VAN FAQ

A document of responses to frequently asked VAN questions. Have a question that’s not on here? File a ticket at txdem.co/VAN-Help. Not sure where to get started? Checkout Freshdesk Resources Hub


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Getting started

What is VAN?

How do I get trained in VAN?


How do I know where to get VAN Help?


I just want to start contacting and registering voters!


Logging in

How do I accept my invitation to join a VAN committee?



How do I log into VAN?

  • Go to texasvan.com and click Login with Action ID. You can no longer log in with Account Name due to security reasons.

  • See more about Signing into VAN for more help on Action ID and Multi Factor Authentication.


I forgot my password for my Action ID - what do I do?

  • Click “Don’t remember your password?” on the Action ID login screen after you click on Login with Action ID on texasvan.com to start the password reset process. 

  • Remember since you can no longer log in with an account name, do not click “Forgot my password?” under the login for VAN Account Name on texasvan.com to start the password reset process… because you will not be able to login with an account name even with a correct password.


Targets

What are targets?

Targets are dynamic lists of voters that have been grouped together based on field data and feedback from campaigns and county parties.  They have been developed for different purposes - recruiting volunteers, engaging democratic activists, finding low propensity democratic voters, finding persuadable voters, and finding folks who have voted in Democratic primaries. They are computed by the TDP data team using scores and metrics with the goal of simplifying your list creation process.  Targets are built around Saved Lists and Saved Searches. Targets can be shared with whole committees or all committees, and are generally limited to managing extremely large lists affecting more than one committee or statewide campaigns.  Targets always refresh overnight and do not change in between. Here is a screenshot of what the Targets row can look like in Create A New List.

How can I figure out who is in the targets?

You can view the explanations at txdem.co/tdp-targets.

How do I build a list based on targets?

Watch our video and check out the slides.


Scripts

What are scripts and how do I create them?


Quick Look Up

What is Quick Look Up and how can it help me?


Create a List, Labels & More

What is Create a List?

See our guide on Create a List and its search criteria here: Create a List FAQ


How do I create and print lists?

Creating and Printing Lists in TexasVAN


How do I create labels/envelopes and other things from a mail merge?

  • You may want to send out literature to your constituents, one way that VAN can help is the Labels function that allows you to pull names and addresses directly from your list in VAN into a PDF file. 

  • To create labels in VAN, do the following:

    • Create your list in “Create A List”, and then “Run Search”

    • In the “My List” page, click “Labels”

    • In the “Print Labels” page, select your formats as appropriate.

    • You have three options for “Label Format”, we recommend that you choose the “Standard Mailing Labels (Avery 5160)” which is the 3 across, 10 down option to maximize space. 

    • To ensure inclusiveness and to avoid addressing the wrong family, we recommend that you select “Print one label per Address” under “Householding”, and “Our Friends At” under “Household Label”.

    • You can also sort the order of the items on the label. We recommend you stick to the basic order of name, mail zip, city, zip code, county. Avoid choosing age or phone numbers.

    • Once done, click “Next” and follow the instructions on the screen.

    • Your label file will be created as a PDF file. Unless you have a specific software that allows you to convert PDF to something else like Word, you will not be able to edit the information on the labels. 


It is an excellent life skill to be able to mail merge an exported list from VAN (To export a list, create a list and then hit the export button. You can also export from VAN to Google Sheets now, more details here, and then do a mail merge in Excel/Word (Microsoft Office), or Google Docs/Sheets (Google Drive). You can do mail merges for form letters, emails, labels, envelopes and more. 


Here are some helpful links to create mail merges:



TDP Partisanship Score

We recently debuted an exciting new data tool that is now live in your VAN account: TDP Partisanship Scores. This score evaluates whether a given voter is likely to vote for Democrats or not, based on a 0-100 score, where higher scores represent higher likelihood that an individual is a Democrat.


We encourage you to use this score over any others. TDP Partisanship Model has a number of advantages compared to the scores we’ve used previously in VAN:


  • Scores are available for all registered voters in Texas, and become available for newly registered voters shortly after they appear on the voter file.

