October VoteSource Newsletter

Welcome to the October edition of the VoteSource Newsletter

Missed last months edition? Catch up by clicking here.

Or click here to browse all previous editions.

Please be aware all VoteSource related queries must be sent to our new email address. The old address will no longer be active after 31st October 2020.

VoteSource Upgrade

We are excited to finally announce a major VoteSource upgrade taking place between the 25th and 30th of November.

This update is the culmination of months of planning and underlines the Party’s commitment to improving our software and enhancing our data for the future. The upgrade will allows us to accommodate more users, deliver better service, improve performance, and avoid unplanned outages. Once complete, we’ll be able to develop and implement new features faster, each one helping us to win.

You will not need to do anything while this upgrade happens, we will be working hard behind the scenes on your behalf. But it will mean a period of five days when your systems will be unavailable, meaning no data can be entered or selected, including by the VoteSource support staff.

We ask you to start planning appropriately for the downtime. For example, membership data and donations data will not be able to be recorded during this period, so we would advise against any membership drives in the week leading up to this period. Take a moment now to consider other impacts on your local schedules that you might need to plan for.

Further details on the timeline will be published soon.

Party Organisation Positions

We’re pleased to announce that Bluebook has been reformed – and will now be available on VoteSource.

Bluebook is the Party’s directory of Association Officers and office contact details. Formerly, this database was kept separate from VoteSource and updated from CCHQ.

So we’re pleased to announce Party Organisation Positions, which will replace Bluebook’s functionality and will be available on VoteSource.

It will allow local users to update contact details of the Association and its Officers in real time. That means greater transparency and more accurate communications from the central Party.

Access to the Party Organisation Positions system is being slowly phased in, and it will take some time before access is granted to association staff. Please keep an eye on the News section in VoteSource for more information. When Party Organisation Positions goes live Help Centre user guides will also be made available.

When Party Organisation Positions is made available, it is vitally important that all details currently recorded on the system are checked and updated where necessary. The data that will be found in the system is what is currently believed to be correct at CCHQ and is what is reported to the relevant legal bodies. Please keep informing CCHQ of officer changes via the current route until told otherwise.

If you have any questions regarding Party Organisation Positions, please contact the VoteSource Support team.

Party Organisation Federation Update

We have now amalgamated membership data for Federations. Users with membership access to constituencies part of a Conservative Federation will have seen a change to their membership section for the past couple of weeks. For example, Milton Keynes North and Milton Keynes South’s membership data now appears under Milton Keynes. Branches for all constituencies have been maintained and transferred to appear under the new organisation.

If a user had access to only one constituency previously, they will now be able to view data for both. This will include access to former membership reports.

If you have any questions, please contact either the Membership Department on 020 7984 8036 or VoteSource Support on 020 7984 8000.

You can also reach each team at membership@conservatives.com or votesourcesupport@conservatives.com respectively.

VoteSource Best Practice

How to approve and delete user accounts

VoteSource users with the access of Constituency Organiser, Campaign Manager and National Campaign Staff all have the ability to approve new user requests and delete user accounts that are no longer required. All VoteSource users with this level of access should be regularly approving new accounts and deleting accounts that are no longer required.

In order to approve a new user account, you will first need to select the user tile of the VoteSource homepage. Once there, you will need to select New User Requests. Here you will be able to see all the new users who have recently signed up to VoteSource in your constituency. When you have selected the user you would like to approve their user page will appear.

The most important requirement of approving a new user is to assign an Electoral Area Permission. Users have to be assigned an area and a user role in order to have access to their user account. Without an Electoral Area Permissions, users will not be able to access their VoteSource accounts.

You will need to search for the area you want to give access to the user for and select the relevant role from the drop down. Once you have assigned the new user the relevant role, you will need to scroll down to the bottom of the page and approve the account. The user will now have access to their VoteSource account.

To delete a user account that is no longer required, you will need to go into the user section and select the user account you would like to delete. You can find user accounts by either using Existing Users list or Search Users option.

Once you have found their account, select the option for Details near the top of page. At the bottom of the following page you will be able to see the option to delete account.

If for any reason you are unable to approve or delete a VoteSource user account you can contact VoteSource support with the details of the account you want approved or deleted and we will be able to do so.