Reality

See what your recorded work actually supports: evidence-supported progress, blocked and stale items, and the Reality settings.

Reality shows what your recorded data actually supports about your work, next to what’s been reported. Every work item has two figures: reported progress, which comes from its status, and evidence-supported progress, which comes from finished sub-items, ticked checklists, time logged against an estimate, finished blocking items and approvals. The gap between the two is what’s worth looking at. The Reality page in the sidebar lists your own work that’s blocked or has gone quiet.

Work item detailsEach work item’s Reality section sits on its detail page.Project realityRisk, forecast, critical path and workstreams for one project.The state of everythingEvery active project in one calculated table.

How Reality works#

It’s arithmetic, not AI. Every figure is calculated from data you already have, using fixed rules, and each screen lists the inputs so you can check it by hand.
No data isn’t zero. An item with nothing to measure shows “No evidence”, not 0%. A risk that can’t be scored says so, rather than showing a low number.
It never scores people. Figures are calculated for work items, projects and the organization. The only per-person view is your own list on My reality. No screen, export or response ranks or compares people.
It stays current on its own. Items are recomputed as work happens, and a full pass over everything runs once a day.

Who can use it#

Permissions

work_item.viewproject.vieworganization.manage

work_item.view shows Reality in the sidebar and the Reality section on work items you can view. project.view is needed for project reality and The state of everything. organization.manage is needed to change Reality settings or turn Reality off.

My reality#

Open Reality from the sidebar. The My reality page lists work items assigned to you that are blocked, stale or both. Each row shows:

The item’s key and title, which link to the work item.
A Blocked and/or Stale badge.
The divergence in points, for example -50 pts, when the item has an evidence figure.
Why the item is blocked, such as an unfinished predecessor (named by its key) or an overdue approval.

When nothing of yours is blocked or stale, the page says Nothing of yours is blocked or stale. The page can’t be pointed at anyone else’s work. Select The state of everything at the top to see every project.

Reality on a work item#

Every work item’s page has a Reality section (see Work item details). It shows:

Reported: Progress from the item’s status category: to do = 0%, in progress = 50%, done = 100%.
Evidence-supported: Progress backed by recorded signals, or No evidence if the item has no sub-items, checklist, estimate, blocking item or approval.
Divergence: Reported minus evidence, in points, next to your organization’s alert threshold. The card is highlighted when the gap is bigger than the threshold.
Why this cannot move: Shown for blocked items, with each reason.
Nothing has happened here for a while: Shown for stale items, with how long it’s been quiet and which business calendar counts the working days.
What the evidence figure is made of: Each signal that applies to the item, with its contribution, its weight and an explanation.
Recent activity on this item: The last status change, comment, attachment, time entry and linked meeting. These are recorded but don’t count towards progress; they decide whether the item is stale.
Signals this deployment does not collect: Evidence UnitX doesn’t have, such as linked commits or pull requests, named so you know it wasn’t considered.

How evidence is calculated#

The evidence figure is a weighted average of the signals that apply to the item. A signal with no data for the item is left out of the calculation entirely; it isn’t counted as zero.

Signal	Default weight	Applies when the item has
Sub-items completed	30	Sub-items
Time logged against estimate	25	An estimate
Checklist completed	20	A checklist
Blocking items finished	15	Items blocking it
Approval state	10	An approval

For example, an item with an estimate and a checklist, but no sub-items, blockers or approval, is measured only on time logged and checklist progress, weighted 25 to 20.

Blocked and stale#

Blocked means something recorded is in the item’s way, such as an unfinished item it depends on or an approval that’s past its deadline.
Stale means no activity of any kind has been recorded against the item for longer than your organization’s stale window (seven working days by default). Working days are counted against your business calendar, so weekends and configured holidays don’t count. A finished item is never stale.

Reality on dashboards#

When you add a dashboard widget, two Reality metrics are available: Reality — reported vs evidence and Reality — blocked and stale. They respect the widget’s filter in the same way as other widgets, so they never show items a list widget beside them would hide. If Reality is turned off, these widgets show nothing rather than zeros. See Dashboard widgets.

Reality settings#

Reality works from the day your organization is created, with the default settings. People who can manage the organization can adjust it at SettingsReality. For other organization-wide settings, see Organization settings.

Enabled: Turning this off stops all computation and hides every Reality screen and widget. Existing figures aren’t shown again until it’s turned back on.
Divergence alert (percentage points): 1–100, default 25. An item raises an alert once, when its gap first crosses this threshold, not on every recompute.
Stale after (working days): 1–365, default 7, counted against your business calendar.
Evidence weighting: A weight from 0 to 100 for each of the five signals. Weights are relative. A weight of 0 switches a signal off, which makes sense for an organization that doesn’t estimate, for example. The tab lists the shipped defaults.

Change the values you need
If nothing has been configured yet, the tab says everything shown is the shipped default.
Select Save changes
Or select Discard to throw away your edits. Changes to thresholds are recorded in the audit trail, because they move every figure in the organization.
Optionally select Recompute everything now
This runs a full pass straight away, which is useful right after changing a weighting. If today’s history snapshot has already been recorded, a manual pass updates the figures but doesn’t replace that day’s snapshot.

Note

If Reality is turned off, the Reality page says Operational reality is turned off, and the project and portfolio views show that nothing is being computed.

FAQ#

Why does an item say “No evidence” instead of 0%?

Because nothing recorded against it can measure progress. 0% would mean UnitX looked and found no progress; No evidence means there was nothing to look at. Add an estimate, a checklist or sub-items and a figure appears.

Does a comment count as progress?

No. Comments, attachments, logged hours and linked meetings show someone touched the item, not that it advanced. They do decide whether the item counts as stale.

My status says done but evidence is lower. Is something wrong?

Not necessarily. It may mean sub-items or checklist entries were left open, or time was logged beyond the estimate. The item’s Reality section lists each signal so you can see which one is holding the figure down.

Can my manager see a ranking of people?

No. Reality has no per-person scores, rankings or comparisons anywhere. My reality shows only your own work, and nobody can open it for someone else.

Still stuck? Search the docs with ⌘K, open Help inside UnitX, or contact support.