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Action Planning (CX)

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About Action Planning

Action plans can be thought of as initiatives that must be completed in order for a company to reach its goals. They allow you to assign tasks and plan resolutions to some of your company’s biggest issues with customer experience. For example, if customers disagreed that your product met their needs, a larger-scale action plan could be to redesign that product.

There are several steps to action planning, most of which must be completed by a project administrator before launch:

  • Configure which users have access to action planning.
  • Enable action planning on a dashboard.
  • Add custom fields for action planning.
  • Create an action planning page in the dashboard, for reporting results.

Once action planning is enabled in the dashboard, dashboard users across the company can create action plans and mark their progress.

This page primarily focuses on v2 action planning. For a guide on the older v1 behavior, see the V1 Action Planning section.

Qtip: Action planning is not available to all CX Dashboard users. If you are interested in this feature, talk to your Account Executive or Customer Success representative about whether or not you qualify.
Qtip: Please do not use emojis in your action plans. This includes names, comments, and custom fields.

Action Plan Users

This section discusses how to configure user permissions so that dashboard users have access to create and edit action plans.

Qtip: Action plan owners and creators will always be able to edit the action plans for which they are the owner or creator, even if they do not have action plan editing permissions.

Allowing Users to Edit Action Plan Settings and the dashboard

This option allows a dashboard user to create and edit action plan settings, as well as the rest of the dashboard.

Sharing window open on dashboard

  1. Navigate to a non-action planning page and share the dashboard.
  2. Select users to share the dashboard with.
  3. Set the Permission for that user/Role to Edit. This will also give users access to Edit for Action Plans regardless of what is selected for the Action Plans permission.

Allowing Users to Edit action plan settings, but no other dashboard content

This option allows a user who cannot edit the dashboard to edit the action plan settings.

Sharing window

  1. Navigate to a non-action planning page and share the dashboard.
  2. Select users to share the dashboard with.
  3. Set the Permission to View or Export, depending on your needs.
  4. Set Action Plans to Edit.

Restricting the Data Included in Action Plan Pages

Before giving dashboard users access to create action plans, you may want to make sure your users are configured to only see action plan data that is relevant to them and their user permissions. This is controlled by the same means that you restrict access to other data in the dashboard. For example, if an employee is only required to see data that matches the user attribute of the region they work in, they will see only regular dashboard data and action planning data for their particular region.

See the Dashboard Role Data Restrictions support page for more on how to set these restrictions up.

Qtip: When setting the data restrictions for users / roles, you will have the option to select from survey data fields and action planning fields. In some cases, survey data fields and action planning fields may have the same name and may need to be added twice, once for the survey and once for action plans.

Hiding All or Certain Pages of Action Plans from Dashboard Viewers

This option hides action plan reporting from people with only view or export access to the dashboard. If a user can edit the dashboard, you cannot restrict their page access.

  1. Navigate to a non-action planning page and share the dashboard.
  2. Select users to share the dashboard with.
  3. Click All Pages.
    All Pages in blue under page column
  4. Deselect any action planning pages you have set up.
    Deselected page named after action planning purpose
Qtip: If page level attribute data restrictions are in place, all action plans that do not have matching data will not be shown. Action plans must therefore be populated by the users with all data that is required to be filtered on.

Enabling v2 Action Planning and Setting Custom Fields

Before you can start using v2 action planning in your dashboard, you need to enable it. You can also configure additional fields that will appear when your users go to create action plans.

See the Action Plan Dashboard Settings page for more on how to enable v2 action planning and customize these fields.

Creating Action Plans

  1. Select the action planning icon in the upper-right of the dashboard.
    Action plan button upper-right of dashboard, looks like a little flag

    Qtip: No action planning link in the upper-right? You may not have access to action planning, or you may be on a dashboard that’s using an older version of action planning. Talk to your Brand Administrator about your permissions, or check out Adding an Action Plan on the Action Planning Editor Widget page.
  2. Click Action Plan.
    Action plan button in upper-right of action planning page
  3. Click the title to name the action plan.
    Fields you fill out to create an action plan
  4. Click Not Started to change the action plan’s status. You can set a status label (not started, on hold, in progress, complete, canceled) and add a percentage complete.
    Example: We marked an action plan’s status as “in progress” and set its progress to 50%.
    In progress button expands to show status and progress toggles
  5. Click the due date to open a calendar and set the date the action plan should be completed by.
  6. Click the X next to a name to remove the owner, or click Add an owner to add more owners.
  7. Any additional custom fields you added will show here.
  8. Type a comment and click Add.

Qtip: If you click the dots in the upper-right of the action plan, you can copy it or delete it. Please wait a little while after first creating an action plan before you try to delete it.

Dots in upper-right expand copy and delete options

Actions within a Plan

Actions are the individual tasks that need to be completed within a larger action plan.

