Projects

Projects are ways of dividing up the work you deliver as an organisation. They can contain their own key performance indicators and Activities. Access to projects can be restricted by each Upshot User.

Different organisations will have a different number of projects in Upshot, and these might not always reflect the way that the organisation defines a project outside of Upshot. Many organisations work out of just one single project, but some use multiple projects.

During the on-boarding process, the organisation and the Upshot team work together to understand how many projects will be needed for the most effective and efficient use of Upshot, however this can change over time. If you do need to add new projects into Upshot, please contact support@upshot.org.uk as the process of adding new projects needs to be completed by the Upshot team.

Please note: part of our pricing structure includes the number of projects an organisation is using, therefore in some cases adding new projects can increase the cost of an Upshot licence.

In some cases, instead of creating an entirely new project, Activity Groups can be used to separate groups of activities in a project, meaning that this is an option to keep the licence cost from increasing, while still being able to easily separate activities into “folders” of work.

• Inside an Upshot Project
• Adding a New Project
• Extending Project Dates
• Bringing Projects to a close
• Granting or Removing User access to a Project
• Reporting on a Project
• Key Terms

Inside an Upshot project

You can access your organisation’s project(s) by going to the Projects tab in the green toolbar and clicking on the relevant project, or by clicking on the project name from the home page dashboard.

Projects will contain a number of different Activities, and this number is technically unlimited. An activity is a specific strand of delivery, for example a project might be “Employment & Community Wellbeing” and then the activities might be “Arts and Crafts” and “Cooking” and “CV Writing Classes”.

Once inside a project, users can use the tabs under the project name to navigate around the project itself.

Users will engage most often with the Activities, List and Grid tabs, as these are used for inputting data around the different sessions that have taken place and marking the attendance at these sessions.

Several of these tabs are related to creating and viewing Indicators associated with this project. Indicators are optional, and can be set up to track key criteria. The By time, By Indicator and Plan tab are relevant here.

More detail on each of the tabs can be found below:

• By time – Allows users to look at Measured and Evidenced Indicators performance against their targets. Users have the ability to view Current, Past and Future targets.
• By outcome – Allows users to report by specific Outcomes in relation to the project. Providing statistical information on activities from the project contributing to the outcome, as well as any indicators linked to the outcome.
• By indicator – Gives users a full breakdown of the detail of each existing indicator and how they have performed against target. This is also where most users go to create new indicators, or add new targets to existing indicators.
• List – Lists out all the sessions within a specific project for the user. This can then be managed by using the time tabs and/or the filter options on the right-hand side. More about this here.
• Grid (not available for Head Counts) – This presents the user with a matrix visual of sessions and registers within a specific activity where each column represents a session and each row represents an attendee. More about this here.
• Activities – A list of all the activities that sit within the project. These are the different strands of work that the project actually delivers. Users could then go on to add sessions (i.e. date and time the activity takes place) and finally a Register or Head Count to indicate attendance at a session.
• Plan – A different way to view all of your indicators together, and your performance against these across different date ranges. More on this here.
• General – You can view all the general information about the project, such as the project dates, activity types and outcomes associated to it. System Admins can also change the users that have access to this project, as well as their level of access from this page.

Adding a New Project

Adding a new project primarily makes sense when what you are adding is a separate piece of delivery, that should not be reported on as part of any of your existing projects.

In order to add a new project you will need to get in touch with support@upshot.org.uk and provide the following information:

• Project name
• Project start and end date – if the project doesn’t have a specific end date we will set it to the end date of your current licence and then extend the project if you decide to renew your licence
• A list of the users from your account that need access – if it is all users you can just say “all users” rather than listing everyone out.

Once this information has been provided, one of the Upshot team will create the project, and let you know once this has been done and it is ready for you to start using.

Note: Part of our pricing structure includes the number of projects an organisation is using, therefore in some cases adding new projects can increase the cost of an Upshot licence.

In some cases, instead of creating an entirely new project, Activity Groups can be used to separate groups of activities in a project, meaning that this is an option to keep the licence cost from increasing, while still being able to easily separate activities into 'folders' of work.

Extending Project Dates

All projects have an 'end date' specified on the Upshot system. This is usually aligned with the end date of an organisations current Upshot licence but can be extended further or specified to a certain date if needs be.

Users will not be able to enter sessions that are delivered beyond the end date of the project.

In order to extend the dates for an existing project you will need to get in touch with support@upshot.org.uk to request one of the Upshot team to do this for you.

Bringing a Project to a close

Some organisations may deliver projects that run for a specified period of time. Whilst there is no harm in keeping the project 'open' , it may be preferable to bring a project to a close.

Bringing the project to a close involves an Upshot team member bringing forward the closing date of the project.

This removes the project from the initial Homepage when users login and also prevents users from accidentally continuing to enter data into the old project.

Once a project has come to a close users can still continue to report on this fully and access all the individual session details if needed.

Granting or Removing User access to a Project

User access is defined at the Project level. Having access to a project allows users to report on the project, view the different sessions that are taking place as well as add new data to to the project.

A user with the System Admin role will be able to grant or remove other users access to a particular project. This can be done via the 'General' tab within a project, or alternatively via Admin > Show all users and clicking update on the relevant user. More on this here.

Users can hold the Project Manager or Session Registrar roles in relation to a project.

The Project Manager role will allow the user to add brand new activities or add new sessions to existing activities. Whilst the Session Registrar role is needed to be able to submit a register or head count in relation to a session.

Often the same user needs to complete both tasks, so they will need to hold both the Project Manager and Session Registrar roles for a project.

Reporting on a Project

As mentioned previously users can choose to set up Measured and Evidenced Indicators in relation to a project. This can be helpful when there are clearly defined targets for a project, particularly, in the case of Measured Indicators, around attendance.

Many organisations will choose to report on their project using the other tools available within the system, and the Reports Explained guide may prove helpful here.

For some specific examples, users may find the following helpful:

• Statistics Report - to report on the big headline numbers in relation to their project. E.g. number of unique attendees, attendances, sessions delivered and contact hours. This can also be broken down by a single criteria, such as the activities within the project or a demographic detail of the attendees that have taken part (e.g. Gender).
• People Report - this report allows users to break down their database of attendees in different ways and answer more complex queries. One of the key criteria available on this report is around attendance. Users can apply multiple filters on this report and the results will return the name and number of individuals that meet this criteria. For example this report would be helpful to use to understand a query such as the 'Number of Girls of a certain age, and from a certain Constituency, that have attended the Project, or a specific activity within it.
• Attendance Report - this report exports all the attendance information in relation to a session, that can be helpful in some instances to query further within the spreadsheet.
• Timeline Events Report - to report against Timeline Events that have been associated to the project.

Key Terms

Evidenced Indicator:

These are often qualitative targets to evidence the impact of a project. You can then set deliverable targets to let you know when this has been achieved e.g. Write a magazine article about the work you have delivered. These can also be quantitative targets.