Pages¶

Processing User Actions¶

Here's what the process looks like:

1 A user arrives on your page.

The user either followed a link or typed a URL into a browser's address bar. Usually the link was in a mailing you sent them but it could also have been forwarded by a friend or posted on Facebook or in a blog, etc.

2 ActionKit checks the URL for an ActionKit ID (or AKID) and action source.

Mailings from ActionKit generally include this information and you can add them to other links you create.

• If the link includes the AKID, ActionKit looks at your page to see what fields are required, then in the database to see if we have that information for the user. See required fields for more information.
• If we have the required information, the user sees a message like Not Bob? Click here. and doesn't have to enter any personal data. See recognized users for more information.
• If we're missing anything, the user is presented with a blank user form.
• If the link doesn't include the AKID, the user is presented with a blank user form.

3 Either way the user takes the suggested action (hopefully) and submits by clicking the button on the page (which will say something like Submit Donation or Send Letter).

4 ActionKit checks the information the user submitted.

• If required fields are still missing, the user sees an error message and must enter the information before the action will be processed. See Required Form Fields for more information.
• If the field is one we validate and the data is wrong (like a 6-digit zip code), the user sees an error and must correct the entry to submit.

5 Once the user successfully submits, a row is added to the core_action table. Content, like letter text, is saved. See Data Capture 101 for more information.

• If the link includes an action source (included in mailings by default), it's saved to core_action as well. If not the action is assigned the generic source, website.

6 ActionKit checks to see if the user entered an email address that is new to your database:

• If so, ActionKit creates a new user by adding a row to the core_user table.
• If the email is not new, that means the user was recognized from the link or entered an email address that was already in your database. Either way, ActionKit saves any new or changed information to the existing user record.

7 ActionKit checks to see if the user's subscription status or list membership has changed. By default, taking action on a page makes the user mailable and adds them to whatever mailing list you associate with the page, if they aren't already on it.

The user doesn't see any of this! After submitting, the user immediately lands at the URL you specified during page creation - usually a thank you page generated from content you entered on the Edit content screen.

8 If you enabled the tell-a-friend widget, the user sees a box for friends' email addresses. ActionKit will send them the TAF message and append the source code taf to links. (So if the friend follows the link, they start the process at the top).

9 Finally, ActionKit takes a look at the address data the user submitted and adds and corrects location-related information (for example, we add the user's Congressional District based on their zip and address info). See Geographic coding for more information.

Pages And Users¶

Default Settings¶

You can customize your instance's header, change various defaults, enable advanced functionality and more from the CONFIG screen.

The page-related defaults include:

Page Settings

Pages Related Tools¶

Please click here to see the descriptions of page related tools.

Pages Dashboard¶

On the Pages Dashboard you can toggle between Recent Pages, Multilingual Campaigns, and Models.

The Recent Pages view displays the page type and action count for the page by default. You can change the action information displayed by editing the Page Mini-dash report.

Select Browse All or Browse By Type buttons at the top of the Pages dashboard to see a full list of all pages or pages of a certain type, respectively.

Browse All And Browse By Page Type¶

The Browse All button displays the full list of all pages. Alternatively, use the Browse by Type or use the search box and the built in filters to view a list of specific pages on this screen.

These screens displays the same Summary Data as the dashboard.

From these listings you can:

• Filter pages by type, tag, language and model status using the toolbar on the right.
• Search short names and titles and sort the list by specifying Order By and Descending or Ascending and clicking Search.
• Show hidden or disabled pages by clicking Show Hidden. Hide a page by clicking Hide.
• Create a new page by copying an existing page.
• Bulk edit pages to show/hide pages or add/remove tags from pages.

Advanced Search¶

Advanced Search provides considerably more options than browsing all.

To perform an advanced search:

When browsing all, click the Advanced Search button at the top of the results page; or click the Advanced Search button from the Pages tab.

The default is All records which will show you all the pages in your database. To limit this Add a Filter by selecting from the dropdown. You can set a sort order if you'd like. Then click Search.

Filter Options

The filter options are taken from those found in the Pages query builder. All filters include some common controls:

• Click on the × icon to remove a filter.
• Click and drag the ≡ to change the order in which the filters appear.
• To exclude rows based on a filter, click on the green Required button to toggle it to Excluded.

Many filters include variables that you can adjust. You'll see these as soon as you select the display.

For example, if you select the display type Number of Actions, you'll see a dropdown with All Actions selected by default. You can change this to:

• Completed Actions - only those with a "completed" status in core_action.
• Non-Spam Actions - only those not designed status="spam" in core_action; only relevant if you've enabled spam checks.
• Spam Actions - only those with a "spam" status in core_action, only relevant if you've enabled spam checks.

You'll also see options for restricting the time period of the actions (e.g. today, last year, custom range, etc.) and specifying the action count.

To see a list of the choices and the corresponding SQL for any of the available filters, view the Query Builder SQL Reference.

There are some filter options in the query builder that aren't here (e.g. SQL expressions and row limits). Also, blank fields are treated as empty values instead of as parameters.

Bulk Editing¶

For Pages, you can hide pages, show hidden pages, add and remove tags from pages in bulk.

Hiding a page disables it. If a user goes to the URL for a hidden page, they’ll see a “Sorry, the URL you tried to load doesn't exist” error. This is true for all hidden pages, whether they’re hidden individually or in bulk.

