November VoteSource Newsletter

Welcome to the November edition of the VoteSource Newsletter.

Missed our last edition? Catch up by clicking here.

Or click here to browse all previous editions.

VS10 - Coming soon!

The Development team are working hard to bring us all VS10, coming soon! But did you know VS10 was already hard at work for you at Party Conference?

Events

Did you know?

Nearly all our readers will be aware that VoteSource is the Party’s one stop shop for a wide range of Party activities. Everything from campaigning, donations, and membership – but that’s not all it is used for.

For example, did you know VoteSource is also used to plan Party events? Events like Party Conference can be created within the system and the relevant teams can then plan for attendance and numbers. They can also track and plan for tickets and passes and have data sent securely to the relevant printers.

VoteSource allows them to easily track and manage all these aspects and extract the relevant information to ensure a successful event.

At the Party Conference this year, organisers were able to track passes in use and even emergency passes if attendees lost their original pass. This greatly helped everyone in ensuring attendees were able to come and go as required.

It will come as no surprise then that VoteSource is also used regarding accreditation, after all VoteSource is used to store all the Party’s official membership information - if your members aren’t on VoteSource, they aren’t members in the eyes of the Party! During the recent Party Conference, we were able to work effectively with third parties to ensure accreditation ran smoothly.

Automated Membership

Did you know?

The Membership sign up and Donation sections of the Conservatives website are linked to VoteSource?

This means that when people enter their details via these webpages, they are checked first against what is recorded in VoteSource to confirm their details. This includes matching the address details and recording contact information against the persons record.

It also means as soon as they submit their membership request or donation it is entered into VoteSource.

This process has saved countless work hours and allows the Party to process the information far more quickly.

But it’s not just the Conservative Party website that uses this process. We have worked with Bluetree to ensure the same actions take place when new or renewing Members use Association websites to renew or sign up.

Membership Renewal Reminders via Email

Did you know?

VoteSource processes automatic email reminders for those members who have a preferred method of contact set to email. It also batches the mail reminders for letters sent by the Party for reminders to renew for those that prefer mailing options.

These processes happen automatically by VoteSource and rely on the accurate data recorded in the system by everyone who uses the system.

Annual Rollover

We will start to receive files for the Annual Electoral Register Rollover from December 1st. This reflects the annual canvass of electors carried out in the Autumn every year. In addition to adding and deleting electors, it reorders the Electoral Roll number of constituents.

Please note that not all Local Authorities provide their annual rollover files promptly on the 1st of December. We do chase stragglers, but this can delay your rollover locally.

You can check the status of your rollover within VoteSource. If you click into the Register tile and then click on the next Register tile, the system will display the loaded registers currently available. This is also where you can check if your monthly updates have been applied, but you will be looking for Annual Register in the left-hand column for this year’s rollover. Remember - until Annual Register appears with a date effective of 2022 and with Loaded in the far-right status column, your annual rollover has not been applied.

Once your Annual Register has been loaded into VoteSource:

• Please check your register and report any concerns to the Support team, providing examples.
• Improve the matching of records by using the manual match process in the Drop Off section and the merge ability.

Every effort is made to ensure that all records are matched together successfully via our automated process, however, inevitably there will be some the process cannot automatically match.

This could be because the individuals have moved address, provided data to the local authority which does not match what is stored on VoteSource, like a date of birth. In some cases, it can even be where parents share the same first name as their children. With examples like these we need your local knowledge to merge these records back together.

We strongly recommend that when you come to match your records together you go to the Drop Off section of VoteSource, found by clicking on the Register tile, select your publishing authority and the criteria you wish to search for, I.E. Voting Intention of Conservative and then export the responses to a spreadsheet.

You can then look up each record via Constituent search and merge the record if they are still at the same address using the Merge ability.

The advantage of using this method is that you can merge records at any time – there is no time constraint like with Drop Offs. Also by using the Merge ability it greatly reduces the chance of records splitting in the future.

Instructions on how to merge records can be found in the Help Centre:

“How to merge a constituent record that’s not matched to an electoral record to a constituent record”

“Drop off – How to extract a list of Drop Offs to merge post annual rollover”

If you would rather use the Drop Off section – which will provide you with possible matches for the dropped off record, please follow the instructions below. Please be aware that the drop off procedure is time sensitive, once your first monthly update on the new year has been applied you should no longer continue matching drop off records. You can of course then start using the merge ability at that time.

To find the drop off section from the VoteSource homepage click on the Register tile and then Drop Off.

You can then select the Publishing Authority and the Published Register you wish to match to.

You will be able to select constituents who have “dropped off the register” based on a number of criteria – e.g. Membership, has a specific Voting Intention etc.

The system will allow you to manually match these records to potential records in the system.

The following user guide can be found in the Help Centre on VoteSource to assist with Drop Offs:

“Drop Off – Annual Roll Over”

Once your first monthly update has been applied post your annual rollover you can no longer use drop off for the previous year.

Once the first monthly update has been applied, you should only use the drop off section to match records that have split during the monthly update.

You will only be able to merge drop offs for each monthly update until next year’s annual rollover.

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

New users – Candidates & Volunteers

Not all recipients of this newsletter will have the ability to approve new user accounts.

We would like to remind our readers that new users do not get automatically approved by VoteSource Support. Telling your volunteers to sign up is only part of the process.

