Voter ID Contacts: View creation, spreadsheet import, emailing

Here's a video (watch at high speed) on how to create a throw-away view for the purpose of emailing people their voter ids.

First, you make a view.
Second you make an import and name your spreadsheet headers.
And lastly, you send an email and use the Username field in your mail merge to be your voter ID.

There are written instructions below the email.

WRITTEN INSTRUCTIONS

This process has three big steps:

Create the view.
Import the data.
Send an email.

Create the View.

Go to the Admin menu, notated by the wheel in the upper right corner on the black bar, and select Views from the drop-down menu.
Select the green New button.
Select the option that says “I'd like to create a new type of Contact.”
Give it the name of Voter IDs. Select the blue Create button.

Now you should see a list of fields to the left, some code in the middle, and a preview of a view on the right. Do the following to edit your view:

On Line 1 of the code, add the following after the last quotation mark and closing bracket:
1. Name="Voter ID Contacts"
2. Singular="Voter ID Contacts"
3. Plural="Voter ID Contacts"

From the list of fields on the left, scroll down or search to find the Column Username option. Click the name, but don’t click the X. This will add that column to the code.
Find the bracketed text that says <Column Id="Username"/> and add the following attribute between the closing quotation marks and the slash:
1. Name=”Username/Voter ID”
Click the blue Save button.

Technically, you’re good to go. If you want to add some optional bells and whistles, here’s how to do that:

Make the collapsed set of fields stay open: By default, a fieldset, or group of fields, is collapsed in the view. To keep it from being collapsed, look again to the list of fields on the left and scroll down or search to find the Fieldset LoginFields option. Click the name, but don’t click the X. Then, find the bracketed text that says <Fieldset Id=”LoginFields” /> and add the following attribute: Important=“true”

Create a batch field: If you want a free-write field where you label your batches of voter ID emails, add this line of code after the Username line of code that you edited above:

Pull the AC Voting Rights field over from the People view: If you grab the AC Voting Rights field along with your names and emails as part of your download from the People view, you can match it up in this view. Then, you could customize your emails and send batches based on their voting rights. Note: This new Voter ID view is totally separate from the People view. Changes made in Voter ID land will not affect People view land.

To pull in the AC Voting Rights field, copy in this line of code after the Username line that you edited above:

Import Your Data.

Go to the Admin menu, notated by the wheel in the upper right corner on the black bar, and select Imports from the drop-down menu.
Select the green New button.
Give the import a name, like Voter ID Import.
From the Table/View drop-down, select Contacts - VoterIDs.
From the RunAs drop-down, select a user to run the import as.
For the Matching Mode, select External Source.
Give it a Source Name. Note that this data is available and can be used for searching and filtering in your Voter ID view. Be as specific as you need to be.
From the list of Options, select both Add and Update.
Select the blue Save button.

You’re ready to structure your .csv file for import. Click on the View fields and instructions header to view the column IDs you’ll need to run the import.

For this import, you’ll want to build a .csv file in Excel or Google Sheets (we really recommend Google Sheets for technical reasons) with the following column headers:

FirstName
LastName
Username (which will be the Voter ID)
ID (which should be a copy of the Voter ID)
Email

Build your file, and download it as a .csv. Return to your import, select the blue header that reads Upload a csv file now, and run it as a test. If your test goes well, run it as a regular import.

A few helpful hints and FAQs:

Will this overwrite other fields in other views? NO. Because you’re importing directly into the Voter ID view, no other Contact view will be affected. This view does not connect to the People view, Church view, etc.

Uploading the AC Voting Rights: If you want to bring the AC Voting Rights over from People, you’ll need to download your voting list from the People view. Adjust the result fields to show: First Name, Last Name, Email, AC Voting Rights. Add the ID and Username columns to this when you’re building your file for import.

Look for duplicates: One common reason an import will error out is duplicate values. Make sure every line on your .csv file for import is unique. We know folks share email addresses sometimes, so give special attention to that.

Send the Email.

We’ve reached the final step: Sending these puppies out into the world!

Go to the Brick River email center, and start a new email.
Set it up however you’d like. We’re going to focus on the technical aspect of getting the Voter IDs into the email.
From the Mail Merge drop-down, you can utilize these fields:
1. First Name
2. Last Name
3. Username - This will be the Voter ID.

A note about testing your email: It’s going to display blank results for the mail merge if you use the test feature. We recommend adding an entry to the Voter ID view that uses your email, and then sending yourself an actual email as the test. You’ll need to add yourself via the method outlined below.

Once you’ve crafted your email, you’re ready to add recipients:

Go to Add Recipients > Contacts > Voter ID Contacts.
Filter the view for those you want to add to the email.
After you’ve filtered, select the blue Email button in the upper right.
Select the email you’ve been drafting from the list of options.
You’re ready to send!