Be especially careful hiding unsubscribe pages. If the unsubscribe page is used in one of your mailing wrappers, your mailing may fail and in any case, the page won’t be reachable, leading to irritated users marking your mailing as spam and quite possibly cats and dogs living together.

To bulk edit:

1 From the Browse All screen (or from the Event List screen for events), click on the “Bulk Edit” link in the top left next to “Show Hidden”.

2 Choose the items that you want to apply the action to -- you can click to select specific items, or select all items visible on the screen.

3 Click the Save button, review the count of objects to be changed, and confirm.

You’ll then see a reportback with the number of changes actually made. This may differ from the preliminary count if, for example, an object you try to apply a tag to already has that tag.

Confirmation Email¶

The Confirmation Email usually thanks the user for their action.

You can use Snippets to insert conditional content. To include a Snippet in the subject, cut and paste the Snippet from those available for the body.

There's a Snippet that allows you to include the user's response to any survey questions (aka action fields). The syntax is action.custom_fields.QUESTION_NAME. You can only do this for survey questions that are on the page associated with the Confirmation Email.

Your Confirmation Email must include an unsubscribe link. Not many users unsubscribe as a result of the thank you email, but offering that option contributes to your standing with the various ISPs.

To create your Confirmation Email you need to:

1 Select the Email wrapper from the dropdown list. Wrappers define the header and footer of your email. See creating email wrappers.

2 Select the Email From Line entry from the dropdown list, add a new From Line, or fill in a From Line for use in this mailing only by clicking "use a custom From Line". See From Line.

3 Enter your Email subject.

4 Enter your Email body.

Content¶

The content for your page is entered here. The text boxes for all page Types share the same basic functionality.

File Attachments¶

There are two places you can add a file-upload field to an action form:

• As a survey question on survey pages.
• As a custom action field in the user form on most page types.

File uploads won't work on pages hosted or embedded outside of ActionKit.

Users are limited to uploading files of no more than 50MB in size.

You can restrict uploads to just images, or accept videos or document files.

Uploaded files are stored in your AWS S3 bucket, using private URLs that allow you to download them without making them accessible to the public.

Links to the uploaded files are available in the values saved for the relevant action fields. You can use the Download Actions tool or a query report to retrieve these values.

The values saved in the action field contain three items separated by spaces:

• The download URL for the file, accessible only to signed-in admin users with either "Can access user details" or superuser permissions.
• The S3 storage URL, which you can use with AWS tools to retrieve or delete the file.
• The file size in bytes.

You can also find a list of all files uploaded using this mechanism by querying the core_fileattachment table, which includes columns for the page, user, action, and other related metadata.

GDPR Compliance¶

The General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, came into effect in 2018. We've added a way to show a privacy UI in action forms when the user selects an affected country, and to require an extra privacy= parameter when those actions are submitted.

See GDPR Compliance for details on what's available.

Goal¶

Thermometers can increase action rates, so we've made it easy to add one to your page.

To include a thermometer on your page, enter a numeric goal in the goal section and select the type of actions to count. The options are:

• Actions -- total actions
• Actions -- unique users
• Dollars raised

Thermometer appearance is set by the progress_meter Template. A designer or developer can customize the appearance by editing the Template and set the goal to automatically increase if it's reached.

History¶

On each screen in the page creation process you'll see a History link under the title, which provides you with the listing of changes that have been made to this page.

Host Outside ActionKit¶

You can host your page with ActionKit or on your own server. Either way you can access all the same functionality - your end users will be recognized, error messages returned, data submitted to the database, Confirmation Emails sent, etc.

To host a page yourself, you need to copy some code into the HTML on your server. Select the Host outside ActionKit box on the Edit content screen when you create your page. Then view the source and download the code from the Preview/Get HTML screen.

When you check the box, we prefill some generic content in the text boxes. If you want the correct content to be included in the code you download, just overwrite the filler. Otherwise, skip the text boxes and enter your text in your own CMS.

We also display a URL field. Enter the URL for your page and we'll hook it up to the View link on the Pages Tab.

Read more tips and suggestions in the embedding section.

Language¶

This option is only relevant if you've set up Languages aside from English in your instance. If so, the additional Languages will show here in the drop down under More Options.

Select a Language to:

• Save this as the user's language for any user who takes action on this page.
• Use the translated system messages (e.g. "Email is required"), if you added these when you set up the Language.
• Tell ActionKit to pre-select the default Templateset for the Language on the Edit content screen and to pre-select the default Email Wrapper for the Language for your Confirmation Email -- if you've set defaults for these.

If you don't want the user's language to change because they took action on this page, you can select '---------' from the Language list.

To learn more about ActionKit's Language functionality, including how to add Languages and translate error messages see Languages and Multilingual Campaigns.

List¶

A mailing list is just a group of your users who can be emailed (e.g. they haven't bounced or unsubscribed). Users join a list by taking action on a page (or you can add them through the Uploader). Users who take action on this page are added to the list selected if they're not already on it.

You may have multiple Lists, but you can only choose one for this page, unless you customize your Templateset to add users to more than one list.

Your page should clearly indicate that signers will be subscribed to your mailing list. This is essential to maintaining good deliverability.

You can also edit your Templateset to require users to opt-in to the mailing list instead.

Read more about creating and using mailing Lists.

Member Actions¶

Check the Include In Reports Of Member Actions checkbox if you want actions on this page to be counted as member actions in reports.

