Sessions - Complete Guide

Once you have created an Activity, you are ready to start adding Sessions.

Upshot defines a session as an individual occurrence of a specific activity, for example - an activity may be entitled ‘Cover letter writing’ and a session will be added for each individual time ‘Cover Letter Writing’ takes place. This step by step guide will explain how to add, view and edit sessions.

Adding Sessions
Session details
Save and Add Register
Creating Multiple Sessions
Recurring Sessions
Viewing, Editing and Deleting Sessions
Calendar
Sessions Abandoned
Key Terms

Adding Sessions

As shown in the Activities guide, you can immediately add a session once you have created an activity by selecting the SAVE AND ADD SESSION button. However, you can also add sessions at any time from the Activities page. This can be directly accessed by clicking Activities from within a project.

Sessions are added to an activity using the Add sessions button. This button will direct you to the Add sessions form.

Session Details

It is important to note that all required fields are indicated by a red asterix *. You will not be able to create a session without completing the required fields.

1. Enter the date, time and duration of the session: A date can easily be entered by clicking in the Date field and using the calendar function. Alternatively, you can type the date in a dd/mm/yyyy format.

The Time field will automatically begin to predict the time you are typing and present a drop down. The time field is in a 24-hour format and you must always use a colon to separate the hour and minutes (e.g. 10:15). N.B. The drop-down times are merely suggestions – it is possible to specify time to the minute, not just the quarter hour. All you need to do is type out your preferred time in full.

Enter the number of hours and minutes your session lasted for in the Duration boxes.

2.Title (Optional): Enter a session title e.g. Cricket is the activity being delivered but the title of the specific session is Bowling.

3. Location: Select the location where this session will take place from the drop down list of options.

Note: New locations can be created by Project manager and System admin users, by going to 'Admin > Add Location' , more about this here .

4. Facility: If the location has been created using Sport England’s Active Places Database, you will have the option to select the specific facility e.g. Athletics track.

5. Type: Register or Head count

Register: This type is a traditional register, allowing you to record the names of all the attendees at a session. It also allows you to define the attendee type (e.g. participant, session leader, support worker etc.), whether the attendees have paid for the session, whether they volunteered and how they volunteered. This extra information enhances your reporting capability.

Head Count: These registers only allow you to state the number of people that attended a session. You are not able to record who attended. This type is usually used when a large number of people attend a session and you are unable to record all their names. Head count sessions allow you to provide a Male/Female split and an age range. However, they restrict your reporting ability, as you cannot identify who has attended and whether the same people have attended previous or future sessions. For the full guide on Head Counts please click here.

6. Registrar: Select the session registrar of the sessions. This is the person who will record the register, for example a coach or session leader.

7. Add tags: Add any tags that will help you report or filter sessions. Tags can be separated by a comma. For instance, you could tag a basketball session with the different skills you covered such as dribbling, passing and/or shooting. More information about 'Tags' can be found here.

8. Add session information: You can input additional information for your attendees e.g. logistics, directions, etc if your calendar is shared externally. Alternatively use this to provide session leaders with additional information for the session ahead, such as what equipment is needed.

9. Copy: You can copy sessions, this allows you to add lots of regular sessions at once. See the Creating multiple sessions section below.

10. Add recurring sessions: You can create recurring sessions, this allows you to add as many sessions as you would like at specific intervals. See the Recurring sessions section below.

11. Create registers too: You can populate your register for the session you are adding from existing registers on your account. Ticking this box produces two drop down menu’s.

The first box asks you which activity from within the project you would like to copy a register from.

The second asks you to define which particular session you would like to copy that register from. Alternatively, you have the option copy from All of them.

Save and Add Register

When creating a single session, you get the option at the bottom of the page to Save and Add Register.

This takes you straight through to your Register page for this session. From here you can add all your attendees that come to your session, by either using the search bar to find existing attendees or by creating new attendees.

At the end, do not forget to either choose to Save Draft register or Submit the register.

Creating Multiple Sessions

When adding sessions you have the option to create multiple sessions for that given activity. This can be useful if you know you have regular sessions and want to create a block of them ahead of time, for example a school term or season.

You have two options when adding multiple sessions, (1) Add another blank session (2) Copy the previous session.

If you click on the Add another button a new blank session form will appear directly below the previous one.

You then complete all of the fields again. This is useful for creating different sessions for the same activity, for example one-off sessions or if they take place at a different time or location.

