Vote 411 User Guide HOW TO LOG IN:

Transcription

1 1 HOW TO LOG IN: Vote 411 User Guide 1) Obtain username and password 2) Go to 3) Enter your username and your password. Make sure there are no blank spaces in front of or at the end of those words. 4) Click on SUBMIT. You should now be viewing the homepage:

2 2 BEFORE YOU START ENTERING RACES INTO THE SYSTEM YOU WILL NEED TO: 1) Enter question sets A question set is a group of questions that you will ask every candidate in a particular race. Once created it can be used for multiple races. 2) Enter bio fields Bio fields are the pieces of biographical information that you want the candidates to give you. These should be non-controversial, and in general candidate answers should be brief. For every race you will need to select a set of bio fields for the candidates to fill out or you may create one set of bio fields to use for every race. You can create and use the same set for all races or customize bio sets for different kinds of races. For example, you may want to include a military history field for presidential elections which would make less sense for a school board. We recommend using no more than 5-7 bio fields. 3) Select and order race categories This allows you to set the order of the races that your readers will click through and also to creating groups of races for easy browsing. 4) Add parties This allows you to add any parties unique to your locale 5) Set up templates for candidate communication - The voter guide Administrative Panel contains seven templates you can use to communicate with candidates: Invitation, reminder, receipt, approval, rejection, publication, and bulk . There also is a separate Blast tool for sending unplanned s as needed. HOW TO ENTER QUESTION SETS: 1) Click on Question Sets on the left hand side of the homepage under Setup

3 3 2) Give a name to the set of questions you d like to add (e.g. City Council Question Set ). Enter the name into the name field under Create a Question Set. 3) Then click add 4) Now click edit next to the question set you just created

4 4 5) In the box offered type in your questions separated by a carriage return (i.e. one to each line hit enter after each one). We recommend no more than five questions per race. 6) Then click add. You can always go back and add or edit your questions later. Don t forget to save! 7) To re-order the questions, use the blue buttons to the left of the questions.

5 5 8) There are four different question types offered Text, Agree/Disagree, YouTube, Rich Text depending on the kind of format in which you want to allow the candidate to respond. To select the question type, click on Settings and choose from the drop down list. 9) You can set the character limits for responses at the top of the question set page. The maximum answer length should be shorter if you intend to create a print voter guide with limited space for responses. We recommend a character limit of 500 if you will not be making a printed voter guide and one of no more than 300 if you will be making a printed voter guide.

6 6 10) Don t forget to save after each edit you make! HOW TO ENTER BIO FIELDS: 1) Click on Bio Fields on the left hand side of the homepage under Setup.

7 7 1) At the top of the page, add any bio fields you need under Create a Bio Field. Again, bio fields are the individual pieces of biographical information that you want the candidates to give you. For example, you might want to add a bio field such as community service or occupation. 2) Click on the edit link next to the field you created.

8 8 3) You can choose the type of bio field, meaning in what type of format the candidate will be asked to respond. In the type drop down, select whether you want a bio field that is: Text Age, which will prompt the candidate for their date of birth (will show on the front end as age) A URL (web sites will show as a pop-up link in the guide) An address (will become a mailto link in the guide) HTML (allowing you to use images, audio or video) YouTube video (allowing candidates to simply enter the URL of a YouTube video to automatically insert a resized video into their profile) 4) To set character limits for bio fields, click on edit next to the bio field you want to limit and enter the limit in max length. 5) You can also include bio fields that are only filled out by you, not the candidate (e.g. links to articles on your site). Click on edit by the bio field and in the drop down box candidate editable select off. 6) Don t forget to save after each edit you make! HOW TO CREATE BIO FIELD SETS: 1) At the bottom of the bio fields page, enter the name of the bio field set you re creating (e.g. City Council Bio Field Set ). Creating bio field sets allows you to ask for different groups of biographical information (bio fields) for each race. However, because you are just covering local races, you will likely be requesting the same biographical information in each race and will simply create one bio field set that contains all of the bio fields you added and that were already in the system. In which case, you could simply name your one bio field set All2013Races.

