Project Roles & Creating Turf
PRINTProject Roles is a powerful and customizable new component introduced in Organizer’s Toolbox 7.1 that allows users with appropriate permissions to assign Turf on the basis of a person’s “role” or job description in the context of a campaign or Project. Project Roles allows users to
- Establish turfing rules for each project or campaign
- Cut turf based on virtually any data including worksite, geographic and political data
- Manage both Staff Turf and Member or Activist Turf
- Assign staff and key activists to targeted people using easy-to-assign rules
Project Roles allows for the differentiation between Staff Organizers and Organizing Committee, as well as allowing for the differentiation between types of Staff (Political Organizer, Internal Organizer, External Organizer, Labor Rep., etc.) and even among union activists (Organizing Committee, Contract Action Team, Steward, Member Political Organizer, etc.) who are key to any organizing campaign. Project Roles allows you to specify, on a Project-by-Project basis, what kind of Organizing Roles will be associated with your campaign and allow you to create and manager Turf quickly and easily.
This article explains the Project Roles user interface and walks through a short scenario for setting up Turf for for a new organizing campaign.
Getting Started with Project Roles
You can access the Project Roles interface in two ways, through the Modules button at the top of the screen
or in the Project section on the Toolbox dashboard
The main screen when you open Project Roles is a summary page that gives you, at a glance, an overall summary of turf assignments.
The screen is divided into two sections, Project Roles listing
and Project Role Summary
You can create a new Role for the Project by clicking the ‘Add Remove Roles’ button at the bottom of the Project Roles list. This brings up a new dialog box.
Click “Add role to Project and this brings up another dialog box. In this example I am going to add a Member Political Organizer Role to the Project by selecting from the list of Roles in the drop-down box.
Click the ‘Add Role to Project’ and you’ll now see the new Role in the list of Project Roles.
Click ‘Done’ to close that box.
Now you need to add people to the Member Political Organizer Role so that you can assign them Turf. Click the Add Person button at the bottom of the summary section.
The familiar “Find a Person” dialog box will appear.
I’ve entered the name of one of my member activists and when it finds his name I click “Done” and see that he has been added to the Role.
Now we need to create Turf for this Role. Click the “Edit Turf” button above the person summary. A new screen will appear that looks similar to the Roles Summary screen.
Click the “Add Rule” button and a new dialog box will appear
In this case I’m going to create a new Rule based on Buildings
After specifying the Turf “Split,” or rule, the Edit Turf screen will display the possible permutations of turf based on that Split. In this scenario the left pane displays the Buildings associated with the employer City of East Ongonquin, and the right pane displays the Member Political Organizers (MPO) to whom turf can be assigned.
To assign Buildings, place a check next the name of one of the MPOs and then select all of the Buildings that will be assigned to that MPO.
Click the left arrow to move those Buildings to the right pane under the appropriate MPO. Repeat this process until you have turfed out all the Buildings.
Click the “Save & Close” button at the bottom of the screen and you’ll be returned to the Assignment Rules screen. Click the “Generate” button below the Assignment Summary grid and Turf will be automatically assigned to each MPO based on the Rule you just created.
Click “Done” to return to the Project Roles home screen.