This allows you to distinguish between actions generated from users interacting with your pages, versus administrative-type actions such as updating custom user fields via import pages.

By default, Unsubscribe, Recurring Cancel and Import pages are not checked.

If you want your reports to only count actions taken on pages that are checked you'll need to change older reports to account for this and pay attention to the options available for action counts in the query builder -- some offer a drop down with an option to limit to member actions.

Model Page¶

You can mark a page as a Model, as you can a mailing, and use it as the basis for future Pages of the same type.

Models can be used to save standard text you include in the Confirmation Email or the tell-a-friend message for Petition Pages, or to save your most commonly used Donation page settings, or as a shortcut for creating C3 versus C4 Donation Pages with the appropriate page wrapper, merchant vendor account, Email Wrapper and From Line.

When you copy a Model, all the settings remain the same, except the copy is not marked as a Model.

Designate your Model by checking the Is model box on the Action basics screen under More options.

Click on the light gray Models link at the top of the page list on your Pages tab to see a list. Or use the filter options on the Browse all screen.

Model pages do not work differently than other pages. Users can still submit on a Model page, if you make the URL public.

Note

Only users with the Pages - plus Model Pages permission and superusers can create and edit model pages. The checkbox to designate a page as a model will not show up for other users.

Multilingual Campaign¶

Multilingual Campaigns allow you to associate multiple Pages with each other for tracking and reporting. If you've selected a Goal, the thermometer for Pages that share the same Multilingual Campaign shows the combined results.

Also, your end users will see links at the top right of the page so they can toggle to their preferred Language.

You can add a Multilingual Campaign from the Pages Tab or from the Multilingual Options section on the Action basics screen when you're creating a page.

Create a Multilingual Campaign for each Page that you plan to translate. Then select the Campaign and the Language when you create each translation.

On the Pages Tab, if you click the grey Multilingual Campaigns link, you'll see summary information for each Campaign including the count of action takers and a list of the Pages showing each Language.

Read more about Languages and Multilingual Campaigns.

Multiple Responses¶

Capture every user submission as a new action or overwrite earlier actions by a user with the newer actions from that user on this page.

Check multiple responses if you want to capture each entry a user makes. We'll add a row to core_action each time a user submits on a page and capture all the corresponding information like custom action fields.

If the box isn't checked, and a user submits more than once on a page, the latest entry will overwrite the previous one. Note that the action source will always reflect the original source of the first action taken by a user.

The box is unchecked by default for Petition or Letter pages, where you generally only want one signature and one comment per user.

Notes¶

Use the Notes field to associate information with a page for internal use. Notes are displayed on the Pages Tab and Browse All screen.

Notification Emails¶

Notifications are emails to someone aside from the action taker, prompted by actions on the Page.

You can use these for a variety of purposes including:

• sending an email to the honoree about gifts made in their honor,
• alerting field organizers to each new event created in an event campaign,
• notifying a campaign director every 1,000 new actions on a page,
• emailing your development staff for each new recurring commitment.

Create your notifications and then select the ones you want to associate with each page on the After action info screen. Each action can prompt multiple notification emails.

Notification emails will only send if there are values for the subject line, to emails, from email, and mailing body. So you can use conditional content to control whether the notification requirements have been met.

We provide a few sample notifications that you can use or customize:

• In honor of: This example shows how you'd prompt a notification email to the honoree after each gift in his/her honor. First you need to add an action field with the label 'action_in_honor_of_email' to the Donation Page template you'll be using. Then you can use the to line in the example -- {{ action.custom_fields.in_honor_of_email }}. The example also shows some conditional content you might include in the notification email by adding additional custom action fields to your template.
• Tell staff about monthly donation: In this example, the subject includes the criteria to prompt the sending of the email. Whichever staff you select from the list or enter in the "to" line will receive this notification after each new monthly donation is created. The body includes some conditional content.
• Notify every 1000: In this example, the send criteria is in the body and the subject includes conditional content.

Here are some other examples that aren't included in your instance but that you might add:

• Notify someone when a donation is greater than $250:

Subject: {% if action.order.total > 249 %}New $250+ Donation!{% endif %}

* Notify event hosts of new attendees:

To: {% for host in action.event.hosts %}{{ host.email }}{% if not forloop.last %},{% endif %}{% endfor %}

Subject: Subject {{ user.first_name }} has RSVPed for your event

Read about adding notifications.

Page Fields¶

Custom page fields are a powerful and flexible tool that allows you to add a section of content or code to an individual page.

For example, if you want to ask users to tweet about an action they've taken, you could add a page field called "twitter" and include a suggested message specific to the page. If you have a Protect Parrots petition your sample message might be "Parrots are smart. I just signed to save them here: action_URL"

Page fields you've created are available on the Action basics screen for each page.

Use this syntax to include page fields in your templatesets or to reference them when creating a page: {{ page.custom_fields.YOUR_FIELD_NAME_HERE }}. Or, if your custom page field contains template tags or filters that need to be interpreted, then use this syntax instead: {% include_tmpl page.custom_fields.YOUR_FIELD_NAME_HERE %}.

Recognize Users¶

Recognize user allows you to control what happens when someone who is already in your database arrives on this page with an identifier (AKID), like from a link in one of your mailings.