However, if you have recurring sessions that take place at the same time and day each week you can easily use the Copy button to create identical sessions.

You will then need to alter the relevant details, such as the date. The quick links below the date field can be used to copy sessions on a daily, weekly or bi-weekly basis. Repeat the copying process to add a batch of sessions, such as for a school term or six-week programme.

Once you have created all of the sessions you want, you must click Save. Confirmation will appear at the top of the page, where you should see the following message:

Recurring Sessions

When adding sessions on to the system it is now possible to make these sessions recurring on a daily/weekly/fortnightly/monthly basis for an extended period of time.

To use this function, add a session as you normally would and follow the details below:

Viewing, Editing and Deleting Sessions

Viewing & Editing Sessions

To view the sessions you have added you will need to click on the Sessions List.

You will find that all your sessions are filtered into four views: Last four weeks, Next four weeks, All and Calendar. If you cannot see the sessions you have just added it may be because you need to change the view.

On the right-hand side of the screen you can filter the list of sessions by a variety of options, including by Activity, Locations, Register status, Session registrar, Tags and Time period.

You can add or edit registers from this page.

You can also edit a session at any time from the list by clicking on Edit session.

Editing a session allows users to make changes to things such as the date, time and duration of the session.

Whilst this page also presents the ability to move the session and associated details, such as register or head count, and any session notes to a different Activity within the same Project. Note, any Media or Timeline Events associated to the original session would need to have their associations amended manually.

Editing Sessions can be done on mass via the Edit draft sessions page, accessible via the Activities tab.

If a register / head count has not been added or submitted against a session you will be presented with the option to Delete session via the Sessions: List as shown above, or within the session register / head count page itself.

Note: If a register / head count has been added, this must be 'removed' first if you want to delete the session. For 'Register' sessions more about this can be found here. For more about deleting 'Head Count' sessions please refer to this guide.

You can also delete multiple sessions at a time by going to Edit Draft Sessions next to your Activity name.

From here you can remove multiple sessions (with no registers or head counts submitted) at once.

This can either be done for individual sessions by ticking the Remove? tick box and then clicking Save.

Alternatively, users can select one of the two options near the top of the screen.

1. To check all the 'Remove?' tick boxes at once, users can click on the Remove? > All button on the left-hand side. This can be helpful if users have a long list of sessions they would like to remove, and they can then just untick the few they want to keep before hitting Save at the bottom.

2. If all sessions need to be removed and none need to be kept, clicking the REMOVE ALL button in red on the right-hand side will be the quickest way to do this. Selecting this button brings up a confirmation message for users confirming they want to remove all the sessions listed.

Calendar

Through your Sessions List you can also choose to view all sessions using the Calendar, and by clicking on a session you can view the session details.

Clicking on the Directions will lead to Google Maps.

When creating or editing existing sessions users can also choose to Add session information. This can be used to provide additional details for your attendees/session leaders on things such as logistics or directions, this can then be seen by potential participants if the calendar is shared externally.

To ensure the sessions are shown on the public facing version of the calendar, please ensure the box below is ticked when creating or editing a session.

If you want to share a live link to this calendar publicly, you can copy the link from the Tools section in the calendar view highlighted above. This can enable potential participants to know upcoming sessions taking place. The view of the calendar will be external from Upshot.

Sessions Abandoned

The Sessions abandoned feature enables you to report on the sessions that have been scheduled but may not have taken place. For example, an Outdoor Fitness session may have been scheduled but could not be delivered due to adverse weather conditions.

To mark a session as abandoned, locate the relevant session from the Sessions List and click Edit session. There are two abandoned session options to choose from; Sessions abandoned and counted and sessions abandoned and not counted.

More about the choices when abandoning sessions and how to report on these can be found here.

Session Tags

An optional feature when adding or editing sessions is to add 'Tags'.

These can be useful in instances when you want to categorize or identify different types of sessions, or elements of sessions, within the same activity.

More detail can be found in the Session Tags guide.

Next Step

The next step is to add registers to your sessions. For more information on adding registers please refer to the Registers guide.

Key Terms

Activities:

These are the different things you deliver within each project such as classes, workshops, events, forums, groups, etc. These are often the physical outputs in your programme.

Sessions:

These are individual occurrences of an activity. You specify the date, time, duration and location of each session.

Registers:

Registers are added to each session so you can record attendance. You can choose to record the names of people that attend or use a head count register.