August VoteSource Newsletter

Welcome to the August edition of the VoteSource Newsletter.

Missed our last edition? Catch up by clicking here.

Or click here to browse all previous editions.

Vesting

Most association officers will already be familiar with the ongoing vesting project of reorganising the Party’s membership from their current associations to the new constituency boundaries. This work has taken months of careful planning involving CCHQ staff, Voluntary Party Managers and association staff across the country.

Important notice, Scotland & Northern Ireland will not be having vesting taking place.

For those readers of this newsletter not familiar with this important work we would like to let you know just what has been done and will be undertaken and what changes you may notice in VoteSource if you have access to membership. Please be aware that not all recipients of this newsletter will have access to membership data on VoteSource.

So far vesting has been completed for the following regions:

• North East
• North West
• Wales
• Yorkshire & the Humber

This means that the members living in these regions are now assigned within their new constituency boundaries.

Accounting Units - Donations

As part of this overall process our data team have also created new accounting units in line with the new constituency boundaries. This has in turn led to overall reorganisation of the Party Organisation section of VoteSource.

The new accounting units will mean that donations entered under the old accounting units will no longer be visible from the front end of VoteSource – this does not mean they have been deleted from VoteSource though as the data will still be stored in the database.

As such before vesting occurs reports of donations to the old accounting units are compiled by our data team and sent to the Financial Compliance team at CCHQ.

If your vesting has not yet taken place, please ensure all donations are recorded as soon as possible.

Branches & Clubs

Please be aware we are transferring branches but only where the boundary of the branch falls entirely within a new association. If this does not occur the branch cannot be transferred – this will not affect any membership status, but the branch will need to be set up again from the front end.

Clubs will not be transferred from old associations to the new. Please be aware that these will need to be reset up post the completion of vesting in your region

How it is decided where members are transferred to

One of the most asked questions our team has been receiving in the wake of vesting has been how members who did not sit squarely in one association or another have their new association decided.

The following two distinct rules have been used in these instances:

1. If the member address is located (based off the address linked to their membership) in their current association, they will be moved to the new association that covers the area for which they live.

2. If the member does not live in the area of their current association, they will be moved to the new association that most of their current association is geographically moving to. (This list is provided to us by the regional voluntary party manager for your area). For example if a person lives in London but is a member of Richmond (Yorks), as the majority of Richmond (Yorks) (179 polling districts) are moving into the new constituency of Richmond and Northallerton, the member would be assigned to this new association rather than Thirsk and Malton which receives the smaller geographical portion (36 polling districts) of the old constituency.

Vesting is set to be completed on the 27th September for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. If you have questions regarding your vesting your voluntary party manager would be the best person to contact initially. If you have specific queries relating to VoteSource and vesting, please contact us on 020 7984 8000 or votesourcesupport@conservatives.com

Conference – VoteSource will be at Party conference again this year! Why not come and meet the team?

We are pleased to let you know that a contingent of the VoteSource team will be at the Party conference again this year. Why not come and meet us on the Party stand?

We are finalising our plans for conference and will be providing further details in next months newsletter, but we can let you know that there will be training seminars taking place at conference this year. These will cover a variety of topics and be aimed at new users of the system. There will also be some more advanced classes taking place. For more information please check September’s edition!

The following members of our team will be attending:

• Ian Singlehurst – Head of Application Development
• Grant Hallyburton – Senior Developer
• Oliver Patey – Senior Support Analyst
• George Sanderson – Support Analyst

A reminder on Merging in VoteSource

What is merging?

Merging is the ability to combine data which has become split from its electoral record back to its parent record.

This data can range from a membership, voting history, contact details or others. The merge ability allows you to combine this data back with its parent record which contains the electoral roll number.

If you come across a record which has information, but no electoral roll number next to the contact information at the top of the page – it could be split from its record and require merging back to the parent record.

It is important to note that this may not always be the case, people do drop off the electoral record for other reasons.

There are various causes as to why information can split from its parent record, these include: the constituent having moved address, changed name, gender or others.

Whilst our team do run automated matching processes these cannot always anticipate every possible outcome, which is where the human merge process comes in.

The following user roles all have the ability to merge records back to their electoral register record at any time.

• Local – Candidate

• Local – Member of Parliament

• Local – Councillor

• Local – Membership Manager

• Local – Local Administrator

• Local – Constituency Organiser

• Local – Campaign Manager

• Local – National Campaign Staff

• Local – National Voluntary Party

• Local – Field Director

The ability to merge records is available for all areas of VoteSource that allow you to access records: Membership, Donations, User Section and Constituent Search.

All of the above roles have access to Constituent Search and therefore the ability to merge records from there. But access to Membership, Donations and the User Section is dependent on role access.

Users guides are available in the Help Centre on how to merge and can be found at the bottom of the Help Centre under “Merging”.

How to merge a record:

https://votesource.uk/Management/HelpCenter#!/ViewArticle/173

How to merge a membership record back to the constituent record:

https://votesource.uk/Management/HelpCenter#!/ViewArticle/178

How to merge a donation back to its constituent record:

https://votesource.uk/Management/HelpCenter#!/ViewArticle/174

If you merge two records together by mistake, don’t panic! They can be un-merged by following the instructions in this user guide:

https://votesource.uk/Management/HelpCenter#!/ViewArticle/179

Please remember to finish your merges once you start! We often come across half completed merges, some not completed because the conflicts could not be resolved, others because the records were accidentally started on the merge process. If merges are left half completed this can cause data issues in the long term.

In either case, please either resolve the merge or cancel it.

If you have any questions on merging, please contact VoteSource Support on 020 7984 8000 or votesourcesupport@conservatives.com

VoteSource Updates

We are pleased to inform you we have carried out several huge areas of maintenance on VoteSource.

The team have improved the following functionality on VoteSource:

• The searches should be much quicker, with most returning much faster, especially less specific searches like street name or first name.

• The mapping tiles that we use for the cover pages of canvass cards or delivery lists have now all been updated to the most recent maps – helping you canvass the new estates near you.

This work was undertaken overnight but crucially we did not have to take the system offline to do so. Meaning no interruption to service for those needing to access the system later than usual. 

If you have any questions about the work that has been undertaken, please do contact VoteSource Support on 020 7984 8000 or votesourcesupport@conservatives.com