Indicators help you monitor the progress of your targets, giving you a great way to visually track the progress of your project. This guide will help you create and manage indicators for your project.
Select the appropriate project by either clicking on
Projects or the project name from the
Performance report section.
To access your indicators, click on
By time. You will have the option to look at
Current Targets, Past Targets and
Future targets.
Creating Indicators
There are two types of indicators available; Measured and Evidenced.
Measured indicators – These indicators provide certain quantifiable metrics that measure the performance of your project in real time. Targets can then be set against this, giving you a visual depiction of how your project is performing.
Evidenced indicators – 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
To add a new indicator, click on
By indicator within a project. On this page, all existing indicators will be listed under the
Measured Indicators and
Evidenced Indicators sections. Within the
Tools section on the right of the page, you have the option to either
Add a new measured indicator or
Add a new evidenced indicator.
Measured Indicators
Using the instructions above, click on the Add a new Measured Indicator from the Tools section. This will take you to the Add Measured Indicator page, where you can input the name of the indicator and select the relevant fields.
Indicator Type - Select one of the indicator types from the drop down menu to choose the kind of targets that you would like to track. A short description for each of the different indicator types can be found below:
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Contact hours: This refers to the number of hours that an attendee spends in a session. For example: If a session lasts 2 hours and five people attend, that is 10 contact hours.
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Number of accreditations gained: This refers the number of accreditations gained by participants on one or more activity, i.e. Level 1 FA Course.
•
Number of attendances: This refers to the number of times participants have attended sessions and can include filtered details such as age and ethnicity.
•
Number of attendances on headcount sessions: This refers to the number of times participants have attended headcount sessions.
•
Number of hours delivered: This refers to the number of hours an activity has been delivered for.
•
Number of referrals from body: This refers to the number of referred participants on your project from a particular external body.
•
Number of referrals from programme: This refers to the number of referrals from an internal programme, to another programme.
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Number of referrals to body: This refers to how many participants from your project have been referred to an external body.
•
Number of referrals to programme: This refers to the number of referrals to your programme from an internal source.
•
Number of sessions delivered: This refers to the number of sessions that have been delivered on one or more activities within your project.
•
Number of teams: This refers to the number of teams created within your project.
•
Number of unique attendees: This refers to the number of individuals that are attending your activities. If the same person has attended 6 of your sessions, they will still only be counted as one unique attendee.
Below is an example of how you may want to set up an indicator that is measuring the number of unique attendees that have attended a specific activity.
Adding a new Target
Once you have created an indicator, you will need to give it a target. This can either be done when creating the indicator, by clicking
SAVE AND ADD TARGET as shown on the screenshot above, or at a later date.
Note: A measured indicator will not show on any of your dashboards until you have given it a target.
To do this at a later date, go into your project and click on
By Indicator.
Here you will see all your Measured Indicators listed. You can then add targets to the
Measured Indicators.
You can always add more than one target to an indicator, e.g. you might have a target for this calendar year and then next.
Measured Indicators - Your Attendee Data Fields
For Indicator types that track information around participants, you have the option to add filters to define the criteria for an indicator.
As mentioned in the Adding Indicator section, you now have the option to include any applicable fields from your registration form. These can be fields created by yourselves found under
Your Attendee Data Fields or fields linked to your
Facilitating Organisation.
As long as these fields are quantifiable, they can be added as a Filter for relevant measured indicators.
Evidenced Indicators
Evidenced indicators are an excellent way to measure your own qualitative data. To add a new one, click Add a new Evidenced Indicator from the Tools section on the By indicator page.
While you would add targets to your measured indicators, you will need to add Deliverables to your evidenced indicators for them to show up on your dashboard and be monitored. This can either be done when creating the Evidenced Indicator by clicking SAVE AND ADD DELIVERABLE or at a later time.
To do this at a later date, go into your project and click on the By Indicator tab. Scroll down to find the relevant Evidenced Indicator and click Add deliverable.
A deliverable is what you want to achieve within the project and what you would like to evidence using the indicator that you have set up. You will also need to set start and end dates for your deliverable to say when you want it to be achieved by.
To show that you are achieving the deliverables that you have set, you may want to upload Media to showcase what is happening. Media could be any electronic file, from a Microsoft Word document to a YouTube video link. For more information on Media please refer to the Adding Media guide.
As well as using media to show that you are achieving your deliverables, you can also use an achievement rating to say whether or not you are on track, as shown in the
Adding a new target section.
