Managing reporting at scale in ActivityInfo

General
1

Hi all,
I would really appreciate learning from your experience regarding reporting in ActivityInfo.

In our case, we work with 42 Member Nations, each managing between 5 and 10 projects. For each project, they are required to complete fairly detailed reports, including both fixed information (e.g. project details) and recurring updates (e.g. results, narratives, attachments).

One of the challenges we face is making this process easier and more efficient for our Member Nations, especially when it comes to repeated data entry and ensuring consistency across reports.

We are currently considering the following approach:
Pre-populated reports
Automatically (ideally) generating reporting empty records in advance, so that Member Nations can simply open an existing report and complete only the variable fields (e.g. results, narrative updates, supporting documents).

This would include:

  • automatic creation of reporting records per country and per project (not sure it is possible)
  • pre-filled common fields (such as project name, timeline, donor, reporting period)

Before moving forward, I wanted to ask:

  • Have you implemented a similar approach in ActivityInfo?
  • If yes, how did you structure it in practice?
  • Do you use any automation (native or external) to generate reporting records?
  • Are there alternative approaches that worked better for you in reducing reporting burden and improving data quality?

Any examples or lessons learned would be highly appreciated.
I think i saw something for UNICEF Ukraine, but i maybe it was a wrong impression.
Thank you in advance!
Tonya, JA Europe

2

Hi @Tonya thanks for your post! That’s an interesting challenge you’re facing and indeed it sounds like some automation could help make this more efficient.

I wonder if @matteo.zagatti_wewor can share any tips here? I know he’s worked on automating certain workflows for some of his projects.

3

Hi @jeric , hi @Tonya ,

we’ve been implementing a few Automations using the native Automations in ActivityInfo as triggers (for example when a record is created or edited) and using the webhook as a trigger to Microsoft PowerAutomate cloud flows. We’ve been using this mostly to generate email or Teams notifications to users and in some cases to update a record back in ActivityInfo. The scenario Tonya is describing is a bit more challenging as they aim to create brand new records from scratch. I can share our experience in linking the 2 tools, so if you can support in the http call, specifically to generate the recordid, it’s something we would also be interested in.

Best,

Matteo

1 Like
4

Thanks for your inputs, @matteo.zagatti_wewor, and welcome to the Community!

Indeed if you are needing to create new records, you would have to supply the record ID. We have more info on IDs here: Understanding CUIDs in ActivityInfo - ActivityInfo: information management software for M&E, reporting and case management

@Tonya to help provide us provide more relevant guidance, perhaps you can share more about the expected workflow? Specifically, at what point should the the reporting records be created, and where should these be created? For example, are the reporting records added in a subform under a Projects form? And should the creation of the reporting records be triggered by the creation of a Project record?

Jeric