The default option once, will recognize a user if we have the fields and can simply submit. This is a default because most of the time the first user who follows a link and submits on the page is the user associated with the AKID. Other users who follow the same link are generally friends who have received a message from the original user telling them about the action, so you don't want the page to recognize them -- both because the page would think the friends are still the original user and because you want to capture correct contact information for the friends.

Never requires all users (recognized or not) to enter all required information. You might use Never if you want to do something like make sure that everyone taking action on a page enters a phone number, whether or not you already have one in the database.

Always has fewer obvious uses, but we've included it in case there are times when you want everyone who follows a link to be counted as the user identified in the link. Be careful with this setting -- with Always selected, the first action (which again is usually made by the person associated with the AKID) and any actions taken by friends who were forwarded the link, are attributed to the user who received the mailing. You don't collect email or any other information from these friends. And the original user gets a thank you email (if you have this set up) for every action submitted by their friends.

A few page types do not include this option. Unsubscribe Pages must always recognize the user to comply with our requirements for best practices for email delivery. Donation-related Pages and Event Creation Pages require the user to enter their information, even if the user is recognized, so we don't show these options for those page Types either.

Redirect URL¶

In the Required section, you'll see the URL for the thank you page with the text you entered in the previous step. If you'd like to direct the user to a different page, enter the URL here.

The URL is always pre-filled, but you can change it if you'd like to direct users to another page instead. Just enter the URL. For example, you might want to have your users land on a Donation page after they sign a Petition.

If you change the redirect, be sure to submit from your page to confirm that you entered the URL correctly.

Advanced option: Use a hidden input with the name redirect and value of a URL will change the after-action page to the URL you entered.

See also How do I pass a source code through to a redirect?

Sharing¶

To view or customize Sharing for your page, toggle open the Sharing section to display previews of how your page will appear on Facebook and Twitter.

Text below the previews will indicate whether the page's current Templateset supports customization of the share messages, and whether it supports tracking of share links.

If customization is enabled, you can click on the sharing previews to edit the text and image.

Any images that appear in your page are shown as candidates for the Facebook image, making it easy to pick one of them to be featured.

The standard thanks template includes social sharing buttons that encourage users to tell their friends about the action they've just taken.

These Post to Facebook and Share on Twitter buttons send users to the social networks' built-in sharing functions, passing along information about your page.

If your Templateset includes certain required code tags, you can customize the sharing messages associated with your page and view reports of sharing-related traffic.

If you see a message that your Templateset doesn't support all of the Sharing functionality, your designer or developer can update your templates.

Short Name¶

Edit the short name if you don't want to use what is auto-generated from the title. This forms part of the URL for this page. Only use letters, numbers, underscores, and dashes. No spaces or other characters.

For example, the URL for a signup page is http://docs.actionkit.com/signup/your_short_name/.

Snippets And Pages¶

Snippets are click-to-insert template tags used to display information specific to each user within the text on your Pages and in mailings.

For example, if you wish to identify the user by name on a page or in a mailing, you would expand the User header under Snippets and select First name. The following Snippet of code will be inserted into your HTML:

{{ user.first_name|default:"Friend" }}

ActionKit can only display conditional content for recognized users. Users who aren't recognized will see the default value defined for the specific Snippet. For example, if you insert First name an unrecognized user will see the default, 'Friend'. You can change the default value by typing over it when you insert it, but not universally for the Snippet.

Some Snippets don't have a default value and you'd generally only want to use them in cases where the users who will see them have a value for the field. For example, it only make sense to use the average donation Snippet with past donors.

The Snippets available for Pages are slightly different than those available for mailings, including the Confirmation Email. View the Snippets and the code they insert for Pages and mailings.

You can define your own custom snippets to make it easy to insert frequently-used bits of text and code into your pages and mailings.

Spam Checking¶

Only relevant if you've enabled spam checking. Use this to tell ActionKit not to apply the checks to this page.

Tags¶

You can associate one or more tags with your page by selecting them from the drop down.

Tags are categories that you can associate with a Page or Mailing. They may represent issue areas or campaigns (e.g. food_safety or Paris_climate_talks_campaign).

You can use Tags to group Pages or Mailings. Tags are displayed on the Dashboard and the Browse all listing, and you can filter by Tag, so for example, you can quickly view the list of all the Tages you have created for a particular campaign.

Tags can also be used to group users for mailing targeting and analysis. Users who take action on a Page are associated with that Page's Tag(s).

Every user who takes action on the Page is associated with the Page's current Tags. There is no way to associate only some of those who took action on a Page with a Tag (for example, you can't tag only donors giving over $X on a page).

Read more about managing Tags including how to add Tags and reorder your Tag list.

Targets¶

The U.S. House and Senate are automatically available as targets for Petition, Letter, Call or Whipcount page. Each state's house and senate are also available, but have to be activated following the steps for Adding a new target group below before they will display in the Target Groups box. You can create a group from a subset of any legislative body (e.g. a particular committee) by following the same steps.

You can also create and select custom target groups. Custom targets can be anyone: Governors, school board members, CEOs, whoever you want. A custom target group can consist of one target or many.

Custom target groups can have the following jurisdictions:

• City and state
• City and country
• County and state
• State
• Country

By default, All users is selected, which means all actions on the Page are directed to all targets in the group.

Groups with a jurisdiction work like legislative targets where the target only receives actions from their constituents. Specifically:

• You can use snippets to show your users information about their target.
• Only users who we know live in the states or countries specified can take action on a Call Page (you can provide a fallback URL for others). Recognized users see the correct target automatically.
• Signature deliveries only include constituents.
• You can use the target constituents checkbox as a shortcut to limit a Mailing to users in the states or countries specified.

