Assign a Geography to an Activity

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Assign Geographies to an Activity

All indicator data in DevResults is associated with a geographic place, and all indicators in DevResults have exactly one geographic disaggregation, like location, country, region, or world. DevResults distinguishes between two types of geographies:

  • Locations: Specific points on a map with GPS coordinates such as cities, hospitals, and schools
  • Administrative Divisions: Shapes or areas such as districts, countries, and multi-national regions

Activities need to be assigned to the geographic places where they report direct entry data. 

  • If an activity reports on indicators disaggregated by location, locations must be assigned to the activity.
  • If an activity reports on indicators disaggregated by an administrative division, that type of administrative division must be assigned to the activity. For example, if an activity reports on an indicator with a geographic disaggregation of "district", one or more districts must be assigned to that activity. (Note: The whole country or whole world is assigned by default.)
An activity will not be able to report direct entry indicator data unless it is assigned to geographies for its indicators' geographic disaggregations. (Data table indicators allow for implicit geographic assignments to be made through data table records alone, but it's still a good practice to add geography assignments to the activity.)

To assign geographies to an activity, go to Program Info > Activities and select your activity from the index. Then go to that activity's Geography tab. Within the geography tab, you will see tabs for each geographic level in your DevResults site. 

For each geographic level, a note shows how many indicators are disaggregated by that geographic level. Click on View indicators to see a pop-up of the list. 

For each level with indicators, click the drop-down and select the geography you want to assign. Typing a few characters will narrow the list for you.

The newly assigned geography will now appear in the list of geographies for that activity, and will be included in data entry templates for direct entry indicators. Assign as many geographies as needed.

Assign Geographies to Activities using an Excel Template

DevResults also offers tools to assign geographies to activities using an Excel template. There are two versions: One template for a single activity, and one template for multiple activities at the same time. 

How to import assignments of geographies to a single activity

On the activity's geography tab, click Export Mappings download a template.  

The template comes with a tab for each geographic level and built-in drop-downs for each geographic place in the site. Fill it out and re-import it using the Import Mappings button.

How to import assignments of geographies to multiple activities

To import geography assignments for multiple activities in one template, go to the Tools > Bulk Imports page. In the Activity Geography Mappings section, download a blank template. 

Here's an example of a template for activity geography mappings. There's a tab for each level: Region, prefecture, and location. (Your site might have different levels). It shows three activities being assigned to a few regions each, with built-in dropdowns for the activities and geographies in the site.

Use the Import Activity Geography Mappings button to import the template. 

Advanced Geography Settings

If an activity's indicators vary over time, or if the geographic scope of the activity varies over time, you have the option to use Advanced Geographies

The geography tab establishes which places appear in reporting templates for direct entry indicators. It is 100% fine to show all of a project's indicators and geographies in all the reporting period templates, and then just fill out the relevant data in the template each period. But you might prefer to customize the templates to change which indicators and places appear for which reporting periods. 

To do so, click on Advanced Geographies. Check the boxes for:

  • Different places report on different indicators (shown below): This provides the ability to enable/disable individual geographies for different indicators (grouped by results framework, since there could be dozens of indicators). 
  • Active places vary over time: This provides a timeline with each of the activity's reporting periods. Click on each reporting period to configure the geographies for that period. Clicking the Advanced menu again will give you the option to Apply to all future reporting periods. Checking this box copies the settings to all future reporting periods. The system will prompt you to make sure you want to make the change. Click Yes, apply to continue with the change.
  • Or both.

Edits to these pages do not affect existing indicator results; they only affect what geographies are available in data entry templates. 

Note: If you are unable to complete these actions, then you do not have permission to assign geographies to activities. Please speak to your supervisor. 


Didn't answer your question? Please email us at help@devresults.com.