9 9 2) Select the bio fields you want to be in the set (using the control button to select multiple fields) 3) Click add 4) Click edit next to a bio field set to add new bio fields to the set or to use the blue arrow symbols to adjust the order in which you d like the bio fields to appear

10 10 5) Don t forget to save after each edit! HOW TO SELECT AND ORDER RACE CATEGORIES: 1) Clink on Race Categories on the left hand side of the homepage under Setup

11 11 2) In the Add additional races field, add all the *categories* of races you intend to cover (not individual races), one line each. For example, you might add NY Senate, NY Assembly, Judicial Races, Mayoral Races, etc. 3) Don t forget to click Save

12 12 HOW TO ORDER AND ADD PARTIES: 1) Click on Parties on the left hand side of the homepage under Setup 2) Enter any party you need to along with an abbreviation (the abbreviation is what the public will see in the user guide). Use the blue arrow symbols to arrange the parties in the order they will be on the ballot. For New York State races, ballot order is determined by the number of votes in the gubernatorial race, and currently is: Democratic, Republican, Conservative, Working Families Party, Independence, and Green. This ordering only affects the display of parties for candidates with multiple party endorsements. The ordering of candidates in a race is determined by the last name field, which display candidates in alphabetical order by default.

13 13 HOW TO SET UP TEMPLATES: The voter guide system generates automatic s for every step of communication with the candidates. You must tailor these s to meet your needs. 1) Clink on Templates on the left hand side of the homepage under Setup

14 14 2) Click edit to customize each of the templates 3) Fill in the subject, sender name, reply to, and bcc fields. The subject and sender name will show in your s to candidates, and if candidates reply, they will be replying to the address you list here. Adding a bcc address is a good way to keep copies of all s you have sent through the system to the candidates this is particularly important for the receipt which is automatically sent to candidates each time they submit information to the voter guide. 4) In the body of the , customize with your response date, contact name, phone and , etc. The response link macro #response_link() creates a link that the candidate can click to see his/her response page. You can use any of the macros listed at the bottom of a template. For example, the #candidate_name() macro generates the candidate s full name in the you send. Don t forget to save your changes.

15 15 5) If you paste from Word or other pro-grams with formatted text, paste using the Paste as Text icon on the top menu to remove formatting codes that will conflict with the voter guide system

16 16 CREATING RACES HOW TO CREATE RACES: The Race Wizard will walk you through step by step the creation of a race and will prompt you to fill out all of the information you need. Choose the type of race you will be creating and follow the prompts. You may want to set up races before you have all of the information you will eventually need. Skip those fields and use the Race Manager later to go back and fill in missing fields. You can make changes to the races after you have set them up. 1) Click on Race Wizard on the left hand side of the homepage under Creating Races 2) The Race Wizard will walk you through each step of setting up a race: Choose the type of office and district - For anything lower than a countywide office, you will select GIS District Name the race Add candidates, s and party affiliations (can add this info later) - Hold down the control button and click to select more than one party Add description of race (optional) - The description box is a good place to include info not only about the public office, but also info such as letting the public know that you did not ask questions of candidates in a particularly race or the date of a candidates forum

17 17 CREATING RACES Select if primary or general election - If there will be both a primary and a general election, you can select primary now and later, after the primary, use The Race Manager to change the race type to general election Choose race category (e.g., City Council) Select bio set (biographical info questions, such as occupation, experience, campaign website) Select a set of questions for the candidates 3) In the last step, the Race Wizard shows you a summary of each of the steps you have taken as a review, and asks you to verify that you want to create the race.

18 18 COMMUNICATION & MANAGEMENT HOW TO MANAGE & EDIT RACES: After you have created your races, you can use the Race Manager to organize and edit the race information, and fill in any information you left blank along the way. All of the choices (question sets, bio fields, districts, race descriptions, etc.) you made when setting up a race in the Race Wizard can be changed with the Race Manager, or you can add information you didn t have at the time. 1) Click on Race Manager on the left hand side of the homepage under Communication & Management. 2) Click on the boxes in front of the races to be edited, and select the boxes for the fields to be edited. Then click the Bulk Edit button at the bottom of the page.

19 19 COMMUNICATION & MANAGEMENT 3) You can click on the blue underlined race names to open the Add/Manage Race page for a particular race. This in one way to add candidate names and addresses as they become available. HOW TO ADD CANDIATES NAMES AND S: 1) In addition to using the Add/Manage race page, you can click on Candidates on the left hand side of the homepage under Creating Races. Start as early as possible to gather candidate names and s. Keep updating your list of names as candidate petitions are accepted or rejected by the Board of Elections, and as primary winners are announced.

20 20 COMMUNICATION & MANAGEMENT 2) Click edit next to candidates names to add their address. The system requires an address to begin the voter guide process. accounts listed on campaign websites tend to be unmonitored, so it is worthwhile to make an extra effort at the beginning to contact each candidate to get a good address and a contact name and phone number. HOW TO INVITE CANDIDATES AND TRACK PROGRESS: The Campaign Tracker is an excellent way to keep track of the Voter Guide progress. The Campaign Tracker provides tools to move the guide along, and to see where you and the candidates are in the process. 1) Click on Campaign Tracker on the left hand side of the homepage under Communication & Management.