For state and federal legislative targets, and custom targets with jurisdictions, certain address information is required to match each user to the right target.

For Petition and Letter Pages you don't have to select any target, but of course you can't deliver signatures without a target. Some signatures may be undeliverable if you add targets to the page later and you weren't requiring the relevant information. When a user isn't in the jurisdiction of any of the page's targets (whether because the page has no targets or because the user lives in a different area) the page will not show an error to the user, but the signature will not be delivered.

For immediate delivery, only signatures submitted after the target is added to the page will be delivered. You can add targets later and deliver older signatures using batch delivery or e-delivery through the Mail tool.

Not all delivery methods are available for all targets. Read more about signature deliveries.

Call Pages require at least one target.

For state and federal legislators, the user's district must be identified before we can display the phone number(s). As a result, Call Pages require a two-step process for user's who aren't recognized: first, the user submits the user form, then, the user sees the script and phone number. Recognized Users see the script and phone number immediately, unless we need additional address information to identify their district. If a user is outside the jurisdiction of all of the page targets, they will see an error message.

For federal legislators, you have the option to also or only display the local district office phone numbers for your targets. If you display both the user will see the D.C. office number and a link to "Local Offices". If the user clicks the link, number(s) for the local office(s) are displayed, including the fax number. If you'd like to hide the fax, you need to edit the templateset.

There are checkboxes next to all target numbers so the user can indicate which target(s) they called and at which office. You can see which users called the local office in the core_callaction_local_office_checked table.

Tell-a-friend¶

If you enable the tell-a-friend widget for a page, your user is shown a box where they can fill in friends' email addresses. They can also click a link to mail friends directly through their preferred email program.

The tell-a-friend options show on the thank you screen (and also on the action page for petitions). You can modify your Templateset to create a standalone TAF page.

If the user enters addresses through the widget, the friend will receive a message with the user's email in the from line while the email is technically sent from your ActionKit domain (to improve delivery speed and reliability).

The user cannot edit the subject or the body of the message but they can add a short personal note. Snippets are available for these messages as well.

Alternatively, a user can follow the link to mail friends through their email program. This option opens the user's default email program and prefills the body and subject (in the email programs that support this). The user will be able to edit the subject and body of the email in this case and the email will come directly from the user.

We don't have an address sucker option, as we've found repeatedly in testing that this option depresses the action rate.

You can see a count of how many tell-a-friend emails any user sends through the widget in the taf_emails_sent column in the core_action table. If the friend follows the link in the TAF message and takes action, the source of the action will be taf. Tell-a-friend emails sent through the user's own email program aren't included in the count.

To create your tell-a-friend message you must:

1 Check the Enable Tell-a-friend widget checkbox.

2 Enter the Tell-a-friend subject. This subject cannot be edited by users, unless they choose to email friends through their own email client.

3 Enter the Tell-a-friend body. Don't forget to enter the full URL for your page in the body. (Use the "Full page URL" Snippet in the Snippet page section to insert this: {{ page.canonical_url }})".

Templateset¶

Customize the look and feel of your Pages using Templates. Our templating system separates the graphic design work of creating pages with your organization's style from the campaign work of setting goals, crafting your message, and creating content.

Templates define everything about the appearance of your pages from your page layout and colors, to the fields displayed in your user forms and the image for your thermometers. Each Page you create in ActionKit combines input from multiple Templates.

A Templateset is just a group of all the available Templates; each ActionKit Page combines input from multiple Templates.

To set a Page's appearance you just select the appropriate Templateset from the dropdown on the Edit Content screen.

Title¶

Enter the title the user will see at the top of the web page.

User Form Fields¶

The Templateset chosen above determines what fields are in your user form, but you can override that for this page by checking Customize Fields. You can’t remove fields needed to process the action (e.g. a petition targeting your state senate requires the address field as we need it to identify the correct target). Read more in the required form fields section.

Otherwise, you can select the fields to be displayed and required, and their order. You can include, and require, any standard user field as well as custom user and action fields, if your templateset supports this.

If you see a red message informing you that some customization choices are not available, your developer or designer must update your Templateset to enable all options. The relevant changes are described here.

In any case, your user form field customization choices do not change how ActionKit processes actions.

One-click (Petition)¶

In the Options section, click if you'd like to Enable One-Click Signing. This turns on a shortcut for recognized users, who sign the petition simply by clicking the link in a mailing, without entering any information. These users are directed automatically to the thank you screen and their action is recorded in the core_action table.

One-click signing makes it easier for a user to take action, increasing action rates. But it's important to make it clear to users that they sign by clicking the link in the email.

Users who aren't recognized will see the standard petition page with the content you entered and a blank user form.

And the one-click link only works once - subsequent clicks on the link take the user to the petition page to submit an action, just as they would for pages without one-click enabled.

Signature Deliveries (Petition & Letter)¶

You have several options for delivering your signatures to your target(s). Petition and Letter pages have an additional step where you can configure automated delivery by email, fax (if you have an InterFax account), or via the Communicating With Congress integration for pages targeting the US House.

You also have two non-automated delivery options. You can use the bulk delivery system to send manually when you wish, or generate a PDF for in-person delivery.

