User accounts are how individuals access your VAN Committee to do campaign or political work. You can create new user accounts in your committee for staff and super volunteers. Volunteers who are just knocking on doors or making phone calls do not need their own user accounts--you can use a virtual phone bank or miniVAN without a VAN account. 


User Profiles

User profiles control what features an individual user has access to within VAN. Users should have a high enough level to perform their direct work without unnecessary features they won’t be using. 


Why can’t every user have every option? 


  • Security: A volunteer or new staffer shouldn’t have the ability to export your volunteer database

  • Efficiency: Simple actions get harder with more menus and options to dig through

  • Organization: Too many administrators doing too many things makes it hard to find the correct script, list, event, folder, etc. and results in mistakes. 


We’re Democrats, not anarchists; a campaign with 3 field directors has too many cooks in the kitchen. 


Available user profiles:


User Profile Level

Description

MI Field (1) Comm Admin

VAN account for trained data staff. Has roughly the same permissions as field director but receives support requests from the rest of staff before they go to the state party. Also has a few more options for interacting with/uploading data from outside data sources.

MI Field (2) Field Dir.

VAN account for managing a field campaign. Can manage all staff, schedule reports, launch auto dialer/robo dialer campaigns, and request API integrations to outside vendors/services.

MI Field (3) Reg. Director

VAN account for higher level campaign/party staff. Can manage field organizers, take bulk actions in VAN, and administer more back-end data considerations like report formats, letters, and labels.

MI Field (4) Field Organizer

VAN account for campaign/party staff. Can create lists, manage canvasses and phone banks, administer volunteer accounts, write scripts, run basic reports, and export data for mailings.

MI Field (5) Super Vol

VAN account for super volunteers who are helping out on more back-end processes like cutting turf and data entry. Can cut turf from saved lists, enter data from paper lists, or use quick lookup to update voter contact information and deceased records. Cannot search on scores or prior field data.

MI Field (6) Phone/miniVAN Vol

VAN account that can dial into virtual phone bank campaigns or auto-dialers. Also applicable if you want to send miniVAN lists directly to canvassers instead of printing list numbers. DOES NOT have MyCampaign access.


Creating a new user account


Most staff users and field users with user profiles MI Field (4) and higher have the ability to create new user accounts. However, your level of access dictates what type of accounts you can create. New field directors or data directors will need to have their user profile updated by MDP staff. 


  1. Select “Users” from the sidebar or administrative menu.


  1. Click “Add new user” in the upper right.


  1. Fill in new user’s first name, last name, and email address. 


  1. Select your committee from the dropdown menu


  1. Select their My Voter File Profile at the staff level for the user (see list on previous page)

    1. Note that you DO NOT need to assign MyCampaign access. Phone bank/miniVAN volunteers should not have MyCampaign access


  1. Under “Assign Access,” give them access to the voters they need to perform their job. That can range from a whole district to a specific precinct. 


  1. Select “Create User”



Once you’ve created the account, the user will receive an email inviting them to create an Action ID. They have 48 hours to accept this invite. 



If the user did not accept the invitation within 48 hours, you can go back to their profile from the Users section and select the option to resend the welcome email.