Goal Management in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales (CRM)

By Jeff Spehn | April 3, 2019

Goal management in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales lets you set sales, service, marketing, and other business goals for your organization and measure the results against the targets. Here are some examples of goal management in Dynamics CRM:

  • Revenue Goals for your sales reps
  • Number of Phone Calls or Appointments for sales or service users
  • Number of Service Cases resolved by service users

Goals can be based on any entity (including custom entities!) and must be set for a user or group of users and for a time frame (i.e. month, quarter, year, etc.)

There are 3 areas for goal set up:

  1. Goal Metric
  2. Rollup Query (if needed)
  3. Goal

Let’s get started!

We will create a Yearly Sales Revenue Goal based on Actual Revenue for “Won” Opportunities. We will use the Opportunity Actual Close date to determine if it should be included in this year’s goal.

Create a Goal Metric

Menu: Sales – Goal Metrics

The Goal Metric determines what entity and field you want to measure from as well as what date field will be used in your goal timespan. The Goal Metric defines whether this is a count or revenue-based metric, which then determines what information is needed in the goal itself.  Continuing with our example, we need a goal metric based on the Opportunity Entity using the Actual Revenue field to measure as well as the Actual Close Date to be used to determine if the records should be included in our goal’s timeframe.

Goal Metrics must have at least one Rollup Field and they can have up to three. For example, our goal is based on Actual Revenue on “Won” Opportunities but we can have another Rollup field to measure “in-progress” money which would look at Opportunities that are still Open in my goal timeframe. It is the Rollup Fields that determine the entity to measure, the field(s) within the entity to count or sum along with the types of records to consider and which date field to look at to determine if the records are within the goal’s timeframe. Here is an example of our Revenue Goal metric with two Rollup fields:

Goal Management in Dynamics 365 CRM

Create a Rollup Query

Menu: Sales – Rollup Queries

Rollup queries are not required. They help you gather data about a given goal. They can be created before or during Goal creation. The rollup query determines what data fits into the goal. In our example, we may only want Opportunities that had certain products or maybe only certain types of customers are eligible to be included in the goal. If you are trying to filter the eligible records in any way, then you would need a Rollup Query. Rollup Queries are created very similar to an Advance Find view. Here is an example of a Rollup Query to measure a sales rep’s actual revenue. We want to measure “Won” Opportunities where the Actual Revenue is greater than $100 and the Account related to the Opportunity has an Account Type of “Customer”.

Goal Management

Create the Goal

Menu: Sales – Goals

The Goal brings the Goal Metric, and the Rollup Query together with time periods and targets to provide a snapshot of how an employee is progressing towards their Goals. There are a few other key fields:

  • Goal Owner – The system will look for records owned by the owner of the goal unless otherwise stated in the Rollup Query.
  • Manager – Can be the same as goal owner, otherwise, this is a nice way to report on goals for a manager of many Goal Owners.
  • Time Period – Fiscal Period is Quarters in a Year. Otherwise, choose Custom Period and pick your date range.
  • You can have Parent and Child Goals, but certainly not required.
  • Target – Actual goal dollar or count amount.
  • Actuals – Calculated values for the goal. Goals are calculated once a day (usually in off hours). You can Re-Calculate a goal anytime by clicking the Recalculate button on the Goal record.

Here is an example of a yearly goal record:

Goal Management in Dynamics CRM - Revenue goal

Goal setup and calculating

Now that we have a goal setup and calculating, the next step is to use or create new views and/or charts to use on dashboards, etc. Just a few things to note on views and charts:

  • Goal Views and Charts are like any other in Dynamics 365.
  • Goal View and Charts can be added to Dashboards for users to monitor their progress.
  • You may want views for users where they are the Goal Owner or Goal Manager and by date ranges (i.e. Qtr 1 Goals, Qtr 2 Goals, etc.)
  • The out of box Goal charts are unique. They can show the actuals, goals, and progress based on the current date. See example below:

Goal Management

As you can see, Goals are simple to set up and can provide users and employees a view of their daily progress toward their goals. You can have as many goals records as you need. Goals are like any other entity in Dynamics 365, so you can Import Goal records if you have a lot of them!

Here are some other Goal ideas you can set up:

  • Number of Leads or Accounts created.
  • Number of Leads Qualified.
  • Number of Tasks completed on time.
  • Number of Cases created.
  • Number of Opportunities closed as won.
  • Revenue Goals based on Invoice records. Very useful if integrating invoices from an ERP system.
  • Whatever else you can dream up!

If you are interested in learning more about managing your Goals in Dynamics 365, feel free to reach out to our team.


Under the terms of this license, you are authorized to share and redistribute the content across various mediums, subject to adherence to the specified conditions: you must provide proper attribution to Stoneridge as the original creator in a manner that does not imply their endorsement of your use, the material is to be utilized solely for non-commercial purposes, and alterations, modifications, or derivative works based on the original material are strictly prohibited.

Responsibility rests with the licensee to ensure that their use of the material does not violate any other rights.

Start the Conversation

It’s our mission to help clients win. We’d love to talk to you about the right business solutions to help you achieve your goals.

Subscribe To Our Blog

Sign up to get periodic updates on the latest posts.

Thank you for subscribing!