Please read carefully to ensure your campaigning teams are not left without access because you have not done your part. In this article we will cover how to approve a new user and what the different sections of user request mean.

When a person signs up for a VoteSource account, their request goes in to the New User section, found under the Users tile on the VoteSource homepage.

Primarily it is expected that association staff would either approve new users themselves or email votesourcesupport@conservatives.com authorising the approval of the new account. To do this we would expect the name of the individual, the VoteSource user role they require and the area they require access to.

As you will be aware, certain roles on VoteSource will allow you to approve new user requests – and delete user accounts no longer required.

It is important to reiterate – not all recipients of this Newsletter will have the ability to approve new user accounts.

The quickest way to check if you can approve or delete users is to login and see if you have access to the Users tile. If you can see this tile, by clicking on it you will have access to New User Requests and Existing Users, as such it is your responsibility to regularly check both sections to ensure legitimate new user requests are processed – and no longer required accounts are removed.

Please remember when a person registers for a VoteSource account, their account is linked to their electoral register address. This means that if a person works in South Dorset constituency but is on the electoral register in Christchurch constituency – their user account is not visible to staff with access for South Dorset.

In this example their account would need to be approved by a Campaign Manager, Area Campaign Manager, Voluntary Party Manager or the VoteSource Support team.

It is also important to remember that when you are checking existing users – if you come across a name you do not recognise you check their Electoral Area Permission. They may legitimately have access to another constituency but live in the one you have access to. Their user account being visible to you does not mean they automatically have access to your data.

If in doubt – please contact VoteSource Support and we can investigate with you.

When approving a new user, you will find the following options – not all will be applicable but please read carefully to help understand the process.

Electoral Area Permissions – In this section you type the area you wish to grant access to (ward, constituency) and will then be able to select a user role. For more information on what the different user roles entail, please read one of the following user guides, you will be able to assign certain roles depending on your access.

List of roles a constituency organiser can grant

List of roles a campaign manager can grant

List of roles national campaign staff can grant

Each guide is specific to your relevant role and can be found in the Help Centre on VoteSource.

Electoral Area Permissions they can manage – If you are granting the user a role which allows them to in turn approve new users, you will need to list the area they can approve users for and each role required. For example, a constituency organiser, the lowest level of access that can approve user accounts, should have fourteen roles listed in this section so that they can properly approve new users. Again, the user guides, listed above, show what roles a constituency organiser or campaign manager can grant – you can use this as a guide to ensure you are setting up your new user correctly.

Party Organisations they can view – If you are granting a user access to a role which can view membership data, you will need to add the constituency in this section so they can access the data. Please be aware membership data access can only be granted for the whole constituency and only certain user roles can view membership data.

Party Organisations they can manage – If you are granting the user a role which allows them to in turn approve new users, you will need to list the constituency that they are allowed to grant to other users.

Accounting Units they can view – If you are granting a user access to a role which can view donations data, you will need to add the constituency in this section so they can access the data. Please be aware donations data access can only be granted for the whole constituency and only certain user roles can view donations data.

Accounting Units they can manage – If you are granting the user a role which allows them to in turn approve new users, you will need to list the constituency that they are allowed to grant to other users.

Control Rooms they can view – This access should only be granted to one person per association and it goes with the role of constituency organiser. If the access is granted to more than one person it can lead to issue of who is actually running the control room and who decides what is happening in the control room.

For simplicities sake only one person should run the control room and make any changes required. During the local elections in May there were several occasions where associations had multiple people running control rooms and people were uncertain who had made changes to their poll day plans.

The access will allow them to set up and run a control room for elections. It will also ensure they can create committee rooms and approve users access to these for their poll days.

Publishing Authorities they can view – This section must be added for marked register data to be entered, in fact we recommend every user account have access granted. The lower level user accounts will be able to enter marked register data and higher level access can view updates from their respective local authority for registers.

Publishing Authorities they can manage – If you are granting the user a role which allows them to in turn approve new users, you will need to list the constituency that they are allowed to grant to other users.

Once you have assigned the required permissions, the final step is to scroll to the bottom of the page and click either Approve or Approve and Email.

Authorising new users can be tricky to learn, the VoteSource Support Team are always ready to help explain and guide you through the process if required. We can be reached on 020 7984 8000 or votesourcesupport@conservatives.com

If we do not receive an email authorising the activation of an account, we do not approve the new user.

We wish to stress, new users should primarily be approved by association staff, campaign managers, area campaign managers or voluntary party managers. Only approve or authorise a new request if you know who the individual is and what role they are carrying out.

Marked Registers

Wondering what’s the best thing you can do to prepare for next year’s local elections? Find out who voted in this year’s local elections!

The marked register is the list of people on the electoral register with a line drawn next to the names of people who voted. You can buy it from your local authority, and enter the data into VoteSource. It’s a quick to do, and will help you for years to come.

How will it help me?

It’s incredibly helpful to know which people vote and which people don’t. And when you combine it with registers from different elections it’s especially useful to know the people who sometimes vote but sometimes don’t.

It can help you target all sorts of campaigning activity - from canvassing to GOTV to membership recruitment. And it helps us at CCHQ help you as well, by making the audiences we load to VoteSource more accurate.

So don’t delay - and get your marked register ordered today. It really is the best thing you can do right now to help you make next year’s local election campaign a success.

If you have any questions please email marked.register@conservatives.com