Modifying the Fly-In Process

The standard procedure to organize your fly-in assumes that you will do everything through VoterVoice and that you will create a meeting for every time your supporters actually meet with their officials. As such, the Events tool combines registration, meeting creation, and a meeting report survey into a single workflow. You can also modify that process to account for differing situations.

• We want to hold virtual meetings.
• My members are already registered - just not in VoterVoice.
• I have people registering through multiple venues - VoterVoice included.
• We have a lot of meetings and don’t want to create them all from scratch.
• I want to create a single “meeting” for all the meetings someone would have throughout the day.
• Registration and meeting organization is handled elsewhere. I only need VoterVoice to let me know how the meetings went.

We want to hold virtual meetings.

In the location field of a meeting, the legislator's office address will be automatically populated when you select the name of the legislator. Just replace that physical address with the link to the Google Hangout / Skype call / etc... 

This article contains further advice on conducting virtual fly-ins. 

My members are already registered - just not in VoterVoice.

Rather than create the event registration, meetings, and meeting report survey all in one workflow, you take those piece by piece and simply not include the registration through VoterVoice.

You will need to upload a csv file of the registrants’ information into VoterVoice, making sure to use a custom field to flag them as having registered for the fly-in. You would likely want to create a simple yes/no custom field for that.

Next, create a meeting report survey. This is essentially a normal survey in which the first question has the “meeting information” answer type. You will also want to add additional questions to ask for specifics about how the legislators responded to the issues that were discussed.

Finally, create the meetings. Go to Advocacy > Meetings and set them up through that interface. They will appear to your users in the app just as they normally would.

I have people registering through multiple venues - VoterVoice included.

Go through the normal fly-in creation process described here.

Additionally, you will need to upload a csv file of the registrants’ information into VoterVoice, making sure to use a custom field to flag them as having registered for the fly-in. You would likely want to create a simple yes/no custom field for that.

Next go to People > Search Contacts and perform a search for

• “events / registered for / [name of event]”
• "insert or"
• “[name of custom field] / equals / yes.”

That will give you everyone who is registered, regardless of what system they used to do so.

We have a lot of meetings and don’t want to create them all from scratch.

The best way to creating numerous meetings from scratch is to clone existing an meetings. Click the clone icon (middle icon) to the right of an existing meeting to create an exact copy.

Once you have created the clone, click on it to edit the details and hit save when you are done.

I want to create a single “meeting” for all the meetings someone would have throughout the day.

It may happen that you have a group of supporters (maybe everyone from a particular region) staying together throughout the day and attending all the same meetings. While the system is designed for a meeting to equate to one time that your supporters sit down with a single official, you are able to use it for multiple meetings within one “meeting.”

To do this, create a meeting and set the details to those that are appropriate for the first actual meeting of the day. In the agenda field, enter the actual schedule with official names, times, and locations.

The meeting report survey will be automatically tied to the first legislator, but you can add additional questions that specify that they are in reference to later interactions.

Realize that the reporting associated with a meeting of this nature will necessarily be more general than one associated with a single interaction and will not be tied to any legislator beyond the one you specify when setting up the meeting.

Registration and meeting organization is handled elsewhere. I only need VoterVoice to let me know how the meetings went.

All you need to do is create a meeting report survey. This is essentially a normal survey in which the first question has the “meeting information” answer type. You will also want to add additional questions to ask for specifics about how the legislators responded to the issues that were discussed. If you anticipate your supporters meeting with multiple officials, you will need to either include extra questions so that all responses can be submitted at a single time or make the survey anonymous so that your attendees can fill it our multiple times.