Example: If your action plan is centered around improving your support team’s overall CSAT, the actions within that plan would be more specific goals that could help you achieve your goal. For example, introducing better customer interaction training, deep analysis of customer tickets to identify what’s going wrong in interactions, the establishment of a CX program, and so on.
  1. To create a new action item, click New action.
    Center of action plan, huge blue space with a "new action" button in the center
  2. Name the action.
    New plan within a plan appears where the blue space was previously
  3. Write a description about the action. This step is optional.
  4. Include a due date for the completion of this action. This step is optional.
  5. Assign owners to the action. This step is optional.
  6. Click Save.
  7. When you’ve completed an action, click the checkmark.
    Arrow indicating checkmark to far-right

    Qtip: As you mark off actions in a larger plan, the status will automatically update to reflect how much progress you’ve made. Adding new actions will not change the status / progress, so make sure you’ve made all the actions before you start marking others off, or you’ll need to change the status / progress manually.

To make additional actions, use the Create action button that appears above your action. Actions within a plan cannot be re-ordered.

Deleting Actions within a Plan

If you decide you don’t want an action, use the dots in the upper-right to Delete action.

Dropdown upper-right

Qtip: When you copy an entire action plan, actions are not duplicated.

Viewing and Navigating Actions Plans

You can find your action plans by clicking the action planning icon.

Action plan button upper-right of dashboard, looks like a little flag

Qtip: In the screenshot above, the button is in the upper-right, but depending on how your dashboard is configured, it may be in the upper-left, above the list of dashboard pages.

Toggle between all action plans you have access to and just the plans assigned to you by using the dropdown.

View all action plans dropdown

Filtering Action Plans

Dropdown for fields you can filters by

If you are viewing all action plans, you can narrow down what’s displayed using a Filter. When filters are enabled, data restrictions set up on the dashboard are respected, and you can add additional filters using the fields we described below. When filters are disabled, data restrictions are not applied, and so you will just see all the action plans you’re the owner or creator of.

If you select a filter and cannot select criteria, that means there’s no values or only one value. For example, if you try to filter by status and cannot select a status, that may mean all action plans are “in progress” and thus there’s no other status you can narrow down by.

There is a limit of 10 filters at once. Filters cannot be locked or saved.

Qtip: Brand Administrators see all action plans in the dashboard, regardless of whether they are the owner or creator.

You can filter by a list of fields, including:

  • The title of the action plan
  • Due date
  • Creation date
  • Date last modified
  • The action plan creator’s user attributes
  • The action plan owner’s user attributes
  • Comments
  • The status of the action plan
  • The percentage progress of the action plan
  • Any additional fields included on every action plan

There are also filtering options for brand ID, which will be the same for all action plans, and for creator ID and fieldset ID, which are internal Qualtrics IDs.

All filters are multi-select. You cannot search using phrases or terms, and can only filter by selecting relevant values.

Exiting Action Plans

To exit an action plan, click Back in the upper-left.

Back link in upper-left when you are inside a specific action plan

To exit action planning, click the name in the global navigation to return to the dashboard.

Top of screen, in navigation bar, you can see the name of the dashboard

Reporting on Action Plans

Once you and your dashboard users have created action plans, you can start reporting on their progress. For example, you can create a chart that breaks out according to the roles of people assigned action plans, or a table that shows the statuses of all action plans.

Report on action plan statuses and place of assignment

Qtip: Action planning data is required in advance of building widgets to report on. Test action plans can be created to do this and then deleted once the reporting widgets have been built.

Creating an Action Planning Page

Qtip: Action planning pages do not have access to other page features such as sharing, exporting, viewing data in Text iQ or Stats iQ, and accessing tickets. For access to these features, navigate to a non-action planning page.

Before you can start reporting the progress of your action plans, you will need to make an action planning page on your dashboard.

  1. Click the Add Page ( + ) button in the page list.
    Adding an Action Planning page
  2. Select Action Planning Page.
  3. Click Page Options.
    Renaming a page

    Qtip: Steps 3-6 aren’t required, but explain how to rename your page so you can easily find which one is for action planning.
  4. Click Rename.
  5. Type a name in the field.
    Rename window
  6. Click Save.

Once this page is created, you can start adding widgets and reporting out on your action plans! All the same widgets available on regular dashboard pages will be available on an action planning page. The only difference are the fields you’ll add to those widgets.

Action Planning Fields

When you start to customize widgets on your action planning page, you will notice that action plan-specific fields will appear in the list instead of the contents of your dashboard data.

Since action planning fields are not included in your dashboard data, they are automatically assigned field types for optimum reporting. Below, each field is listed by its type. For more on what field types mean and the widgets they are compatible with, see the Field Types support page.

Open Text:

  • Comments: This field displays comments left on action plans.

Text Set / Multi-Answer Text Set:

  • Owner IDs: Owner IDs are internal Qualtrics IDs assigned to the owners of action plans.
  • Status: The status of the action plan. Statuses include Not Started, On Hold, In Progress, Closed, and Canceled.

