Breadcrumb: BCBA › Target configuration
Change goal and target status
Move a target between Planned, Active, Generalization, Maintenance and Mastered, put a target or goal On Hold and resume it, one at a time or many at once, and read the history of changes.
A target's status says where it is in treatment: Planned, Active, Generalization, Maintenance or Mastered, or On Hold while you pause it. ABACare can move targets on its own when they meet their criteria, but you decide: you can move any target to any status, change many targets in one go, pause a target or a whole goal and resume it later, and read who changed what and why. A goal's status follows its targets, and you can set it by hand too.
Before you start
- You do this in the web app, as a BCBA or an org owner. Aides cannot change statuses or see the history, except that an aide your clinic allows can activate a planned target during a session. Aides can never put anything on hold or resume it.
- The treatment plan must be Active. On a plan that is On Hold or Completed, the status buttons are disabled, but the history stays readable.
Change one target or goal
- Open the treatment plan and go to the Goals tab.
- On the target's row or the goal's card, select the circular arrow (Change Status). On a target's details page, select Change status in the Status & transitions section.
- The window shows the name and the Current Status. Under New Status, pick the status. A target can move to any other status, On Hold included. A goal can move from Planned to Active, from Active to Mastered, Planned or On Hold, from Mastered back to Active, and from On Hold back to Active.
- Type a reason in Reason (Optional) if you want it in the history. It holds up to 500 characters.
- Select Update Status.
Target status updated successfully or Goal status updated successfully appears.
Select Cancel to close the window without changing anything. Each time you open it, New Status and the reason start empty, except on a target or goal that is on hold, where the window proposes the status it had before (see below).
When you change a goal by hand, a note under the reason tells you what follows. For most statuses it warns that this overrides the automatic status: the goal keeps it until the next status change of one of its targets. For On Hold, and when you resume a held goal, it says what happens to the goal's targets.
Moving a target into generalization or maintenance
When you change a single target to Generalization or Maintenance from the Goals tab, the settings of that phase open straight away so you can set the contexts or the probe schedule. From the details page, from a bulk change or after a suggestion you approve, they do not open; set them up in the target's Generalization or Maintenance section. A maintenance target without a probe schedule is never offered in a session. See Configure generalization for a target and Configure maintenance for a target.
Change many targets at once
Bulk changes are only in the table view of the Goals tab. Switch to it with the list icon above the goals.
- Select Update Status.
- In Select Targets, tick the targets. Each shows its current status. Search targets... filters by name, and Select All and Deselect All act on the filtered list. Targets you ticked before filtering stay ticked. Select Next.
- In Choose Status, pick the new status, On Hold included, and type an optional reason. Select Next.
- In Confirm, check the number of targets, the status and the reason, then select Update Status.
A message tells you how many targets were updated and how many goals changed with them. Targets that already had that status are left out of the count, so if all of them had it, the message says 0 targets updated. Targets of a goal you put on hold are skipped. Changing the table filter or switching to the card view closes the wizard, and it starts again from the beginning next time.
Put a target or goal on hold
Put a target On Hold to pause it for a while, for an illness, a prerequisite skill to rebuild or a request from the parents, without deleting its data or pretending it never started. You use the same Change Status window or the bulk wizard, and the reason goes into the history like any other change.
While a target is on hold:
- It is not offered for data collection. Aides do not see it when they choose targets for a session, on the web or in the mobile app, it is left off the printed worksheet and the list of mandatory targets, and parents no longer see it in their home practice.
- A session already in progress keeps the target until it ends, and the aide can still record data on it. A held target no longer counts as unfinished when the aide submits.
- ABACare leaves it alone: no mastery check, suggestion or automatic transition, no probe marked due, no tether set off, and no row in the Needs Attention list. A suggestion waiting on it is cleared when you hold it from the Change Status window.
- It stays in the plan, on its details page, in analytics, in reports and in its history, tagged On Hold in grey. Its data stays, and its mastery and probe progress is neither reset nor advanced. Analytics count the hold as a pause, not as a step back.
Hold a whole goal
Only an Active goal can be put on hold. When you pick On Hold for a goal, the window explains: Holding the goal also puts its Active, Generalization and Maintenance targets on hold. Planned and Mastered targets keep their status. Each target held this way gets its own line in its history, marked Automatic. A target you had already put on hold on its own is left as it is.
While a goal you put on hold stays on hold:
- None of its targets can change status. If you try, Resume the goal before changing its targets. appears. A bulk change skips them, a tether does not activate its planned targets, and aides cannot activate or add targets on it during a session.
- A target you add to it with Start as Active is put on hold straight away, and becomes Active when you resume the goal.
Resume
Open Change Status on the held target or goal. The window pre-selects the status it had before the hold, taken from its history. You can pick another one. If its history shows no hold, nothing is pre-selected. A goal can only go back to Active.
Resuming a goal returns each target it put on hold to the status that target had. Targets you put on hold on their own stay on hold; resume them one by one.
Read the status history
- On the Goals tab, open the History item in the menu of a target row (the table view also has it for goals), or select History on a goal card. The list shows each change, newest first. Load More replaces it with the next, older changes.
- On a target's details page, the Status & transitions section shows the history under Status history. Changes ABACare made on its own are marked Automatic.
What happens next
- Every change adds a line to the history with the reason, who made it and when.
- The goal's status is worked out again from its targets: Mastered when every target is mastered, Active when any target is active, in generalization or in maintenance, On Hold when neither applies but a target is on hold, and Planned otherwise. A held target counts as neither active nor mastered, so a goal with one mastered and one held target is On Hold.
- A goal you put on hold yourself stays on hold until you resume it. A goal that went on hold only because of its targets becomes Active again as soon as you resume one of them.
- Moving a target into maintenance restarts its probe schedule. Moving it out stops the probes.
- If other targets are tethered to this one, they become Active when it reaches the chosen status: see Tether targets together. Their new status can take a moment to show on the page. On Hold is never a trigger.
- A change you make on a single target clears any suggestion waiting on it, and so does holding or resuming a goal for each target it moves. A bulk change does not: the suggestion comes back after the page refreshes. See Review an automatic status suggestion.