Communicating with your Attendees via Upshot

On Upshot, there are a few features in the system that could be considered attendee facing, such as Surveys, Emails or the Attendee sign-up form.

This resource looks at all of these features and how the attendee will experience them.

Attendee sign-up form
Surveys
Emails
Text messaging tools
Public Calendar
Key Terms

The Attendee sign-up form is an external registration form which allows attendees to register themselves onto your Upshot database. Multiple forms can be created and sent out via a public form URL or embedded into your website.

This would be then be the first place that any attendee (or potential attendee) will engage with the system.

System Admins have the ability to control what is displayed on your organisations Attendee Sign-up Forms. Choosing whether specific questions are required or optional, as well as any help text accompanying a question. They can also decide on the order and create sections within the form.

It is important to think about this to ensure the form is as attendee friendly as possible.

System Admins also have the ability to create a custom message that appears on screen upon submission of the form as well as an optional automated email that can be sent out.

There is the option to set a specific “reply to” email within Upshot, so that those potential attendees can get directly in touch if they have any questions.

Surveys

There are 3 different survey types in Upshot, standard, anonymous and public. The choice of survey type will affect how your survey can be completed, whether it’s attached to Upshot attendee profiles and whether those attendees can be identified via the results.

In terms of the way the attendee will engage with each survey, there isn’t much difference between the types other than it being possible to email Standard and Anonymous surveys directly to the attendee through Upshot’s survey tool provided they have given their consent and have a valid email address on their profile.

The difference here is that for Public surveys a URL (or link) is generated and this can be distributed as desired. This has the advantage of being able to interact with those that are not already attendees on your Upshot account. Public surveys are often used to create 'Expression of Interest' forms, or for public research.

For Standard and Anonymous surveys sent directly to the attendee they will have the option within the email received to 'unsubscribe' from surveys. This will also be reflected via the permissions on their attendee profile.

If your organisation collects survey responses using paper forms and hand-ins, you are still able to upload these results manually into Upshot, allowing varying levels of engagement with attendees.

Finally, survey responses can also be submitted by your Upshot users via the Upshot Mobile App .

More information about creating and sending surveys can be found in the resources here.

Emails

Emails can be sent from Upshot to your attendees and other Upshot users. Whilst the email tool on Upshot is not a two-way communication, it can provide a quick way of notifying individuals on your account, for things such as upcoming changes to session delivery.

The attendee will have to have indicated consent for them to be able to receive emails from you through the system as well as a valid email address. Attendees will also have the option to 'unsubscribe' at the bottom of all emails received.

More information about the email function can be found here.

Text messaging tools

SMS messaging is not currently available directly within Upshot for sending text messages to your attendees.

However, there are a number of tools dedicated to sending mass text messages which work well with Upshot data exported from the People Report.

For a guide on how Upshot data could be used with an external tool called ClickSend to send text messages to your attendees, please see here.

Public Calendar

The calendar view can either be accessed by going to the projects tab and then clicking directly into the calendar view, or from within a project in the 'Sessions List' you can choose to view all sessions using the calendar.

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. This can enable potential participants to know upcoming sessions taking place. The view of the calendar will be external from Upshot, and can be embedded in a website, or linked to on social media platforms.

Attendees will be able to see:

Activity name (and activity group if used)
Session title
Session location
Session duration

If the Eventbrite integration is being used, then attendees will also be able to sign-up directly to the session from the calendar via a link in the additional information section.

More information about the calendar can be found at the links below:

Key Terms

Attendee:

This is a participant, someone who accesses your services. You track your work with attendees through session registers, timeline events, media and surveys.

Attendee sign-up form:

This is an external registration form, which can be shared via a public form URL or by embedding on your own website. This allows attendees to register themselves onto your database. The attendees get no access to the Upshot account.

For more information on this please refer to the External Attendee sign-up form guide or view the short video here.

Calendar:

Organisations can choose to view a calendar of activity taking place within their organisation. This can also be shared externally to make potential participants aware of upcoming sessions that may be of interest. This can be across projects or within a single project. More information can be found via the Projects Calendar or the Sessions Calendar.

Emails:

Emails can be sent from Upshot to your attendees and other Upshot users. Whilst the email tool on Upshot is not a two way communication, it can provide a quick way of notifying individuals on your account, for things such as upcoming changes to session delivery.

For the full guide around Emails please click here.

Surveys:

Surveys can be created on the system and could include a onetime evaluation form or a questionnaire that is completed at various points in time by individuals to measure changes in their responses.

There are three different types of surveys that can be created on the system – Standard, Anonymous and Public.

Standard and Anonymous surveys are assigned to individual profiles. These can then be sent out to individuals via email or they can be completed by a system user on the individual’s behalf if they have a paper copy in front of them. A third option can be for a user to bring up the Survey App while at a session and complete with participants.

Public surveys generate a URL link and are not attached to individual Upshot profiles. The URL link can be shared far and wide allowing organisations to gain feedback from the wider community.

For more information on this please refer to the Creating Surveys, Sending and Completing Surveys and Comparing Surveys guides or see the short video here.