  • Our model is trained using only Texas data and is therefore better calibrated to recognize the unique behavior, such as strategic primary voting, of Texans. In testing, it outperformed all the national models.

  • Our model will get smarter over time. Every time you enter a voter interaction into VAN - especially if we learn about that voter’s partisanship - the model gets better at predicting not only that voter’s behavior, but the behavior of voters across the state.


Because this score is still so new, we are eager to hear your feedback regarding the model and thoughts about what we should build next. Please do not hesitate to submit a help ticket with any questions or feedback: txdem.co/van-help


How do I search by Precinct, County Commissioner or Justice of the Peace/Constable in a list?

  • Create a list

  • Navigate to “Home Districts”

  • Select a county if your districting/geography covers multiple counties—Precinct, County Commissioner or Justice of the Peace/Constable WILL NOT appear if a single, specific County is not selected (see screenshot)

  • Select an individual Precinct (won’t appear until you select a county), County Comm or JP/Constable in the drop down, or click the linked blue word Precinct, County Comm or JP/Constable to select multiple


How do I cut turf in VAN?

Webinar: Report Format and Turf Cutting


How do I delete unused lists / map regions?

  • You can delete an entire folder by navigating to that folder, clicking Edit Folder, and changing the status or deleting it.  DELETING a folder is PERMANENT, so we recommend changing the status to Inactive instead of deleting

  • You can modify a list by navigating to the folder, and clicking Edit.  From there you will be able to delete it.


MiniVAN

How do I download MiniVan?


How do I set up an ActionID in MiniVAN?

  • Click Create your action id if you have never created one before (Screenshot below)

  • Setup your account following the prompts (If you already have an Action ID, do not create a new one—you can follow the troubleshooting here on all things login/Action ID/Multi Factor Authentication: MFA Overview (Of note: MFA is a must for logging into texasvan.com (VAN) and not the MiniVAN App))


Need more MiniVAN info?

Check out the resources on MiniVAN at txdem.co/data-resources & MiniVANual


How can I distinguish between targets in MiniVan / show different scripts for different targets?

  • Open MiniVAN Campaigns

  • Under script details choose “Choose a Default Script and alternate Scripts based on Target's Subgroups”

  • Select your generic script, and then select specific scripts for specific sub-targets

  • Even if you want to say the same thing to everyone, you can put a note at the top of the script (e.g., NOTE: This person voted in the May 2019 election, or NOTE: This person is a low propensity Democratic voter)


How do I make a distributed canvass?

  • How to guide is here


What personal smartphones/tablets are good to use, in general? What tablets/cell phones should MyCampaign/county party purchase for MiniVAN if we don’t want to use only personal smartphones?

  • Do not use Huawei, ZTE smartphones/tablets. Most recently, MIT cut ties with Huawei and ZTE, joining federal agencies, the DNC and other academic institutions in their decision to stop using the Chinese-made equipment due to Chinese Government/Intelligence security concerns. There are no other smartphone/tablet manufacturers with known security concerns. 

  • VAN will be dropping support for anything less than Android 5 and support for iOS 8 (smartphone/tablet operating systems) at some point in the future. If you want this tablet to last a few cycles we recommend buying current generation devices with current iOS and Android versions or bare minimum Android 5 / iOS 8.


How do I use MiniVAN Quick Look Up?

See our guide here: FAQ - MiniVAN Quick Look Up


MiniVAN Manager - an extra, paid feature to track your MiniVAN Blockwalkers in real-time

What is MiniVAN Manager and how do I request to add it/request a demo?

MiniVAN Manager is not administered by TDP. Please get more information at ngpvan.com/go/minivan-manager and txdem.co/MiniVANual.


What is the monthly/yearly subscription cost of MiniVAN Manager?

Please reach out to sales@ngpvan.com for more information on MiniVAN Manager pricing. 


Phones and phone banks

Best practices for using paper lists and making sure that data is in VAN

  • We prefer that everyone uses Virtual Phone Bank/OpenVPB. But if you use paper phone lists, you need to make sure that all of your phone data is recorded properly in VAN. More details here.


Understanding phones in VAN

What are the Phone Quality Scores in VAN?

