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.

The Helpdesk will be closed for the bank holiday on Monday 26th August. You can still leave voicemails via our telephone number 020 7984 8000 or email queries to helpdesk@conservatives.com

Post Election and AGM VoteSource Checks

Have you gone through your user list and checked only current association officers and volunteers have access?

These checks should be carried out regularly throughout the year and are very important.

The following user guide found in the VoteSource Help Centre can help you identify who has a VoteSource account and lives in the electoral areas you have access to:

VS10 - Users - Roles https://votesource.uk/support/HelpCenter#!/ViewArticle/372

Using this guide, and the Roles section of VoteSource, you will be able to find lists of accounts either by user role or by an electoral area.

Remember:

A Green U means the account is accessible. A Red L means that the account is locked due to too many incorrect password attempts. A Blue F means that the account is frozen due to inactivity. This means the account hasn’t been accessed for more than six months.

The following user guide will go through how to Unlock, Unfreeze or Delete an account:

VS10 – How to Unfreeze, Unlock and Delete VoteSource Accounts https://votesource.uk/support/HelpCenter#!/ViewArticle/371

Please note: You may find a user that you do not recognise. This does not mean that they necessarily have access to your data, so remember to check carefully their Electoral Area Permission. It could be that they are a registered elector in your area but have access to another area legitimately. If in doubt, please contact the Help Desk team, and we will be happy to investigate.

Have you archived target audiences & delivery rounds you no longer require?

The team will be carrying out an automatic archive of these files (please see article 2 for further information on this), but the below information will be helpful for you to better manage your audiences and reactivate them if required.

Remember, target audiences & delivery rounds are snapshots of the electoral register when they are created – they do not update with monthly or annual rollover files.

To archive a target audience, go to Campaigns and then click on the Target Audiences tile. You will then be able to search through all available target audiences in the area(s) you have access to. Simply click on the target audience you wish to archive and when it has loaded, select the red tile labelled Finish and Archive.

You can also search for target audiences using the Created by me tile and the Quick search filter.

An important note is that if you subsequently realise you needed a target audience that you have archived, they can be re-activated via the Archived Target tile. Please do ensure you take some time to tidy up your target audiences. Removing unrequired ones will help organise this section of VoteSource ahead of the important campaign work next year. Hint: any target audiences you created with the title “test” can probably be archived!

Auto Archiving of target audiences created before the General Election

Please be aware, we will be auto archiving target audiences created up until 04/07/24 on the 27/08/24.

As posted in the VoteSource news section on the 05/08/2024, unfortunately we do have to archive old target audiences from time to time as not enough audiences are archived by users when they have finished with them. We also do this to encourage people to run new target audiences so that they are incorporating the latest data provided to us from local authorities.

Please be aware that no data already entered against these target audience will be lost and if you do require access to any target audience archived you can reactivate it.

To reactivate an archived target audience, you will need to know its name. You can then go to Campaigns and select Target Audiences. From this page you can select Archived Targets. You will then be able to search by name for your target audience, and then select it and click Reactivate. The following guide, found on the VoteSource Help Centre, will help you with this process as well:

VS 10 - Target Audience - Retrieving an archived Target Audience https://votesource.uk/support/HelpCenter#!/ViewArticle/257

If you have any questions about the archiving of Target Audiences, please call us on 020 7984 8000 or email us at helpdesk@conservatives.com

Data Protection

The Data Protection team have asked us to pass on the following important points.

The following points should be noted:

1. When creating a campaign, please remember that the description you enter will be seen by people who put in a Subject Access Request (SAR - where someone asks what information we have about them) either to local Associations or to the Party centrally. Please therefore use plain English to describe a campaign in a way that a non-political person would know what they mean, avoiding the use of jargon or abbreviations. For example, “Canvass cards for Barchester North ward” rather than “BN1 to BN4 cards”. People have the right to ask us what things mean on the reports we send, so we may well be in touch with users with this question.
2. It is fine to add a “note” to someone’s record, as long as it is factual. For example, we add a note saying what someone has said if they ask for no mail to be sent and will copy and paste their words into a note as part of our process. You can also put the reason for a member not renewing, or why they are suspended etc.
3. Deadlines for responding to rights request such as “no mail”, erasure or SARs do not stop because of a General Election, though it may be possible to apply an extension to the time allowed. See the SARs guide available on Toolkit, or contact the Data Protection team: dataprotection@conservatives.com or 020 7984 8300.