Committee Admin Report (CAR) Dashboard FAQs
How do I access the CAR Dashboard?
I have access, but can’t see all of my committees on the report
Where is this data coming from?
How often is this report updated?
I want to give someone access to this report that is not an Admin/Deputy Admin
What is this dashboard?
Have you ever wanted to see, at a glance, how many unique calls you made, the number of IDs, how many canvassers you recruited, etc? If so, you know it can take a long time to find all that information in VAN and even longer to make it useful to your voter contact program. The CAR dashboard is intended to help VAN users overcome this challenge!
The Committee Admin Report (CAR) Dashboard presents data sourced from your VAN Committee(s) that is difficult to find or visualize in VAN. For example:
Precinct maps with past election results and voter contact history
Voter contact information by canvasser and date
A list of survey questions and responses
This information can help VAN users understand existing progress or plan future field work. Only VAN Admins and Deputy Admins have access to this report.
How do I access the CAR Dashboard?
Go to txdem.co/report. If you see a page with the Texas Democrats logo and information about the CAR Dashboard, you’re all set! You can read more about how to use and navigate the report on that page.
Access to the CAR Dashboard is set up based on the email associated with your VAN user account. Typically, this is the email you use to log in to VAN, however, some users make a practice of using a personal email for their ActionID and another email (i.e. a campaign email) for their VAN account. Whatever email you receive our VAN emails at is the email that is associated with your VAN account. If you aren’t sure what email is associated with your VAN account, email us at vanhelp@txdemocrats.org and we can check for you.
If you get an access error when going to txdem.co/report, follow these steps:
If you have a Google account for your VAN user account:
If the email that you use for VAN is a Gmail email address (example@gmail.com)- use that email to log in and you should be good to go!
AND
You may need to switch between Google accounts – click your picture or initial in the top right corner of the screen, and then select the other Google account (or add the Google account) from the dropdown.
Note: it is possible to have a Google account with a branded domain (example@txdemocrats.org). This does not apply to most users, so if you don’t know what this means, don’t worry and skip ahead to the next step!
If you have another type of email for your VAN user account:
You do not have to have an @gmail.com email address to access the dashboard. If you use another email service for your VAN account (i.e. Yahoo or Outlook), you will need to create a Google account using that email.
A Google account is not the same thing as a Gmail address (example@gmail.com). You can have a Google Account with a different email address (example@yahoo.com).
Follow the steps here to create a Google account using an existing email.
After creating your Google account, go to Data Studio, click your icon/initial in the top right corner, switch to your new Google account.
Then select “Shared with me” and then click the Committee Admin Report (CAR) Dashboard.
If you have continued access issues, please send us a help ticket by emailing vanhelp@txdemocrats.org and we will help troubleshoot further.
I have access, but can’t see all of my committees on the report
You have access to all of the committees that you are an Admin or Deputy Admin on and are associated with the email that you are viewing the report with. If you can’t see some of your Committees, these are the likely reasons why:
You have a different email associated with the user account(s) on your other Committee(s).
You are not the Admin or Deputy Admin on the VAN Committee(s) you’re looking for: only Admins and Deputy Admins for each committee will have access to view the report for their Committee. If you’d like access to that Committee’s report, please have your Committee Admin bump you up to a Deputy admin, or email us at vanhelp@txdemocrats.org.
Your user account in the other committee(s) is inactive – if you can’t log in to VAN and view that committee, your user account may be inactive.
The report only shows information for active VAN committees – you won’t be able to see data for campaigns from previous cycles.
To confirm which possibility it is and ensure that you have access to all appropriate committees, send us an email at vanhelp@txdemocrats.org.
Where is this data coming from?
All of this data is sourced directly from VAN. We use a DNC tool called Phoenix BigQuery that syncs data from VAN four times a day. This functionally serves as the “back end” of VAN for our data reporting.
How often is this report updated?
The pipelines that refresh the CAR are currently running at 2 AM, 8AM, 2 PM, and 8 PM CT every day. Data in your report will update automatically after those pipelines run, you won’t need to refresh or request that we re-run data.