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Creating Action Plans (EX)


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Qtip: This page describes functionality available to Engagement, Pulse, and Lifecycle projects. For more details on each, see Types of Employee Experience Projects.
Attention: If org hierarchies are modified or created after creating action plans, the action plans will not update with the new org hierarchy information unless you navigate to Participant Tools and select the Update all action plans with current metadata option.

Creating Action Plans

  1. Go to Ideas and actions.
    the ideas and actions button
  2. Click Create an action plan.
    Action plans top-right; action plan in blue with plus sign below that
  3. Select if there’s a Survey Question the plan should be linked to, a Category, or a Custom Focus Area.
    Action plan creation window opend with dropdowns along the top and blue create button bottom-right
  4. Select the specific field the plan should be based on.
  5. Click Create an action plan.
    Qtip: If you chose a question or category with Specific Guidance filled out, you will see guidance in the action plan, including suggested tasks and resource links. Managers can edit these suggested tasks, title, and description after they create the action plan.
  6. Click the title to name the action plan. This title is automatically populated depending on which field the action plan is based on.
    Fields of an action plan numbered going down

    Attention: The character limit for an action plan’s title as well as for the title of an individual action is 255 characters.
  7. 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.
  8. Click the date to open a calendar and set the date that the action plan should be completed by.
  9. Click Add an owner to add more owners, or click the x to remove owners.
    Qtip: The org hierarchy is autoset based on the action plan owner. For example, any action plan owned by Jane Smith will show up when selecting “Jane Smith” in the hierarchy filter.
  10. Any additional custom fields you added will show here.
  11. Click New action to add a subtask to your action plan. Tasks have the following fields:
    • Title
    • Description
    • Due Date
    • Owners
    Qtip: To edit or delete a subtask, click the dots in the upper-right corner.
    Click dots in upper right corner of sub task to edit or delete subtask
  12. If you would like to add a comment to the action plan, type a comment and click Post.

Qtip: If you click the dots in the upper-right of the action plan, you can copy, delete, or export the action plan.

Three dots pretty high up, not in dashboard navigation bar but just below that

Updating Action Plan Statuses

You can indicate the completion of a subtask by clicking the checkbox on the left. This will automatically update the status and percentage completion for the entire action plan.
The action plan status can be manually overridden by clicking the Status and changing the Status and Progress fields.

The action plan status can be manually overridden by clicking the Status and changing the Status and Progress fields.
Edit status manually by selecting the status button and choosing a percentage.

Adding Action Plans from Focus Areas

You can create an action plan directly from a focus areas widget.

  1. Click Improve in the focus area widget.
    Shows improve button on focus area widget.
  2. Click Confirm.
    Shows confirmation pane for creating action plan from focus area widget.
  3. If you would like to navigate to your action plan, click View your action plan. Otherwise, click Close.
    Button to view the action plan after creating from focus area widget
Qtip: The details and title of the action plan will automatically populate with the area you took action from in the widget.

If the Improve button is not displaying in the focus area widget, ensure that you have made that item available for action planning.

Viewing Action Plans

You can view your own action plans, or filter by org hierarchy to view the action plans of other people in your organization.

  1. Click Ideas and actions.
    the ideas and actions button
  2. Click the View: Your action plans dropdown. This shows all of the action plans that are currently owned by you.
    Shows how to filter by org hierarchy in selecting filters in the upper left
  3. Click Action plans by org hierarchy if you would like to view the action plans of other people in your org hierarchy.
  4. Select the org hierarchy that you want to view. Use the dropdown menu underneath to select someone in your org hierarchy to view the action plans they own.
    Shows how to filter by org hierarchy
Qtip: To determine what parts of the hierarchy the participants can filter by, adjust their dashboard permissions. See the Permissions page for data restriction options.

Exporting Action Plans

Administrators can export all action plans to a CSV file directly from the Action Plans page.

  1. Go to Ideas and actions.
    the ideas and actions button
  2. Click Export all action plans (admin only).
    Shows the "Export action plans" button in the action plans tab.

The exported document contains columns for action plan data including action plan ID, title, progress, status, due date, action owners, and more. Each row is a different action, identified by the Action ID column. There can be multiple actions associated with the same action plan, which is identified by the Action plan ID column.

an example action plan export file with the action plan id and action id fields highlighted