Fallback Page (Call)¶

If you're targeting a state or federal legislator and a user who lives outside the district(s) lands on the call page they'll see a message saying 'This action isn't available where you live'.

Or, you can designate a fallback page to provide an alternative action for these users. For example, if your call page targets the two CA Senators, a user from NY could be directed to a related petition if you enter the petition URL here.

If you enter a fallback URL, be sure to test it. You can do so by entering a zip code that's outside the district of any of the targets you selected for your call page.

The fallback page isn't used if your target doesn't have a jurisdiction in ActionKit. This includes the US President and custom targets without a state or country jurisdiction assigned.

Whipcount Responses (Whipcount)¶

Whipcount page creation includes an extra step called Whipcount Responses. This is where you set the source you'll use to determine the targets' positions and some related settings.

First you pick a Result Source. The choices are:

• User submitted - If you select this option, all targets will show Unknown, call now! in the stance column until enough users submit the same response, according to the choices you make in the User Submitted section.

This option is selected by default when you create a new page because this is the standard approach to whipcount campaigns.

• User submitted with admin overrides - This option is the same as user submitted, except that you can set the position yourself, instead of using the data your users provide, for one or more targets. You do this in Whipcount Response Overrides.

A use case for this option is if you've got staff meeting with legislators and you want to override the stance submitted by users where it doesn't match what you've heard directly from the legislator.

• Admin configured - If you select this option, you should set overrides for every one of the page's targets. If you don't set an override for one or more targets, they'll show Unknown, call now! no matter how many calls are made.

This option is most useful if you want to create a thank and spank action.

Whipcount Redirect URL (Whipcount)¶

You can easily ask your users to make multiple calls. The whipcount template in the Original Templateset has some special code that you can trigger by setting the Redirect URL on the After action screen to the Whipcount page's URL. If you do this, the user will see thank you text, followed by the list of results so they can select and call again. Edit the template to change the thank you text.

User Signature Template (LTE)¶

When your user submits an LTE, ActionKit appends their contact information and emails the letter to the newspaper chosen.

Using the default user signature template, the user information, or signature, looks like this:

First Last

Number Street

City, ST Zip

(XXX) XXX-XXXX

You can change the format by creating a new user signature template and selecting it from the drop down in the User signature section on the Action basics screen. You add a new template by clicking the :green: + or under Other on the Pages Tab.

The default user signature template looks like this:

{% if user.first_name %}{{ user.first_name }} {% endif %}

{{ user.last_name|default_if_none:'' }} {{ user.address1|default_if_none:'' }} {% if user.city %}{{ user.city }}, {% endif %}

{% if user.state %}{{ user.state }} {% endif %}

{{ user.zip|default_if_none:'' }} {{ user.phone|default_if_none:''|format_phone }}

Snippets can be used in signature templates. They are not clickable so you need to cut and paste the snippet into the template. Use snippets to include information like occupation in the signature by creating a custom user field for occupation and adding the field to the user form in the LTE template. Then add {{ user.custom_fields.occupation }} at the bottom of the signature template.

Take action using the email address you use to log in to the admin UI to view a sample letter as it will appear to the editor. This is particularly useful if you customize the signature. The email will start "This is a preview of the message that would be delivered" and include the content you entered in your letter. To submit an LTE to a paper yourself you must submit with a different email address.

Newspaper Types & Phone Numbers (LTE)¶

You can select which types of newspaper you'd like your campaign to target:

• National (papers with circulation greater than a million),
• Regional (circulation between one hundred thousand and a million), and/or
• Local (circulation less than a hundred thousand).

Make sure to check at least one paper type!

If a user submits a letter to a paper, then comes back to the same page to send another LTE, only the papers the user hasn't sent to will display.

Display Phone Numbers (LTE)¶

When enabled, this feature will display the phone numbers of the newspapers.

LTE User Form Fields (LTE)¶

Address and phone number are required for LTE pages. Most newspapers of any type will not consider letters without these. The Customize Fields section is still accessible on the Edit content screen because you can add additional fields.

Users who are following a link from a mailing will see a blank contact form unless we already have all this information in the database.

Canned Letters (LTE)¶

LTE Pages have an additional section on the Edit content screen where you can provide your users with pre-written letters to use as inspiration.

Papers which get obvious form LTE submissions are not likely to publish them so you may want to include obvious prompts in your canned letters, like [INCLUDE YOUR OWN EXPERIENCES WITH ISSUE X HERE]. Alternately, canned letter paragraphs can be a series of prompts, like 'When I heard about Senator X's stance on the jobs bill, I... '

By default, we provide space for up to three canned letters, but you can add more.

Question Builder (Survey)¶

The Edit content screen for Survey Pages includes the standard introduction and thank you text boxes, and is also where you compose your survey questions.

In the top-right corner of each question area is a Sort handle, which you can drag to rearrange the order of the questions in a survey. There's also a checkbox here for deleting a question. Check the box and submit to complete the deletion.

Type your question in the Question Label box, just as you'd like it to appear on the page (including a ? if you want one to display).

Choose a type of user input field in the Question Type menu:

• Custom HTML
• Keyboard Entry
  • Text
  • Number
• Single Selection
  • Select Menu
  • Radio Buttons
• Multiple Selection
  • Checkboxes
  • Multi-Select List
• Upload
  • File Upload

The selection of a "question type" determines which other fields are visible.

