Create and Connect Indicator Definitions
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Create an indicator definition.
- Assign an indicator definition to an outcome.
- Explain how to connect an indicator definition to a program.
Understand Indicators
In the practice of impact management, indicators help you measure the results of your work and progress toward your desired outcomes. With indicators, you turn an abstract outcome into a concrete plan for measurement. However, choosing indicators can get complicated: the best indicator isn’t always apparent, and many different indicators can be used to measure the same outcome. The challenge is selecting what’s most meaningful for your organization. Check out the Impact Management Tactics and Practices module for advice on selecting indicators.
Generally, and in Outcome Management, there are two kinds of indicators.
- Program indicators—also called outputs—measure progress within a program or activity. For example, the number of people enrolled in a program.
- Outcome indicators measure progress toward your desired outcomes. For example, the average number of a participant’s missed or skipped meals is an indicator of food security. We explore this example later in this unit.
Any organization usually has both kinds of indicators. Well-chosen indicators enable an organization to focus its resources where they’re most effective, improve its offerings, and measure the effectiveness of its activities. Another benefit of clearly defined indicators is that an organization’s fundraising and development team can easily understand what’s measured. That understanding is helpful when crafting proposals for donors, foundations, and other stakeholders.
In Outcome Management, the Indicator Definition object describes both outputs and outcome indicators. Indicator Definition records are connected to a program or outcome using the Indicator Assignment object.
Allie at HNMI already has her Increase High Food Security outcome tied to her Food Distribution program. Now she must create a measurable indicator definition and assign it to the outcome.
In this unit, you follow along as she creates an indicator definition and related records to track the number of average meals participants miss each week, which is one way to measure food security.
Create a Unit of Measure
Before you create an indicator definition, however, you define another element: the unit of measure.
Unit of measure records exist in Outcome Management and other Salesforce feature sets to establish consistent measurement across objects. If you need a particular unit of measure in your Salesforce org and can’t find it, align with your team before adding that unit of measure. It’s important to maintain a clear list of units of measurement to avoid confusion and mistakes. For example, if one person tracks results in hours and another person tracks results in minutes, you can’t compare these values easily.
Fortunately, Allie’s unit of measure—meals—exists in her Salesforce org. It also exists in your trial org.
Create an Indicator Definition
Allie has everything to create her indicator definition. Here’s how she creates it.
- Select Indicator Definitions from the navigation menu.
- Click
and then New.
- Specify these details:
- Name:
Average Weekly Missed Meals
- Status: Active
- Unit of Measure: Meals
- Description:
Participant-reported average number of meals skipped, missed, or made smaller each week because there wasn't enough money for food.
- Name:
- Save your work.
You can now review your indicator definition record.
Indicator definitions are immensely important in Outcome Management. They explain what you are measuring and possibly why you’re measuring it. Always include a detailed description of the indicator definition that helps anyone using Outcome Management to understand what an indicator represents. For example, Allie includes details in the description drawn directly from a question the team at HNMI asks program participants.
Connect an Indicator to an Outcome with an Indicator Assignment
With the indicator definition in place, it’s time to assign it to a related outcome record.
- On the Average Weekly Missed Meals indicator definition record, click the Related tab.
- In the Indicator Assignments related list, click New.
- Specify these details:
- Name:
Average Weekly Missed Meals - Increase High Food Security
- Intended Direction: Decrease
- Indicator Assignment Type: Outcome
- Status: Active
- Outcome: Increase High Food Security
- Name:
- Save your work.
Allie named her indicator assignment with the name of the outcome and indicator definition she connected. This helps her team track these relationships as more indicator assignments are created in the system. And she left the Program field empty because she selected an Indicator Assignment Type value of Outcome.
Connect an Indicator to a Program to Capture Outputs
Allie created an indicator assignment for an outcome indicator, but remember that there’s another type of indicator: program indicators, also called outputs.
Outputs track what a program produces. For example, Allie and HNMI use outputs that track the number of people served in their food programs, the kilograms of food distributed, and the completion rate of nutrition education programs.
To track these outputs in Outcome Management, Allie can create an indicator definition and an indicator assignment record with an Indicator Assignment Type value of Program. Skip that for now, though. It’s time to move on to Allie’s next task: Setting up indicator performance periods to define when indicators are measured.