ERS Q&A
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Collapse ▲General Questions
Q: Where do I find older data (pre-2022) that was entered into ERS?
A: Scroll to the very bottom of the ERS dashboard screen and you will find a section for legacy reports.
Group Educational Activities
Q: If participants have the option to provide demographic data in Eventbrite, do we also need to collect demographic information at the event?
A: No, not unless you notice that nobody’s filling it out the demographics and everyone is coming up as unidentified.
Q: In the activity reports, we have Master Gardener volunteers for certifications, but not the master food volunteers.
A: EMFV has been added to the certifications section.
Q: Can you add crop advisors to the audience list.
A: Crop advisors should be reported as agriculture industry/farmers.
Q: What if at a meeting they talk a little shop beforehand and then learn something before they go home.
A: Report it as an educational activity.
Q: In the past we reported the number of pesticide credits and number certified, since this was removed how do we report certification information?
A: We simplified the reporting and you just need to check off what certification credits were provided with the training. Under outcomes and impacts for plant production there are 2 outcomes you can report – Outcome: Number of pesticide applicators receiving continuing education credits and Outcome: Number of pesticide credit hours provided.
Q: Any way to account for multiple counties for ASA?
A: Report it in the county where the event was offered or in your base county. You can also tag the CEDs or an agent in the other counties as team members.
Q: Where are activities related to honeybees reported?
A: Animal production. The backyard livestock and poultry outcome measure has been moved to the animal production objective.
Q: If volunteers are teaching an educational group event that requires registration, do we include that in ERS, or just things we as agents teach?
A: Yes, if they’re representing Extension whether they’re paid or not, we still want to be able to report the activity.
Q: Sometimes we as agents are giving programs at a beekeepers group or the cattlemen’s association, but a lot of times we might have other people giving programs who do not work or volunteer for extension. It might be another beekeeper is giving a program or an outside speaker is giving a program do we include that in those cases?
A: Yes. If you organize the meeting with invited speakers you would Include it as a group educational activity.
Q: What is a demonstration garden? Are school gardens considered demonstration gardens?
A: Extension offices may have gardens where they put descriptive signage and information about the plants or vegetables that are growing in that garden. If your school garden does have that educational piece to it, you could select demonstration garden.
Q: If you did a field day looking at the on-farm test plots and invited everybody to come and hear a speaker and look at the test plots, would that get reported as a group educational activity?
A: Yes.
Q: What audience would you use for food safety classes for food managers?
A: Select Food/Tourism Industry as the audience.
Q: Where do we report invited presentations?
A: Put them as a group activity report. If you have the demographic information from the organization include it in your entry if you can’t get the data from the hosting organization report the demographics as unidentified.
Q: I often meet with kids for 45 min. My only option for that is 1 hr as a minimum of contact time. Is this a problem?
A: Not a problem, report anything 30-60 minutes as 1 hour.
Q: As an ASA, sometimes I run trainings that are intended to teach agents as well as farmers, or sometimes just agents. What should I select for my target audience?
A: Ag Industry/Farmers. NOTE: Only ASA’s can report agent training in ERS, traditional agents report agent training in their XPD report.
Outreach Activities
Q: Where do I report farm visits?
A: Report farm visits under Program Activities – Outreach – F2F Technical Assistance
Q: Where do I report people that visit the Extension offices looking for advice?
A: Report office visits under Program Activities – Outreach – F2F Technical Assistance
Q: Can we go in and put something in a monthly outreach report and then save it and then come back and edit it and put additional activities in?
A: Yes, you can edit your entries. You can also submit multiple reports over the course of the month.
Q: Do you have a good way to keep track of the phone calls, emails, texts that you’re sending?
A: Track them on your calendar or keep a notebook where you record them daily. Google Sheets has a reporting tracker template. It’s called assignment tracker if you open google sheets, at the top there is a bar of templates, the third one from the left is the assignment tracker
Q: If I’ve emailed one person seven times, am I reporting that as one email or am I reporting every single email sent back and forth between me and that person?
A: You’d want to record it as 1 issue that was addressed.
Q: I create a newsletter with a colleague of mine. What would be the best way to kind of tag her in that?
A: You both report it. If you’re both writing articles in a newsletter or you’re both writing on your website or both involved in a podcast, whatever it might be, then each person reports their own activity.
Q: What if we send out our newsletter and the Chamber of Commerce picks up some of the articles and puts it into their newsletter or the county picks up her articles and puts it into their newsletter. How do we report the replication of the news or the article.
A: It depends on if you’re able to get that data. If you know the county republishes it in another newsletter and you know how many people they sent it out to then you could add it into your reach numbers. If not, just report that initial mailing.
Q: Would club meetings fall under meeting organized?
A: If they’re doing some sort of organized activity, report that as a group educational activity. If it’s a business meeting or planning meeting that would be meetings organized.
