Import OKRs with AI

Import OKRs from planning material

Use OKR Import when your team already has planning material and you do not want to copy every Objective and Key Result by hand. ALLO can read a planning document or pasted text, find likely Objectives and Key Results, and turn them into a draft you review before anything is saved.

The import flow is draft-first. ALLO does not create a Session, Objective, or Key Result while it is reading your source. It prepares a draft, shows a preview, opens an editor, and saves only after you choose Import OKRs.

For the full Goals/OKRs model, start with Understand Goals/OKRs. If you are planning a new cycle from scratch, Create a Session explains the manual setup path.

Availability and permissions

If Goals/OKRs is missing, the import button is hidden, or the editor is read-only, check workspace access before trying a different file. Use Troubleshoot OKR permissions to confirm your role, feature access, and Session access.

Choose the right entry point

OKR Import has two entry points, and the entry point controls where the saved draft goes.

Pick the target before you start. If you meant to add rows to an existing Session but started from Goals/OKRs home, cancel before saving and reopen import from inside the Session.

Prepare your source

OKR Import works best when the source already contains recognizable OKR structure. A useful source usually has Objective headings, Key Result rows or bullets, owners, dates, and measurable targets. It can also include planning notes, but the clearer the OKR section is, the less cleanup you will do in the editor.

You can upload common planning formats:

• Word documents
• Excel workbooks
• PowerPoint or slide files
• PDFs
• Markdown
• CSV
• plain text
• HWP files

Google Docs and Google Slides are cloud documents, so download or export them as a supported file before uploading.

You can also paste text directly. Pasted Markdown, bullets, meeting notes, copied spreadsheet rows, and plain text all work.

If the source is very long, paste only the part that contains the Objectives and Key Results. Long policies, meeting transcripts, or project plans with a small OKR section can produce a weaker draft because ALLO has to separate planning context from actual OKR rows.

Do not use OKR Import for:

• scanned PDFs without readable text
• password-protected files
• empty exports
• files that need human judgment before the OKR structure exists

If the document is mostly a brainstorm, clean up the OKR section first or create the Objectives manually with Create an Objective and Add Key Results.

Upload a file or paste text

Open OKR Import from the correct entry point, then choose one source. You can upload a file or paste text, but not both in the same draft. If a file is selected, pasted text is disabled until you remove the file.

For files, drag the file into the upload area or browse for it. ALLO checks the file type and 20 MB limit before starting the draft. For pasted text, paste the OKR section into the text box.

Choose Generate draft to start. Then keep the window open while ALLO prepares the draft:

1. ALLO uploads the file if needed.
2. It reads the source.
3. It checks workspace members for owner matching.
4. It generates a draft.

The progress screen may take about a minute or two for larger files. Closing the window may stop your local view of the task, and there is no draft history view for returning to the same import later.

Review the draft before saving

When the draft is ready, ALLO shows a review screen with the number of Objectives, Key Results, owners found, and the detected quarter or period. This screen is a preview, not a saved Session.

Use this ready state as the checkpoint before opening the editor. If the count, owner matching, or detected period already looks wrong, fix the source and regenerate before spending time on row-by-row edits.

Choose Open editor to inspect the actual draft. In the editor, you can update Objective titles, Key Result titles, owners, Key Result due dates, tags, and the Session date range when you are creating a new Session. When you are importing into an existing Session, the Session title and date range come from that existing Session.

Read the draft like a reviewer, not like a spell-check pass. Confirm:

• each Objective says the direction you want
• each Key Result is measurable
• each Key Result belongs under the right Objective
• notes, ambiguous metrics, or context did not become work your team does not intend to track

Fix owner, date, and unit warnings

Owners. Owner matching is based on workspace members. If ALLO finds an exact or strong match, the owner can be selected in the draft. If a name is missing, ambiguous, or not found in the workspace, review the owner field before saving.