Minimum Amount (Donation)¶

Users will not be able to make a donation in an amount less than your minimum. Often this is set to an amount that just covers the transaction fee charged by your vendor.

Payment Accounts (Donation)¶

To accept donations in ActionKit you must have a payment account with a vendor we integrate with. You can accept credit cards through ActionKit donation pages with a traditional merchant vendor account with Braintree, Authorize.net, PayFlow Pro or PayPal. You can also accept PayPal payments where the user logs into their own PayPal account and pays with their preferred method with a standard PayPal account.

ActionKit records each donation and generates a request to the vendor, asking them to process the donation and deposit the funds in your bank account. We also provide an interface for prompting changes (like refunds), so these are captured in your ActionKit database as well.

PayPal (Donation)¶

ActionKit's PayPal implementation offers support for both traditional CC processing (like that provided by Braintree, Auth.net and PayFlow Pro) as well as paying via PayPal accounts.  Users set up their PayPal accounts to use whatever payment method they prefer (e.g. credit card, bank account). When users pay via PayPal accounts they are redirected to the PayPal site and then back to ActionKit after they approve the payment.

Read more about our PayPal integration.

Suggested Ask Formula (Donation)¶

You can customize the suggested donation amounts shown to a previous donor based on that user's giving history.

Recognized users will see a suggested donation and any larger amounts you enter on the Edit content screen. You define the formula used to set the suggested amount, basing it on the donor's highest previous gift, 2nd highest gift, average gift,most recent gift or total over a particular time period. Imported donations are included.

You can also insert the same ask amount in a mailing using the suggested ask Snippet in the mailer.

To read more about defining the formula used to set this amount, read Suggested Ask Rules.

Allow International Addresses (Donation)¶

If you wish to accept credit card donations from users with international addresses, you must:

1 Select the Allow international addresses checkbox.

2 Turn off AVS with your merchant vendor.

3 Modify your donation page template to include country.

International addresses will not be accepted unless you've completed all three steps.

Donations must still be in U.S. dollars unless you are set up to receive donations in other currencies as outlined below.

ActionKit still requires state and zip if the user selects the United States as their billing country. Neither postal nor region are required if the user selects any other country.

Users with JavaScript will see the correct fields when they switch countries. Users without JavaScript will see all four fields (region, state, zip and postal) all the time but if they fill out extra fields they will be ignored.

Accept ACH Payments (Donation)¶

If you use Braintree as your merchant vendor, you can accept transfers from U.S. bank accounts using ACH Direct Debit. Before you can process these payments, you will need to do some setup as described here.

Accept Foreign Currencies (Donation)¶

To accept donations in other currencies you need to use Braintree as your merchant vendor. You'll need to do some additional set up with Braintree for each currency you wish to accept. Then you can create Donation Pages, send mailings, generate reports, etc. using the currency. The set up is similar to using other languages; donation campaigns will generally need distinct Pages and mailings per currency. Details, including how to get started are at currencies.html.

Products (Donation)¶

ActionKit provides basic support for product sales and give aways. Products can be premiums, merchandise for sale, or something less tangible (for example, 'adopting' an endangered tiger).

Products are used with donation pages. If you have set up any products, you'll be able to select them in the More options section on the Action Basics screen when you create your page.

The default layout offers users options to select a product and to make an additional donation. You can change the layout, offer products with no option for an additional donation, or allow users to donate without selecting a product on a page with products by editing the donate.html template.

Our product system is not designed to function as a storefront. If you need shipping and tax calculations and fulfillment tracking, we recommend using an external storefront and integrating the data using our API.

Candidate Donations (Donation)¶

Use this option to create bundling pages for candidates. You need to add Candidates first before they'll be available for inclusion on a Donation page.

The end user fills in the amount they'd like to give to each candidate and there's an option to make a regular donation to your organization.

In the Original Templateset, employer and occupation are automatically required for Pages with candidates. PACs can easily copy the code to require these fields everywhere or you can use it to adapt your Templatesets for bundling for non-federal races with different rules.

Fraud Filters (Donation)¶

Fraudsters will sometimes use Donation Pages to test whether stolen credit cards are functional or not. These carding attempts can incur transaction and chargeback fees for your organization.

Clients who use PayFlow Pro, Authorize.net or Braintree as their payment gateway can set global- and per-page fraud limits.

The fraud scores are generated using the MaxMind minFraud service. We incur a small charge for each fraud score calculated, but do not pass that charge along to you.

MaxMind looks at a lot of factors: whether the user's IP address is that of a known fraudster, whether the country of the card issuer matches the user's current location, HTTP request headers that can help tell automated scripts from real users, and more.

The filters can reject some real donations although the benefit of avoiding fraud may outweigh any donations lost, especially if you're having a problem with fraud.

The filtering process logs details to the core_donationattemptlog table, where you can review exactly how many attempts were rejected and the details of the rejections.

By default, ActionKit blocks donations from IPs in 5 high risk countries: Brazil, Estonia, Ghana, Nigeria, and Vietnam. If any of those are high value for your organization, we can remove those countries on a per-client basis. Note that this comes with an increased risk of carding attempts, which can incur transaction and chargeback fees.

Read more if you want to enable fraud filters for your instance.

Donation User Form (Donation)¶

Unlike other page types, donation pages do not use the user form template. Instead the form is part of the donate template.