21 21 COMMUNICATION & MANAGEMENT 2) Click on All in the upper right hand corner to view all of your races. 3) To invite candidates, click the blue arrow in the Created column. Clicking this arrow will bring up the invitation template, and you can send the invitation s. You can click on preview if you would like to be sent a preview of the before sending it to candidates. Invited candidates will have a symbol appear in the Invited column. You can also click the arrow going in the other direction if you need to uninvite candidates. 4) Check candidate status. There will be a symbol after each candidate: - bounced or no address in the system - unopened 5) Remind candidates to respond by clicking the blue circular arrow in the Invited Column. This will bring up the reminder . 6) Verify which candidates have responded. A blue arrow will appear in the Responded column. 7) To take an action in bulk (invite or remind more than one candidate), check the boxes for the candidates and use the bulk edit buttons at the bottom of the Campaign Tracker. Make sure you are looking at all the races and candidates by selecting All in Page Size at the top right corner. You can also select the Filter link at the top left to change which races display in the Campaign Tracker, e.g., to view only published races or to view only candidates with bouncing s or unopened s. (Definitions of all the race filter types can be found in the campaign tracker s help page) 8) You can use the filter at top to search your races. For example, you can filter the results to only show candidates who have not yet responded to your invitation.

22 22 COMMUNICATION & MANAGEMENT HOW TO ARCHIVE CANDIDATES If you are covering primary races, you can archive candidates that are running only in the general election so that they do not show in the voter guide as though they are running in the primary. You will then un-archive them after the primary so that they are in the voter guide for the general election. You can also delete candidates that lose a primary or that are kicked off the ballot. 1) Click on Delete and Archive on the left hand side of the homepage.

23 23 COMMUNICATION & MANAGEMENT 2) Select the candidates you would like to either archive, un-archive, or delete. At the bottom of the page, click on Delete to delete, the check sign to archive, or the minus sign to un-archive. Archived candidates will not be visible to the public when the voter guide goes live. HOW TO PREVIEW AND PUBLISH RACES GO LIVE! 1) To preview your voter guide, click on Preview on the left hand side of the homepage. 2) To see how each race will be appear to the public, select Race Index from the dropdown in the upper right hand corner of the preview screen.

24 24 COMMUNICATION & MANAGEMENT 3) When you are ready to go live, click on Race Publisher on the left hand side of the homepage under Communication & Management. 4) Just click in the Published column for any race, and that race will appear in VOTE411. Candidates who reply after a race is published will have their responses appear in VOTE411 without any further action on your part.

25 25 ADMINISTRATION HOW TO EXPORT AND IMPORT DATA (for creating printed guides) You can export your guide into many data forms. From the bottom of the home page, click on data export. XML Outputs Normalized XML: If you are familiar with XML, this is the best, most flexible output. You can manipulate the data using an XML editor (e.g., XMLSpy), and customize it for upload into your publishing system. Candidate Profiles: While this format uses XML tags, it is not normalized, meaning that some data elements are repeated. Candidate responses are grouped by candidate, and the text of each question is repeated within each candidate profile. This is appropriate for a format organized into candidate profiles. Answer Comparisons: Like the XML Candidate Profiles, this is not normalized. Candidate responses are grouped by race, so a single question is followed by multiple candidates responses. This is appropriate for a format organized into comparisons of candidate responses. Text Outputs Candidate Profiles: This is a plain text format, so there are no tags that indicate what each data element is (e.g., race name, etc.). Candidate responses are grouped by candidate, and the text of each question is repeated within each candidate profile. This is appropriate for a format organized into candidate profiles. Answer Comparisons: This is also a plain text format. Candidate responses are grouped by race, so a single question is followed by multiple candidates responses. This is appropriate for a format organized into comparisons of candidate responses. HTML Outputs: Candidate Profiles: This is an HTML format, meaning that header tags are used to indicate data elements such as race and candidate names. Candidate responses are grouped by candidate, and the text of each question is repeated within each candidate profile. By combining this format with style sheets, you could create flat HTML pages for your Web site. Answer Comparisons: Also an HTML format, candidate responses are grouped by race, so a single question is followed by multiple candidates responses.

26 26 ADMINISTRATION Delimited Outputs Mail Merge: Candidate names, addresses, addresses, and security codes, in a tabdelimited text file. Use this output if you are creating a list of candidate contact info for a direct mailing.