Q: In terms of the social media do you report when you are sharing information, just not posting an announcement for a class or for a program or for an event?
A: Correct you report content that shares educational information or resources but do not report your advertising activities or other posts that are not educational in nature. When you think about social media or any media source it’s easy to turn an event announcement into content. You could link to a publication or a website that has information on it, you can add a blurb that you’re offering a food safety class then give a little food safety tip. If you incorporate a piece of education, a little nugget of information along with the primary intention, which was to advertise your program you can then report it as educational outreach.
Q: If we are purely advertising a program on social media we don’t count that anywhere?
A: Correct, you don’t report advertising programs.
Q: If we had a workshop and had 50 people register for our Zoom. But only 20 people showed up. I can put the 20 people that showed up in the group educational activity, but then if we send the other 30 a follow-up email that has the recording and the handouts and that stuff where would that be reported?
A: When you send out a recording of a training you would report the additional 30 people under outreach activities – video/podcast.
Q: Does equipment include renting out equipment like soil probes or cattle chutes?
A: Equipment (listed as a type of outreach) could include renting out, testing, or celebrating a piece of equipment. It also could include respirator fit testing.
Q: Would it be possible to add a description to our ERS Outreach Activities? It helps me to remember if I have reported it. So there are no repeats.
A: This will be added to ERS in 2026.
Q: What is the correct input for the below situation: I sent 9 different mass emails to our listserv in Jan. would I put used 9 times and then multiply 9 times with my 421 4-H listserv subscribers in audience reached or do 9 times and the amount reached 421?
A: Multiply 421 X 9. The way our system is setup we are reporting duplicated counts so until I figure out a better way to collect our data we might as well be consistent with our duplicates and refer to them as “contacts made.”
Q: Can you please add an option to choose a team for F2F interactions? I rarely visit a farm without a county agent, so either we will end up double reporting or only one of us will get credit.
A: This will be added in 2026 for now you should both report the contact.
Q: The activity type samples, is that just for samples that we are submitting to the lab for our clients or can it include when we handout soil testing kits? I know in the old system, I would report it as self-directed, so I was unsure if soil testing kits still counted.
A: Yes, you record the soil testing kits that were handed out.
Q: I attended a trade show in January and met with 28 growers. I asked them all if they had any questions or needed any help. Some did, and we discussed growing-related issues, but some did not, and we only exchanged pleasantries. I didn’t keep track of who I spoke to about what. How do I track this?
A: I would put it under outreach – F2F Tech Assist. You can just estimate how many of the 28 you talked to.
Outcomes
Q: Where do you report on-farm test plots?
A: Report on-farm test plots in your outcomes and impacts report.
Success Stories
Q: Are you able to go back into a previous year’s success story and add pictures?
A: No, you can’t add pictures to prior year success stories. Once ERS locks for the year, changes may not be made.
Civil Rights
Q: What groups need to be reported in the civil rights module?
A: You only need to report the demographics of your advisory leadership committees. You no longer need to report demographics for 4-H clubs, ECA, etc.
Q: If you are a multicounty agent and have an advisory committee from one county and one advisory committee for another county, then you pick the correct county, right?
A: Yes. But if you have a multi-county committee, you can manually change the makeup of the communities to add composition of both or use statewide population demographics.
Fiscal Activities
Q: When reporting fiscal activities, what is the difference between the amount current year and the amount total?
A: If you have a multi-year grant, the total amount is what was awarded over the course of the entire grant and the current year amount is how much money you’re getting for the current year of the grant. If it is 1 year finding these numbers will be the same.
Q: What is a user fee? What is the general view on user fees, should we be utilizing those more frequently?
A: User fee is simply a registration fee for our programs, whatever you charge the public to attend any of your programs, classes, workshops, etc. The advantage of user fees is that it helps us bring in additional revenues and we’re not so reliant on our state and federal funding. We don’t want user fees to be a deterrent to people from attending our programs. Look at your program and see if it would be appropriate, see if there’s costs that you would want to recover and decide on a case-by-case basis.
Volunteer Activity
Q: How do I report volunteer activity when the volunteer independently conducts a group educational program or a public event? For 4-H Embryology school enrichment, if I train teachers and they use the 4-H curriculum to teach embryology in their classrooms (which they registered for and provided me classroom demographics for), where is this reported?
A: Report activities conducted independently by a volunteer (including teachers) in both the program activity report and the volunteer activity report.
Q: Where do I report advisory council meetings?
A: Report the number of volunteer hours in the volunteer activity report. Select Advisory Leadership System for the activity type (use ALS type even if your advisory group is composed of youth).
Q: Can we add an option for the whole year, for example, ECA does not do a report every month?
A: You can report the entire year by putting December as the month and report the total for that block of time.