When you have parent OKRs with multiple contributing children, keeping track of overall progress and health can become overwhelming. How much progress have we made? Are we on track? What's the real status across all the work?
With automatic rollup, Rhythms eliminates manual calculations by automatically aggregating progress from contributing children and computing time-based health indicators. Your parent OKRs stay up-to-date in real time as your team makes progress, giving you instant visibility into goal health across your organization.
How this helps:
Real-time accuracy: Parent progress and status update instantly when children change—no waiting for manual updates
Eliminate manual math: No spreadsheets, no aggregating numbers across teams, no calculating weighted averages
Health transparency: Status automatically reflects whether you're on pace with time expectations
Save hours: Reclaim time previously spent manually updating parent goals
Consistent tracking: Same calculation method across all organizational levels
Early warnings: Spot problems immediately when child progress falls behind
How Automatic Rollup Works
Automatic rollup has two components that work together to give you a complete picture of goal health:
Progress Rollup: Aggregating Completion
Progress rollup calculates your parent's progress by combining the progress of all contributing children. By default, all contributing children have equal impact—if you have three Key Results at 80%, 60%, and 40%, your parent Objective shows 60% progress (the average).
Organizations can optionally enable custom weights to prioritize strategically important work. With custom weights, you might give a critical Key Result 50% weight while supporting work gets 25% each, so the weighted calculation reflects strategic priorities.
When to use progress rollup:
Parent goals that aggregate team deliverables
Objectives with measurable Key Results
Initiatives tracking multiple tasks or sub-initiatives
Any time you want progress to reflect the weighted reality of contributing work
For detailed guidance on how progress aggregates and how to configure contribution weights, see Intelligent Progress Rollup: How Rhythms Calculates Parent Progress.
Status Rollup: Time-Based Health Indicators
Status rollup automatically computes whether your goal is On Track, Behind, or At Risk by comparing actual progress against expected progress based on time elapsed.
The calculation is simple: if you're halfway through your time period, you should be around halfway to your target. Status reflects whether you're on pace:
On Track: Progress meets or exceeds time-based expectations
Behind: Progress is 1-25 percentage points behind expected
At Risk: Progress is more than 25 percentage points behind expected
This gives you immediate visibility into whether goals are healthy or need attention, without manual status assessment.
When status rollup helps most:
Goals with clear time boundaries (quarterly OKRs, project milestones)
Teams needing early warning signals about falling behind
Organizations wanting consistent health indicators across all levels
Leaders monitoring multiple goals and needing quick health signals
For detailed guidance on status calculation and when to override with strategic judgment, see Automatic Status Rollup for Parent OKRs.
Choosing Between Automatic and Manual Modes
Every parent OKR can use one of three progress modes. Understanding when to use each ensures your goals reflect reality accurately.
Automatic Rollup (Recommended for Most Parents)
Best for:
Objectives with measurable Key Results
Initiatives tracking sub-tasks or deliverables
Goals where progress is objectively measurable from child work
Teams wanting to eliminate manual update overhead
How it works:
Progress: Weighted average from contributing children (equal weights by default)
Status: Automatically computed from progress vs. time-based expectations
Updates: Real-time as children change
Example: "Launch Mobile App" Objective with Key Results for features, testing, and approvals. As each KR progresses, the Objective automatically reflects overall completion.
Manual Mode
Best for:
Qualitative goals requiring human judgment
Executive-level objectives where strategic context matters more than math
Goals with non-linear progress patterns
Situations where child data is incomplete or misleading
How it works:
Progress: You enter values manually in check-ins
Status: You set status manually based on your assessment
Updates: Only when you perform a check-in
Example: "Improve team culture" Objective where multiple factors contribute but progress isn't purely mathematical—leadership judgment determines real status.
Important: When you switch to manual mode, you take on the responsibility of keeping progress and status current through regular check-ins.
Integration Mode (Advanced)
Best for:
Goals tied directly to external data sources
Organizations with connected tools (GitHub, Jira, etc.)
Metrics that update automatically from integrations
How it works:
Progress: Auto-calculated from connected data sources
Status: Automatically computed from progress vs. time-based expectations
Updates: Real-time as integrated tools provide new data
Example: "Close 10 deals" Key Result connected to Salesforce that updates automatically as opportunities close.
Note: Integration mode requires configured data connections. See How to Set Up Auto-Updates for instructions on how to connect your Key Results and Initiatives to external sources.
Getting Started with Automatic Rollup
Three simple steps:
Align your OKRs: Connect child items to parent OKRs so Rhythms knows what contributes to what
Enable contribution: For each child, toggle on "Contribute to parent's progress"
Set automatic mode: On the parent, set progress mode to "Update automatically based on rollup from contributing children"
Once enabled, your parent's progress and status will update in real time as teams make progress on contributing children.
Default behavior: All contributing children have equal impact. If you need to prioritize certain work more heavily, your organization can enable custom weights. See Intelligent Progress Rollup: How Rhythms Calculates Parent Progress for details.
Note: Children with Postponed status are automatically excluded from rollup calculations, their contribution weight is set to 0 to prevent paused work from affecting parent progress or status.
When Automatic Rollup Might Not Work
Automatic rollup is powerful, but it's not right for every situation. Consider manual mode when:
Progress doesn't follow linear patterns:
Goals with unpredictable milestones
Work where 90% effort doesn't equal 90% completion
You're in the early planning phase:
Children haven't been created yet
You're setting aspirational targets before work begins
External factors dominate:
Market conditions, dependencies, or unknowns heavily influence success
The numbers look good but strategic context says otherwise
In these cases, manual mode gives you the flexibility to reflect reality more accurately than automatic calculations can.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know which mode my parent is using?
Click on the parent's progress value. The dropdown will show the current mode. You'll see either "Update automatically based on rollup from contributing children" (automatic) or "Update manually" (manual).
Can I switch modes after starting?
Yes. However, when you switch to automatic rollup, your parent's displayed progress and status will immediately change to show the calculated values from contributing children. Your previous manual check-ins will remain in the history.
What happens if I have no contributing children?
Parents with no contributing children will show 0% progress in automatic mode. Add contributing children or switch to manual mode to track progress.
Do I need to enable automatic rollup on every parent?
No. You can choose different modes for different parents based on what works best for each goal. Many organizations use automatic rollup for measurable Objectives and manual mode for strategic, qualitative goals.
Can children contribute to multiple parents?
Only if enabled in your organization's goal model configuration. Contact your admin if you need multi-parent alignment.
Does automatic rollup work across all organizational levels?
Yes. If you have Objectives rolling up to company-level goals, and Key Results rolling up to Objectives, automatic rollup cascades through all levels. Progress flows upward in real time.
What's the difference between progress and status?
Progress measures how close you are to your target value (0-100%). For example, if your target is to reach $500K revenue and you're at $250K, you're at 50% progress. Status measures health by comparing your progress to time-based expectations (On Track, Behind, At Risk). Both update automatically with rollup enabled.
Related Articles
Configuring how progress rolls up: See Intelligent Progress Rollup: How Rhythms Calculates Parent Progress for how progress aggregates from children, how to adjust contribution weights, and when to use equal vs. custom weights.
Understanding status calculation: See Automatic Status Rollup for Parent OKRs for how status is computed, when to accept calculated status, and when to override with strategic judgment.
Tracking progress: See Effective Check-ins to Track OKR Progress in Rhythms for how to conduct check-ins and update OKR progress.