FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Are initiative creators supposed to add ourselves as an owner?

To see initiatives listed under 'My initiatives' you must be added as a member of the initiative.

When adding a member to an initiative you'll have to select their role in relation to the initiative. Below is a table that describes the different types of roles and responsibilities they typically include. Select the role that is most appropriate for the member you are adding.

Owners

Contributors

Reviewers

People responsible for keeping the Goal or Initiative on track

People contributing to the Goal or Initiative

People responsible for reviewing the progress of the Goal or Initiative

  • Overall accountability for the Goal or Initiative.

  • Final sign off on matters relating to the Goal or Initiative when needed.

  • Ensuring regular Progress Updates against Progress Indicators for their Goals or Initiatives on Ochre.

  • Ensuring all data related to their Goals or Initiatives (e.g. contact records, etc) is kept up to date on Ochre.

  • Part of the team directly working to deliver on the Goal or Initiative.

  • Supporting regular Progress Updates against Progress Indicators for Goals or Initiatives they are contributing to on Ochre.

  • Helping to make sure all data related to Goals or Initiatives (e.g. contact records, etc) they are contributing to is kept up to date on Ochre.

  • Supporting Goal or Initiative owners to set and regularly report against appropriate Progress Indicators on Ochre.

  • Ensuring Goal or Initiative owners keep all related data (e.g. contact records, etc) up to date on Ochre.

  • Regularly appraise Goal or Initiative performance and support initiative owners to overcome challenges

What are the different roles users can have?

Ochre provides us with a database to store information about the people we're working with. These records can be linked to initiatives (and goals). This is done by adding a member to an initiative. The roles of 'Owner', 'Contributor' and 'Reviewer' relate to type of role an initiative member can play (more about member roles).

Sometimes we'd like to give people we're working with access to Ochre. To do this we set them up with a user account that allows them to login and use the tool. Each user account has an associated level of access, i.e. what the user can see and do.

Example

Contact

User account

Initiative memberships

someone@example.com

Yes - 'Partner' level access

  • 'Owner' for Initiative 1

person@partner.com

No - Cannot login to Ochre

  • 'Contributor' for Initiative 1

  • 'Owner' for Initiative 2

In the above example the first contact (someone@...) can login to Ochre and has 'Partner' level access. This essentially means they can see and manage initiatives they are a member of, which in their case is 'Initiative 1'.

The second contact (person@...) does not have an Ochre login, so cannot use the tool. They have however been added as a member to a couple of initiatives, which allows us to build up a richer picture of the people we're working with.

This permissions table provides more detail on the different levels of access and what users can see and do.

Adding a new record for a person or adding an existing record as a member of an initiative does not automatically create a new user account or give that person access to Ochre.

How do progress indicators for an initiative relate to goals?

Initiatives can contribute to goals. To do so...

  1. Navigate to an initiative

  2. Click the 'Goals' tab

  3. Click on the 'Add goal' button

  4. Select the goal you would like and click 'Add contribution'

An initiatives progress indicators do not aggregate on goals the initiative is contributing to.

You can also add initiatives to goals via the 'Initiatives' tab of a goal.

What do user invitations sent by Ochre look like?

When I log in and go into 'my initiatives' there's nothing there

To see initiatives listed under 'My initiatives' you must be added as a member of the initiative.

Also see: Are initiative creators supposed to add ourselves as an owner?

When you're logging an interaction do you log yourself?

Yes, if you were involved in the interaction.

You will automatically be added to the list of participants on the new interaction page. If you weren't involved in the interaction you will need to remove yourself.

Where can we see one view on all activity on an initiative - interactions, progress, etc?

  1. Navigate to the initiative you'd like to view

  2. Click the 'Activity' tab

At the moment the 'Activity' tab is for change logging purposes and the 'Interactions' and 'Progress' tabs may present a more user friendly view of data.

Who will support team members with drafting good progress indicators?

Currently we expect this to be one of the responsibilities of Goal and Initiative reviewers.

Also see: Are initiative creators supposed to add ourselves as an owner?

We are still designing how Goal and Initiative reviewers will be monitored and supported to fulfil their role.

Will Ochre replace our use of Airtable/Sheets/etc?

In some cases yes, but in mostly probably not.

Some Airtables like the projects list and contracts list will be probably be fully replaced.

Other Airtables used for programme mamangement (eg. Explore, Design Hops, EDA) which store programme-specific data like participation in activities, progress on tasks etc. will probably stay. Airtable is better for this sort of data because it's more flexible (the programme lead can easily add/remove columns).

Ochre is primarily for higher-level stuff like how Catalyst initiatives fit together, and information that is shared, like the names of the people and organisations that we are interacting with. Within Ochre you will be able to see a list of all the ways that someone has interacted with Catalyst, but some of the details of that interaction may be stored elsewhere, so you'd be pointed to the relevant Airtable.

We are setting up unique identifiers for each person, organisation, and initiative, which you can store in your Airtable, spreadsheet etc. These will allow people to be sure that 'DEV' in one spreadsheet and 'The Developer Society' in another both correspond to the same Ochre record.

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