Ambiguous owners are not guessed into the saved OKR. Pick the right person or team, or leave the owner empty if that is intentional.

Dates. Clear dates can become Key Result due dates. Vague dates such as "end of quarter," "weekly," or a date without enough year context may need review. Objectives do not have their own due date column in the import editor; the Session date range and Key Result due dates are the dates that matter.

Units and metrics. Units can come from the source, including percentages, currency, counts, hours, days, business days, or custom labels. Check imported Key Results that use non-standard units.

A Key Result about reducing work from 38 hours to 20 hours should remain an hours-based metric, not silently become a percent. If the metric is only described in prose, ALLO may preserve the wording as context so you can finish the measurement after import.

What Import OKRs saves

Import OKRs is the commit point. Before you press it, your changes are still a draft. After you press it, ALLO writes the reviewed Objectives and Key Results to the target.

Imported Objectives and Key Results start as normal Goals/OKRs records. Matched owners are assigned. Key Result dates and measurable values are saved where ALLO can read them. Tags selected in the editor are applied to the imported rows when available.

OKR Import does not create Initiatives, Check-ins, or Snapshots for you. It also does not decide your operating rhythm. After import:

• review the Session name, Timeframe, and Check-in cadence
• create connected canvases with Create an Initiative
• update progress with Check in progress
• use Snapshots for review periods

If the imported plan has multiple levels of Objectives, open Tree view after saving. The map view makes it easier to confirm that parent and child Objectives were imported the way you expect.

When not to use OKR Import

Do not use OKR Import when the source is not actually an OKR plan. A strategy memo, policy document, transcript, or task list may contain useful planning context, but it may not contain Objectives and Key Results that should become records.

Do not use it to bypass review. AI can find structure, but it can misread an owner, treat a note as a Key Result, miss a date, or keep a metric that still needs human judgment. If the draft looks wrong, fix it before saving or discard it and prepare a cleaner source.

Do not use import when you need to merge with existing Objectives, deduplicate a Session, update live progress, or build the canvases behind Initiatives. Import adds new Objectives and Key Results. It does not reconcile duplicates, overwrite existing rows, make Check-ins, create Initiatives, or populate connected canvases.

What can go wrong

The file is blocked or unreadable. It may be unsupported, too large, empty, password-protected, or unreadable. A scanned PDF without text may look fine to a person but still have no text for ALLO to read. Export the source again, remove password protection, split a large file, or use a text-based export.

The source has no recognizable OKRs. If ALLO cannot find Objectives and Key Results, paste only the OKR section or rewrite the source so Objective and Key Result lines are clear.

The draft needs review even when parsing succeeds. Missing owners, ambiguous owners, vague dates, duplicate-looking rows, low-confidence wording, and unclear metrics are signals to inspect the editor before saving.

Saving fails after review. Your access may have changed, the target Session may no longer be available, the network may have dropped, or the draft may contain a row that cannot be saved. Use the option to go back to the editor, review the flagged rows, and save again instead of starting over with a new upload.

Troubleshooting

If Generate draft is disabled, choose a supported file or paste source text. If a file is selected and you want to paste instead, remove the file first.

If upload fails, check the file size and format. Use a file under 20 MB, remove password protection, and export cloud documents as files before uploading.

If ALLO cannot read a PDF, try a text-based PDF or export the original document as Word, Markdown, CSV, or plain text. Scanned PDFs need OCR before import can read the words.

If no OKRs are found, narrow the source to the planning section that contains Objectives and Key Results. A whole meeting transcript or policy document can hide the actual OKR rows.

If owners do not match, confirm the people are active members of the workspace and pick the correct owner in the editor. If the person is not in the workspace, invite or restore access before assigning them.

If you cannot save, confirm that you still have permission to create or edit Goals/OKRs in the target Session. See Troubleshoot OKR permissions.

If the error persists after you review the draft and retry, contact support with:

• the time of the import
• the workspace
• the visible error message