Once you have the
Intended evidence to demonstrate you have achieved your deliverables, you can tick the
Done box.
You will then be presented with the message below. Clicking YES, THIS IS COMPLETE will mark the indicator as completed.
Plan (tab)
The Plan view is a great way to manage and visualise your Measured and Evidenced Indicators across different time periods, making it easy to identify targets and deliverables that have been achieved.
Creating Time Periods
Within your project, click on
Plan followed by
Time Period. Any Time periods previously created will appear on this page.
To create a new Time period click
ADD A TIME PERIOD.
Once you have defined your Time period, you can either click CREATE TIME PERIOD ONLY or CREATE TIME PERIOD WITH DELIVERABLE which will also add existing deliverables to your new Time period.
Plan - Measured Indicators
Plan - Evidenced Indicators
To mark a deliverable card as complete, click on Done followed by YES, THIS IS COMPLETE.
Deleting Indicators, Targets and Deliverables
Indicators can only be deleted when there is no target attached.
To delete an Indicator, go into your Project and click on
By Indicator.
Here you will see all your indicators listed. If an indicator has no target attached the option to
Delete will be shown as below:
If this option is not shown this means a
Target or
Deliverable has been added to this Indicator.
To delete a
Target or
Deliverable:
• Go to
By Indicator
• Find your relevant
Indicator
• Make sure you have clicked on the
+ to see all associated
Targets/Deliverables with your
Indicator
• Next to your target or deliverable will be the option to
Delete
Once these have been deleted you will then have the option to delete your indicator if required.
Targets, Deliverables and
Indicators can also be deleted via the
Plan tab.
Downloading Indicators
If you would like to look at your data relating to Measured and Evidenced Indicators in further detail, you can download all the information into an Excel spreadsheet. From the By time page, click on either Download Measured Indicators or Download Evidenced Indicators under the Tools section.
Click here for more information on how you can create graphs and charts from your download.
Facilitating Organisations - Indicators
In Upshot there are two platforms - one for facilitating organisations, often used by funders, and another for delivery organisation accounts, where the attendee and session information is inputted. Facilitating Organisations accounts can be thought of as an over-arching account linked to a number Delivery Organisation accounts. If applicable, information feeds through from the Delivery Organisation level to the higher Facilitating Organisation level for reporting purposes. However, this is not a necessity and delivery organisation accounts are not always linked to a facilitating organisation account.
Facilitating Organisations can find Measured Indicators a helpful way to track the work delivered by different projects associated with their programmes.
Firstly Facilitating Organisations can view the performance of both Measured and Evidenced indicators set up directly within associated delivery accounts. Alongside this, Facilitating Organisations can create Measured Indicators of their own in their own account that look across all associated Projects or against a specific Activity Type.
Webinar
As part of the Upshot Community Webinar series in 2020 a thirty minute webinar was delivered called Monitoring your impact: Upshot Reporting 2 and this can be seen below:
Adding a deliverable to your evidenced indicator defines what you want to achieve. This then becomes the task that needs to be completed or evidence that needs to be provided to then mark this indicator as complete.
Evidenced Indicators:
These are often qualitative targets to evidence the impact of a project. You can then set deliverables 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
For more information please refer to the short video
here.
Facilitating Organisation:
In Upshot there are two platforms - one for facilitating organisations, often used by funders, and another for delivery organisation accounts, where the attendee and session information is inputted. Facilitating Organisations accounts can be thought of as an over-arching account linked to a number Delivery Organisation accounts. If applicable, information feeds through from the Delivery Organisation level to the higher Facilitating Organisation level for reporting purposes. However, this isn't a necessity and delivery organisation accounts are not always linked to a facilitating organisation account.
LSOA IMD:
Index of multiple deprivation for Lower-layer Super Output Areas. The lower the percentage, the more deprived the area. For example, 0 - 20% will show attendees in the 20% most deprived Areas. Data only available for England at present.
Measured indicator:
These provide certain quantifiable metrics that measure the performance of your project in real time. Targets can then be set against this, giving you a visual depiction of how your project is performing.
For more information please refer to the short video
here.
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While you would add targets to your measured indicators, you will need to add Deliverables to your evidenced indicators for them to show up on your dashboard and be monitored. This can either be done when creating the Evidenced Indicator by clicking SAVE AND ADD DELIVERABLE or at a later time. 
Plan - Evidenced Indicators 