  • A helpful feature that can help maximize the time you spend making calls

  • Phone Quality Scores are assigned to phone numbers based on a wide array of historical data. They estimate how likely a phone number is to connect you with a potential voter, with higher scores indicating higher quality numbers.

  • You can find them under the Phones section in Create a List; there, you can limit your search to higher scores or exclude lower scores.

  • There are five values. Higher scores indicate better numbers:

    • Very Low

    • Low

    • Medium

    • High

    • Very High

  • More details here - slides


What is the verification status and display of cell phones in VAN?


What is a preferred phone?

  • Preferred phones are a measure either of something that has been manually marked preferred or the most recent update

  • The specific number that is preferred will change over time, so we discourage folks from relying on this as the best phone number

  • Instead we encourage you to try all of the numbers

  • Preferred phone logic prioritized phones in the following order:

    • The phone is marked preferred

    • The phone is on the highest (best) Phone Quality Score bucket

    • Between two phone numbers in the same bucket, rank the most recently added phone number first

    • User-added phones will be assigned the highest (best) Phone Quality Score


Which numbers should I call / text in VAN?

  • We encourage you to export all of the numbers (not just preferred).  You can attempt all of them on a VPB (virtual phone bank), and have your texting provider determine which numbers are textable.


How do I limit my search to only people who have phones?

  • Under source, click check all


Why are Cell Exports Restricted?

  • Restricting cell exports is a national best practice, ensuring:

    • People do not to robocall/text blast cells since this is against regulations; 

    • Folks texting using approved texting providers are using API connections

  • We do on a case-by-case basis give export privileges for cells 

    • To request this put in a ticket txdem.co/VAN-Help and include the application that you will be sending cells to and/or a description of what you are trying to do and how/with what tools you will be doing it with if approved

Virtual Phone Bank

Virtual Phone Banks (VPB) and Open Virtual Phone Bank (Open VPB)

What is a virtual phone bank/open virtual phone bank? How do I create and use it?


What are the differences between VPB and Open VPB?


What resources are available for my volunteers who are new to phone banking?


Dialers

What dialer vendors are available? What are their rates? What are each of their features?


How do I sign up for Dialer Platforms (admins only)?


Texting

What texting vendors are available? What are their rates? What are each of their features?

How do I sign up for Texting Platforms? (admins only)


How do I setup my Hustle integration and administer Hustle? 

How do I sign up for Hustle?


How do I setup my VAN integration / API with Hustle?


How do I configure my integration with Hustle?

 

How do I import a list from VAN to Hustle?

  • Details on list import here


How do I know which type of goal to choose?



Where can I get additional help with Hustle?

Emails in VAN

Why can’t I see emails in VAN?

  • Emails are always local to the committee that those emails are put in (regardless if in My Voters or MyCampaign)

    • Unless you or someone have in the past put an email in that campaign/county party/organization’s VAN, there will be no emails

  • Emails from other campaigns/county parties/organizations are not included with VAN Access. 

    • Sharing email lists leads to an increase in spam and a decrease in email deliverability rates

    • We recommend organic collection of emails since that will have higher open rates and deliverability rates


Canvass Results, Suppressions, and Contact / Input Types

What are the different types of Canvass Results and how do they impact suppressions?


What are Contact types / Input types and which ones should be used in conjunction with canvass results?

  • Canvass data will be categorized by contact type, which indicates how they were contacted.  It is important to do this consistently so that historical data can be better aggregated.  More on Contact / Input Types here.


Voting History

What do the letters mean in Voting History?

  • M & A = Mail/Absentee Mail Ballot Voters (Voted-By-Mail)

  • E = Early Voted in-person

  • P = Election Day Voted in-person (Polls)

  • Y = Voted, but method unknown (Could be voted-by-mail, early, or election day)

  • D = Democratic Primary or Primary Runoff Voter

  • R = Republican Primary or Primary Runoff Voter


How do I get voter history from elections that are not in VAN (non-partisan elections not in November)?

  • Similar to limiting to only the voters in your district where there are split precincts in non-partisan races, you would request this from your county and upload into a saved list (not an activist code or survey question).

