January VoteSource Newsletter

Welcome to the January edition of the VoteSource Newsletter.

Missed our last edition? Catch up by clicking here.

Or click here to browse all previous editions.

Fixes – Items that the Development team have been working on in January

The following are the items our developers have been working hard on in January. These are now released to live and will improve your overall experience of VoteSource.

Campaigning

• Target Audience- improved criteria for ‘18th Birthday between dates’
• Advanced Target Audience - No date validations shown within TA creation 
• A new Front-End Feature for Creating and Managing Donation Campaigns, this will be rolled out later this year
• Reports - Voting Intention Dashboard Report improved
• Voting Intention Dashboard export improved
• Fixed where Delivery Point Suffix not being pulled on Mail Merge exports
• Issue Breakdown Report – can now choose a greater type of areas
• Postal Vote Request counts inconsistent across pages fixed

Donation Microsite

The release adds

• New Enhanced Security
• New Improved load capacity

Our development team will continue to work to provide exciting new features and ensure those that are already available work as they should. If you do not find something that you have previously raised in the above release note it does not mean our team are not working on it but that it could not potentially be included in this release.

As ever, if you have questions on the release, please contact us on 020 7984 8000 or votesourcesupport@conservatives.com

Fundamentals – target audience – setting up, canvass cards, data entry & mobile canvassing

Target Audience

A target audience allows you to specify the type of electors you wish to contact/canvass. It is the basic building block of any campaign activity within VoteSource. From your target audience you can also enable all of the campaigning activities we cover in this article.

Once you have logged into VoteSource you will need to go to the Campaigns section of VoteSource and then select Target Audiences.

This page will show you all existing audiences created in the area you have access to, please note that you will be able to view audiences created by other users, so make sure you select the correct one if you are planning on using an audience already set up.

You also have the ability to set up a new audience here and can do so by selecting New Target Audience +. The page this tile takes you to will have a number of preset options for you to choose from like:

• Full Canvass
• Uncanvassed with Postal Vote
• Volunteer Recruitment

and more.

Once you have selected your chosen audience, you will need to follow the setup stages, naming your audience, selecting which type of election the audience is for and choosing the electoral geography.

After completing these steps simply click generate and your target audience will be created for you.

Creating canvass cards

Canvass cards are created from target audiences, so you will need to have set one up first. From your target audience you will see an option called Enabled Activities, by clicking into this section you will be able to view all the different campaigning activites you can set up from your audience – including canvass cards.

Simply toggle the canvass card option to on, and select Generate a new set canvass cards. This will bring up the canvass card file generation details, allowing you to amend certain options on how the cards will look and what information will be shown.

Once you have selected your options and are ready, simply press Generate and the cards will be produced. You can then download the files for printing from VoteSource. Please be aware that like all export options from VoteSource these files will be password protected and the password will be available next to the download option.

Enabling Mobile Canvassing

The advantages of mobile canvassing are various, including eliminating the need for manually entering canvass cards or survey returns into the system – the data entered via the Canvasser app will be uploaded directly to VoteSource as long the survey script has been set up correctly.

It is also very easy to set up from within a target audience, you simply need to go to Enabled Activities and toggle the option Mobile Canvassing to on. You will then need to select the survey template you wish to use for either canvassing or survey data entry – this can be one previously set up in the system or one which you have created yourself via the surveys section. We will be covering survey creation in a later edition of the Newsletter.

Once you have selected all your options and ensure the data protection statement is selected for contact details collection you simply need to select Enable Mobile Canvass. As the final step to activate the session click on Manage activity which now appears under the Mobile Canvassing heading and click Start mobile canvass. The session will now be live and appear in your appr when you next log in.

Setting up data entry for canvass or survey entry

Whilst enabling movile canvassing will cut out the need to manually enter paper returns, if youdo opt to use paper canvass cards or surveys then the data entry can and should be set up from the same target audience you created your cards or audience from for surveys.

From the Enabled Activities of your target audience, you will need to enable the Canvass data entry option. Then you will need to select the type of activity you are entering data for, either Rapid Survey or Rapid Canvass, and then select the survey template you wish to use. This will either be a custom survey script that you are someone else has created or one of the canvass templates. All Canvass templates start with Traditional Canvass Entry and only appear with Rapid canvass.

Once you have selected your template and ensure you have a data protection statement for contact details collection, you can then click on Enable Activity. Finally, you will need to click Manage Activity and Start Canvass Data Entry.

Data entry will then be set up for you or your team to record paper returns quickly into the system.

If you have any questions about the above, please do feel free to contact us on 020 7984 8000 or votesourcesupport@conservatives.com our team will be happy to assist you set up for campaigning in VoteSource.