Donation pages always require the user to enter all of their contact information. By default they do not require the credit card CVV, if you use Authorize.net or Braintree, and you've changed your settings so this isn't required by your merchant vendor. It is required by default by both vendors, so if you remove it from your ActionKit form without changing your settings, donations will fail.

Amount Options (Donation)¶

You can select an amount as the default, which means it will be pre-selected on your page.

If your page also uses a Suggested Ask formula, here's how these amounts and the Suggested Ask amount interact:

• For users who aren't recognized by ActionKit, the donation amounts entered here will be displayed. Read about which users will be recognized.
• For recognized users who have never given, the Suggested Ask amount is used in place of the lowest amount on your list. The amount under Make ask amount in the Suggested Ask Conditions section for the top row is used.
• For recognized users who have previously given, the Make ask amount column shows the lowest suggested donation that will be shown to all users with a total less than the amount in the first column for whichever criteria you select (e.g. Highest Donation); all larger donation amounts entered here will show as well.

For example, if your formula is based on the donor's Highest Previous Contribution (HPC) and the user has an HPC of $150 and the suggested ask is $175, the amounts shown on the page will be $175 and any donation amounts that are larger.

• There is an exception to this rule. If the donor would only see one or two donation amounts on the page because the Suggested Ask is higher than all but one donation amount, ActionKit will display all of your donation amounts (just as if the user wasn't recognized).

For example, if a user has an HPC of $1000, the Suggested ask amount is $500 in the default formula. If the largest donation amounts entered in this section are $500 and $1000, the user would only see two suggested amounts. Instead they will see all the amounts you enter in this section.

Recurring Donations (Donation)¶

A Recurring Donation is a commitment your user makes to give a donation automatically on a regular basis, like monthly. Through ActionKit you can accept recurring donations by credit card, US bank transfer (ACH Direct Debit), or from the user's PayPal account. You must sign up for recurring billing with your payment processor. Most payment processors consider recurring billing a distinct product from one-time payments. ACH Direct Debit recurring payments are handled directly by ActionKit, but you must sign up for the ACH beta program with Braintree.

By default, users are charged on the same day of the month each month by the merchant vendor. ActionKit will show the payments immediately or the next day, depending on which merchant vendor you use.

By editing your Donate template and depending on your merchant vendor, you may be able to adjust the billing date (e.g. to the 1st of each month) or change the frequency (e.g. to weekly or yearly). You can also edit your template to create a recurring only page.

Default Page (Unsubscribe)¶

One unsubscribe page will be used as your organization's default, which means it will be automatically included in email wrappers. You can link to a different unsubscribe page by editing the wrapper or you can change your default unsubscribe page. All wrappers must link to an unsubscribe page.

Just select Use In Mail Wrapper under Unsubscribe Options on the Action basics screen for the page you want as the default. This will replace whatever page was previously selected as your default unsubscribe page.

Data Capture 101¶

General Reports¶

Page Type Specific Data¶

Testing Overview¶

As soon as you save a page in ActionKit it’s "live", meaning any user who ends up at the URL can see the page and take action. Of course, users generally don’t find a page unless you’ve shared it by sending an email or linking to it from your website or sharing it on Facebook or another public forum.

Always test a page before you share it with your users and again if you make changes.

You may want to do additional testing for specific cases.

If you’re using a new, untested templateset, your testing should be more extensive and involve multiple browsers. Read about templateset testing here.

For most page types, when you test your page, your actions are recorded just as your user’s actions are. You can confirm that the data you entered was recorded in the database.

Finally, you may want to check optional elements you’ve included like snippets and taf.

Data Capture Testing¶

As with TAF’s, the functionality that records an action and the associated data is built into ActionKit and generally can’t be "broken" by changes you make while creating a page. (Although this is one reason you need to test new templatesets).

Data capture testing is still a good idea and particularly important for survey and donation page types. We’ve outlined more information about how to check the data under the page type in Testing Protocol by page Type.

The query below is useful for confirming basic data capture for any page type:

SELECT cu.first_name, cu.last_name, cu.zip, ca.created_at as action_date, ca.source as action_source
FROM core_user cu
JOIN core_action ca on (ca.user_id=cu.id)
JOIN core_page cp on (cp.id=ca.page_id)
WHERE cp.name={page_name}

Viewing As A Recognized User¶

When you follow a link in Pages to view a page, you see what the page will look like for a user who isn’t recognized. Most often an existing user will follow a link in an email from you to reach your page and ActionKit will recognize the user.

For most basic testing, you don't need to view the page as a recognized user. But here too, when you've got a new templateset or you want to test something specific, you may want to see what a recognized user will see.

You have two options:

• You can create your draft email and send yourself proofs. Follow the link to the page in the proof to view the page as the user specified in the to line of the proof mailing.

Or

• Search for the user by name or email or other criteria from the Users tab. Click through to the user record. Copy the akid shown under the user name. Return to the URL of your page. At the end of the URL, after the final "/", append "?akid=" and paste the token. The URL will look like: "http://docs.actionkit.com/?akid=.1.qgzMpW". The page will show what this user will see if they follow a link to the mailing. You can repeat this for as many users as you’d like.

In either case, you should be careful submitting. ActionKit thinks you are the recognized user, so if you submit, an action will be recorded in the recognized user’s name and they’ll receive a Confirmation Email if you’ve set that up for the page.

If you want to view the Snippets on the thank you screen or a Confirmation Email for a user aside from yourself, it’s best to do that as another staff user.

Testing Protocol By Page Type¶