--- title: "How do I visualise the goal hierarchy?" description: "The Hierarchy view in the Goals module draws your goals as a tree, each one sitting under its parent goal, so you can see how objectives nest and where progress stands." category: goals-analytics section: goals-and-okrs type: Tutorial lastUpdated: 2026-08-26 locale: en canonical: https://support.talkspirit.com/en/goals-analytics/visualize-the-goals-hierarchy --- # How do I visualise the goal hierarchy? ## How do I visualise the goal hierarchy? The **Hierarchy** view in the Goals module draws every goal you can see as a card on a canvas, each one connected to its parent goal by a line. It shows at a glance how objectives nest, who owns each one and how far along they are. Hierarchy is one of the three Goals views, alongside **List** and **Timeline**, and you pan, zoom and collapse branches to explore it. ## How do I open the Hierarchy view? 1. Open the **Goals** app. 2. In the toolbar above the goals, click **Hierarchy**. It is the third button in the view switcher, after **List** and **Timeline**. Talkspirit remembers the view you were last in, so the Goals module reopens on Hierarchy until you switch again. ![The Goals module in Hierarchy view: goal cards spread across a canvas, one card linked to a sub-goal below it, with the view switcher outlined at the top left and the zoom and layout controls outlined at the bottom right.](/images/goals-analytics/visualize-the-goals-hierarchy/01-goals-hierarchy-view.png) ## What does the Hierarchy view show? Every goal you have access to appears as a card. A goal with no parent starts its own branch. A goal that has a parent sits below it, joined by a line, and a sub-goal can have sub-goals of its own. Two things often surprise people: - **Category is not a level.** **Company**, **Team** and **Individual** are categories you set on each goal. They label a goal, they do not place it in the tree. What places a goal in the tree is its parent goal, and nothing else. - **Nothing is filed separately.** Every goal lives on the one canvas, whether or not it is linked to anything. There is no separate area for unlinked goals. **Filter** works in this view. **Sort** and **Group** do not: they apply to the List and Timeline views only. When you search or filter, the whole tree stays on screen, the goals that do not match fade back, and the parents of each match stay at full strength so you can still see where the matches sit. ## What does each goal card show? A card carries the goal's name, its category, its health status when one is set, its time period and dates, its progress as a percentage and a bar, its owner, and a badge counting its key results. The owner can be a member, a role, a circle or a group. A small round button on the edge of any card that has sub-goals collapses or expands that branch. It stays visible when the branch is closed, so you can always tell there is more underneath. ![Close-up of two linked goal cards. The upper card shows its name, a Team category badge, its time period, 47% progress and its owner, with a collapse button on its lower edge and a line running down to a sub-goal card below.](/images/goals-analytics/visualize-the-goals-hierarchy/02-goal-card-and-sub-goal.png) ## How do I nest one goal under another? 1. In the Goals module, click **Add goal**. To nest a goal that already exists, open it, click the more actions button and choose **Edit goal**. 2. Open the **Parent goal** field and choose the goal this one belongs under. Leave it on **No parent goal** for a top-level goal. 3. Complete the remaining fields, then click **Create**, or **Save** if you were editing. **Note:** Talkspirit refuses a link that would loop back on itself, so you cannot nest a goal under one of its own sub-goals. It also caps how deep a branch may run, and tells you when a link would go one level too far. ![The Add goal dialog with the Parent goal field open, listing No parent goal and every existing goal to choose from.](/images/goals-analytics/visualize-the-goals-hierarchy/03-parent-goal-field.png) ## How do I move around the tree? The controls sit in the bottom-right corner of the canvas. - Drag the canvas to pan. Scroll to zoom, or use the **Zoom in** and **Zoom out** buttons. - **Fit view** brings the whole tree back into frame. - **Expand all** and **Collapse all** open or close every branch at once. - The layout button switches the tree between top-down and left-to-right. - Drag a card to move it. Talkspirit remembers your positions, your zoom level and which branches you closed, in this browser. Changing a goal's parent clears the saved position of that goal and of its new parent, so the tree lays those two out again. A minimap appears in the bottom-left corner while the tree holds 50 goals or fewer. You can drag and zoom inside it to jump across a wide tree. ## How do I get from one goal to its place in the tree? Open a goal and look for its **Hierarchy** section, which shows its parent and its sub-goals on their own small canvas. Click **See in context** to open the full Hierarchy view centred on that goal, outlined so you can pick it out immediately. ## Does a sub-goal's progress count towards its parent? Not until you ask it to. Every goal has a **Progress driver** that decides where its progress comes from: its key results, its sub-goals, or both. A goal starts with all of its progress coming from its key results and none from its sub-goals, so linking a sub-goal does not move the parent's percentage on its own. To make progress cascade: 1. Open the parent goal, click the more actions button and choose **Progress driver**. 2. Choose **Sub-goals**, or **Both** if the goal also has key results of its own. 3. On the **Both** tab, set **Sub-goals weight** to the share of the parent's progress the sub-goals should carry. **Key result weight** and **Sub-goals weight** together have to make 100%. 4. Give each sub-goal a multiplier if some of them should count for more than others. 5. Click **Save**. From then on, a change to any sub-goal's progress recalculates the parent, and its parent in turn, all the way up the branch. ## What's Next? - [The three Goals views and when to use each](/goals-analytics/the-different-goals-views) - [Adding, editing, or deleting a goal](/goals-analytics/how-to-add-edit-or-delete-a-goal) - [Weighting key results so the biggest ones count for more](/goals-analytics/weighted-objective)