I've just set up AdvoKit with a voterfile. When I first log in and try to browse contacts there are none. What am I missing?

Original Question: I uploaded my voterfile and ran the perl script, and there are voters in the database, but when I log into advokit as the campaign manager and I try to browse contacts there are none. What am I missing?

AdvoKit does not provide a way to casually browse the voter file (perhaps this will be remedied in the future). "Contacts" in AdvoKit are voters who are on a contact list. Since no contact lists have been created yet, when you click on "Contacts" under the "Browse" section of the sidebar, you see an empty list.

(Note that the following describes a "shortest path" to getting to where you can browse voters. In actual practice, as an organizer, you should be less concerned with browsing voters than you are with managing your campaign: allocating work to volunteers, monitoring performace, etc. But it's reasonable when getting started to want to check out the voter data.)

In the AdvoKit way of thinking, contact lists are relevant to activists who have voter contact responsibilities. Therefore, to be able to create a contact list, you must either be logged in as such an activist (i.e. you occupy a voter-contact activist job), or you must be a leader or upline leader of a team that has a voter-contact job on it that you can assume ("assuming" a job temporarily gives you the same functions as if you actually occupied that job).

To get to this point (assuming that you are logged in as campaign leader), you will need to have established some organization:

• Defined an operation
• Defined a team under that operation
• Defined a job-type that includes voter contact responsibilities
• And finally, created an instance of that job-type on the team

With that established, you can assume the job. When this job is assumed, a block of links will appear in your sidebar that includes a "search voters" section. If your voter file is not very large, you could simply leave the field empty and click "Go". AdvoKit will return a list of all voters in the database (20 at a time). You can enter a search string (that will be matched against voter names and street names). Or you can click on the "advanced search" link to bring up a more elaborate search page.

Some things to bear in mind:

• The "pool" of voters that can be searched and displayed is constrained by any voter filters that have been applied on the team or on a team or operation above it. If you want to browse all voters, you'll need to remove such filters.
• The search results list can be constrained to voters who are on contact lists, not on contact lists, etc., by making a choice on the drop-down list near the top of the page.
• Displaying the results of a search for voters does not create a contact list! This is an additional step - either individually select voters using the check-boxes, or bulk-add; using the controls at the bottom of the page.