  • More details here at our Managing data in Non-Partisan Elections FAQ.


When will data from the most recent election be added to Voting History?

  • Before we are able to upload election history, we have to wait for the Secretary of State to finish its canvass of all 254 counties’ election results. This process usually takes 4-6 weeks after Election Day. 

  • If 4-6 weeks have passed since Election Day, please feel free to reach out via a help ticket and inquire about information status. 


Early Voting Data Tracking

  • More information here.


My Campaign

What's the difference between My Voters and My Campaign?

  • There are two sides to VAN: My Voters and My Campaign

  • My Voters houses the permanent voters file whereas, My Campaign is unique to your own campaign

  • My Campaign houses powerful volunteer management & Event tools

  • Click here for more details


How do I add someone to MyCampaign?

  • There are several ways to add someone to MyCampaign:

    • Manually copying from MyVoters

    • Automatically copying survey question responses

    • Bulk Upload through Process Volunteers

    • Automatically copying through integrations

    • Adding through quick lookup

  • More details on each of these here



How do I use VAN to plan events?


How do I record someone’s social media profile?

MyCampaign allows you to write down information about social media profiles:

  • Find voter (e.g., in a list, quick lookup)

  • Open profile

  • Click “Social Media”



How do I search for duplicates?

  • Go to Create a List

  • Create list of all of your contacts

  • Click Duplicate People



  • Click Search for Duplicates



  • Choose criteria

  • Review information and merge as appropriate


How do I merge duplicates?


Bulk Upload

What is a bulk upload, and how do I do that? 



Can I upload from Google Sheets?


I have a list of people in my neighborhood that I want to mark as D / R in VAN - how do I bulk upload them?


Where can I get more information about ThruTalk Bulk Upload?


2022 Best Practices: Mark Your Mail in VAN!

Cutting lists for Non-Partisan elections / dealing with districts that split precincts


Survey Questions and Master Survey Questions


Activist Codes

What activist codes should I use?

  • We are moving away from the use of activist codes and suggest using survey questions for data collection. We request that you submit a help ticket at txdem.co/van-help for more information.


Ethnicity, Race, Religious Cultural Identity Scores/Models in VAN

Ethnicity, Race, Religious Cultural Identity, and other values assigned in VAN in Scores or in other ways are based on models we don't have control over. They cannot be changed. However, in regards to Ethnicity/Race, we are starting to think through how we can more comprehensively collect self-identified information. The first step is collecting as much information as possible. If you want to mark those folks using the SQ XCmty Self-ID Ethn, that will be a big help.


API Keys / Application Integrations (including how to request API Keys)


MobilizeAmerica

What is MobilizeAmerica? 

  • Our contract with Mobilize America has ended, and unlike previous cycles, we will no longer be able to offer free MobilizeAmerica accounts for all committees that purchase VAN. On January 31st, 2023 all Mobilize accounts outside of County Parties were discontinued. Please note that we will continue to provide Mobilize free of cost to all County Parties.


How do I sign up for MobilizeAmerica?

  • Committees that would like to use Mobilize can get their own contract by emailing polisales@ngpvan.com.

  • If you previously had a committee and want it reactivated, please be sure to include the full name and URL of that committee, which will ensure the Mobilize team maintains or reactivates your existing account. It is important to note that contacts/sign-ups are not permanently deleted when a Mobilize account is deactivated. Accounts can be reactivated without any loss of data. 

  • To get your API key please visit our API Key FAQ for more details. 


How do I use MobilizeAmerica?


NGP 7 & NGP 8 Integration with VAN

What are the benefits for integration between my VAN committee and my NGP 7 or NGP 8?


Where do I request that my NGP 7 or 8 is integrated with VAN?

  • Put in a VAN help ticket at txdem.co/VAN-Help with what campaign, county party or organization you are with, who has already purchased VAN and NGP 7 or 8. Ensure that both are currently active. 

  • Additionally, if you have NGP 8, let us know in the Help ticket what user in VAN should have the Administer Integration permission.