Number Set:

  • Progress: This is the exact percentage that the action plan is completed.

Date:

  • Creation Date: The date the action plan was created.
  • Due Date: This is the due date given the action plan.
  • Last Modified: The date someone last edited the action plan. This includes status and percentage changes, but not the addition of comments.

Misc. Field Types:

  • Action Plan Owner User Attributes: You will be able to select from a list of user attributes for the people the action plans have been assigned to. For example, let’s say the user attribute you uploaded with your users is Department, Start Date, and Office Location. You would see the options Action Plan Owner: Department, Action Plan Owner: Start Date, and Action Plan Owner: Office Location.
  • Action Plan Creator User Attributes: You will be able to select from a list of user attributes for the creator of the action plan. For example, let’s say the user attribute you uploaded with your users is Department, Start Date, and Office Location. You would see the options Action Plan Creator: Department, Action Plan Creator: Start Date, and Action Plan Creator: Office Location.
    • Field type of the user attribute depends on how the original is mapped in the Project Mapper.
      Example: If Department is mapped as a Multi-Answer Text Set, then Action Plan Owner: Department and Action Plan Creator: Department will also be Multi-Answer Text Sets.
  • Action Plan Fields: The fields you set in your Action Plan Settings will also be available for reporting. For example, let’s say you create a field called “Responsible Departments” referring to departments who will need to be involved to resolve this action plan. You’d be able to report on this data by selecting “Responsible Departments” from the list of fields.
    • Text fields are Open Text
    • Dropdowns are Text Set, unless set to Multi-Answer Text Set
    • Checkboxes are Text, unless set to Multi-Answer Text Set
    • Dates are Date

Measurable Action Plans

Measurable action planning allows users to measure the impact of strategic action-taking with metrics from their customer feedback dashboards. These action plans can be created manually in the action plan creator or by clicking Improve on any focus areas widget.

ENABLING METRIC TRACKING

  1. Open the dashboard Settings.
    Settings icon from cx dashboards menu.
  2. Click Action Plans.
    Enable action planning from cx dashboards settings.
  3. Toggle metric tracking On.

CREATING A MEASURABLE ACTION PLAN FROM THE ACTION PLANNING PAGE

  1. Navigate to the action planning page.
    Shows the action planning icon in cx dashboards.
  2. Click Create an action plan.
    Create action plan from action planning menu.
  3. Name your action plan.
    Configure action plan from action planning menu.
  4. Ensure Link action plan with a focus area is checked.
  5. Select a focus area for this action plan by searching from the drop-down, or click Custom focus area to create a new one.
  6. If you create a custom focus area, enter a label for it.
  7. Enter a starting metric value, if you would like. This will serve as the base for metric calculations.
  8. Enter a target metric value, if you would like. This will serve as the goal for metric improvement.
  9. Click Create an action plan.

CREATING A MEASURABLE ACTION PLAN FROM A FOCUS AREA WIDGET

  1. Ensure action planning is enabled in your focus area widget.
  2. Click Improve.
    Shows improve button on focus area widget.
  3. Name your action plan.
    Create an action plan from the focus area widget.
  4. Set a target value for this focus area, if you would like.
    Qtip: The focus area and starting metric value are automatically populated from the data in the focus area widget. If you would like to manually set the focus area or metric value, follow the steps above to create a measurable action plan from the action planning page.
  5. Click Create an action plan.
  6. Click View your action plan to view the action plan. Otherwise, click Close.
    View action plan from settings menu.

NAVIGATING MEASURABLE ACTION PLANS

Measurable action plans allow you to view the baseline and target metrics from focus area widgets directly within the action plan. These values can be used to track the action plan’s improvement overtime for key CX metrics like customer satisfaction or net promoter score.

Metric progress calculation within action plan.

Once the action plan’s status is set to Complete, you can record the Final metric value in order to capture the effectiveness in improving the focus area.

Shows the box to input the final metric value.

Action Planning v1

This guide is only for users who do not have v2 action planning enabled. V1 action planning leans on the use of the old Action Planning Editor widget. It also does not allow you to create actions within plans.

Configuring Action Planning Users

This works the same as it does in v2. See Action Plan Users.

Configuring Action Plan Fields

There are some custom field types, such as drill down and data definition, that are only available in v1. See the v1 section on the Action Plan Settings page.

Creating and Editing Action Plans

In order to create action plans, you first need to create an action planning page in the dashboard.

Using new page button, top or left of dashboard. One of the options is action planning page.

Then you need to add an Action Planning Editor widget to your action planning page. This widget allows dashboard users to create action plans based on survey results. This widget is required to create and edit action plans. The data captured in action plans can then be reported on in a separate action planning page. You can even use this widget to assign issues to members of the team best suited to the task.

Action planning editor widget

Reporting on v1 Action Plans

Reporting on v2 is the same as it was in v1. First you make an action planning page, and then you can build aggregate reports.

FAQs