Toolbox v.7.1 Overview
PRINTOrganizer’s Toolbox version 7.1 introduces several important changes that will greatly enhance your ability to manage organizing details with the introduction of Project Roles. This document is meant to give a brief overview of these changes so that OT Administrators, Campaign Leads, and Campaign Directors can begin thinking about how to make the best use of Project Roles to enhance their campaigns. In the coming weeks we will release detailed support documentation to enable users to get up to speed quickly, and as always we will continue to provide personal phone support upon request.
What’s Changed?
New components of the Toolbox:
- Project Roles
- Staff Module
- Project Roles Tab (in the Person Module)
The following modifications have been made that you should pay special attention:
- Organize Tab has been eliminated
- Project Edit
- Reports - Grouping & Sorting: Organizer sorting option
- Turf Manager - Has been replaced with Project Roles
- Organizer Module - Replaced with Staff Module
Project Roles
Project Roles is a customizable component that will allow 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 works similarly to the Turf Manager in that you can:
- 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
How is this different from OT 7.0? In Ot 7.0 only two distinctions were made in the Turf Manager, Organizer or Organizing Committee. While this set-up works effectively in the context of a new organizing campaign, some users found it too limiting in the context of Contract Campaigns, Political Organizing, Internal or Membership Organizing (i.e., Member Representation), or COPE Drives. Consequently many people relied on Lists to identify the different Organizing Staff and worker activist distinctions. While this strategy works quite well for many people, it does not allow the use of one of the most powerful & useful features of the Toolbox, managing turf on the basis of defined rules and then generating lists and reports on the basis of these rules. Project Roles will allow you to take managing your campaigns to a new level of sophistication.
Staff Module
The Staff Module replaces the Organizer Module and greatly enhances the level of detail available in one convenient location. With the Staff Module you can now see in one place a summary of Staff assignments, the different Roles they have within the Project as well as in other Projects, the Organizing Team(s) they belong to, as well as contact information.
Project Roles Tab (Person Module)
The Project Roles tab replaces the Organize tab in Ot 7.1. The Project Roles tab gives not only a summary of the different Roles a worker may have within a Project and in other Projects, but also allows a user with the appropriate level of permission to manually edit organizing assignments and override rules established in the Turf Definitions Manager.
Other Modifications of note
This section will highlight those changes that have not already been noted in previous sections. Note that these modifications will affect the way in which you perform certain tasks in the Toolbox so please read this section carefully.
- The Organize Tab has been eliminated (please see Project Roles). The two List Categories that used to exist on the Organize Tab (Issues and Willing To) have been moved to the Lists tab. These two List Categories will be enabled by default for all projects.
- Organizer Module - (please see Staff Module)
- Turf Manager - Has been replaced with Project Roles Manager
Project Edit - now allows Project Editors to add new Roles to a Project. Please note that both “Add Role to Project” and “Remove from Project” can also be done through the Project Roles manager with the Project.
The final important component that has changed in Ot 7.1 is the Grouping & Sorting portion of the Reports & Extracts Module.
The Organizer sorting option has been removed and replaced with “Turf.” To sort by Organizer you will now need to select “Turf: Assigned To”. There are also two other options, “Turf: Team Leader,” and “Turf: Team Name.” For more information on this feature please see Sorting by roles in Toolbox 7.1.