    • The Administer Integration permission will allow that user to choose Survey Questions and Activist Codes that they would like pushed from VAN MyCampaign to the NGP 8 side. It will only do this with records that came from the sync from NGP 8 to VAN MyCampaign.

    • If you are the single user with this Administer Integration permission, go to the Administrative Menu: Advanced: Administer NGP Integration for this permission and review NGP 8 + VAN Integration Documentation

  • NGP 7 is no longer available for new campaigns. But general info on NGP 8 is at act.ngpvan.com/ngp8.


User Administration (Admins only)

Where do I take the VAN Administration Course on our online learning platform?

Sign up for the VAN Administration Course on our online learning platform. See the section “Training / Where can I learn more about how to use VAN?” above or find via the table of contents on this VAN FAQ for more!


What are the responsibilities of an admin?

  • See here for details


Why should you create users?

Who should create users?

How do I add new users?

Who can I create accounts for?

  • See here for details to the questions above


How do I deactivate or reactivate a user?

  • See here for details


How do I change information about a user / change my own profile information?

  • See here for details


How do I debug basic login issues?

  • See here for details


There are other users in my committee on my users page. I don’t know who they are and cannot manage them.

The users you are talking about are State Party Staff/Interns/Fellows and have access to all or multiple committees in the state. The way the VAN shows users on the users screen shows the committee they were last signed into, which we know can be alarming. Ideally, it would just list Texas Democratic Party, but it's not something we can change.


If you see a user and they are listed as a State Administrator, Texas Super Deputy State Admin—TDP, Texas Deputy State Admin—TDP, and Texas Grand Admin—TDP, those are all authorized State Party users. If there are API users listed (API in the name or user profile), those were authorized by your campaign at some point in the past to connect with another application.


Impersonating User Accounts - Handy for sharing folders to users/user groups

  • To impersonate a user account, click on the 'More' dropdown and then on 'Impersonate User' when you are on a user’s profile 

    • While you're impersonating a user, the 'More' dropdown disappears so that users cannot purposefully or accidentally make changes to a user account as another user.

    • For all intents and purposes, impersonation will allow you act as if you are that user for the vast majority of permissions

    • To return to self, click on the name in the top right and click ‘return to self’

  • Impersonation is most handy when a user hasn’t shared a folder with lists (including turfs) to other users or user groups

    • To create a user group, go to the administrative menu: users: user groups

    • To share a folder to a user or user group go to that folder, hit edit folder, and add the user or user group that needs access

  • You are only able to impersonate users that have a user profile set that is below yours, i.e. a Level 2 user can impersonate a user in Levels 3-7 (see txdem.co/TDP-User-Profiles for more on user profiles)



Reporting 

What is the counts and crosstabs tool, and how do I use it?


What is the report manager, and how do I use it?


VAN Usage Policy for Activists

What is the VAN usage policy?

All activist VAN users (including but not limited to county parties, precinct chairs, SDEC members, and other organizations such as clubs) must affirm the VAN Usage Policy (txdem.co/van-usage) using our online form (txdem.co/confirm-van-guidelines).


When do I need to do this?

  • We will email new users monthly and give them 30 days to sign

  • You can also distribute this to your users proactively


My account was turned off because I didn’t affirm - what do I do?

  • Affirm at txdem.co/confirm-van-guidelines

  • Then submit a help ticket at txdem.co/van-help with the specific information we need to reactivate your account, (first & last name; County Party/Committee; all possible emails associated with your account).


My account was turned off and I thought I did affirm - what do I do?

  • Either the form wasn’t filled out all the way and we didn’t get the response or there was an error matching your VAN account to your affirmation.

  • Reaffirm at txdem.co/confirm-van-guidelines to ensure that it goes through this time.

  • Then submit a help ticket at txdem.co/van-help with the specific information we need to reactivate your account, (first & last name; County Party/Committee; all possible emails associated with your account).


Does this impact users of campaigns or organizations’ VAN committees who have a VAN license?

No. Their usage agreement is covered when they sign up for VAN. This covers what we call activists in the VAN Usage Policy (txdem.co/van-usage): “County parties, precinct chairs, SDEC members, and other organizations such as clubs.”