actual GitHub activity. An Epic's progress calculates from its child issues, a Project's progress from its Epics, and an Initiative's progress from its Projects. Hover over any percentage to see detailed breakdowns including date ranges, sub-issue counts, story point totals, and progress across workflow states.

Using Goals & Planning with Timeline

The Goals & Planning Panel appears on both your Work Tracker and Timeline views as a consistent overlay. Changes made in the panel immediately appear on Timeline, and vice versa. Filtering applies to both views — when you filter the panel to show only Epics, Timeline also displays only Epics.

FAQ

Q: Why don't issues from Goals & Planning Panel appear on my Work Tracker?
A: This separation is intentional. The Goals & Planning Panel focuses on strategic planning (Initiatives, Projects, Epics), while the Work Tracker handles execution-level work (Issues, Tasks). Enable Level 4 visibility through Edit issue types and hierarchy if you want to see execution-level work in the panel.

Q: How is completion percentage calculated for parent items?
A: Progress rolls up automatically through the hierarchy. A Project's percentage calculates from the completion of its child Epics, which calculate from their issues. The calculation is based on actual closed issues in GitHub — as your team closes work, percentages update in real time.

Q: Can I customize the hierarchy levels to match our terminology?
A: Yes. Access Edit issue types and hierarchy to customize each level with your preferred terminology and default issue types.

Q: What's the difference between This workspace and Company wide views?
A: This workspace shows only hierarchical work from your current workspace. Company wide displays all projects and epics across every workspace in your GitHub organization. Both views share the same data and update in real time.

Q: Why are some items greyed out in the panel?
A: Items appear greyed out when the top-level item doesn't match your current filters but at least one child issue does. This helps you see relevant children even when their parent wouldn't normally appear.

Q: Can items from Goals & Planning Panel be used in sprint planning?
A: Strategic items remain in the Goals & Planning Panel, but their child issues appear on the Work Tracker where sprint planning happens. Break down strategic work into execution-level issues to make them available for sprint assignment and velocity tracking.