Field

Field is where a campaign turns a list of people into a day at the doors: the ground you cut, the days you plan, who walks which turf, and what comes back. This page follows that order.

Campaigns

Field lists the campaigns this account can see — which is exactly the set you could act in, not a filtered view of a longer list. New campaign creates one, and it makes you its campaign manager in the same moment: a campaign with nobody in it is visible to nobody, including whoever just made it. If you are in only one campaign, Field takes you straight to it.

A campaign's own screen is the manager's home: what it is called, who is in it, the ground it has cut and the days it has planned. You can rename it, archive it, and make it active again.

What it is running for shows the office — "Mayor", "Ward 3 councillor" — and the election day. Change the office or the date is offered to the same people as renaming: whoever runs the campaign. Leave either blank until it is known. Everybody who reads the campaign sees them. A campaign's election day is the campaign's own; your plan's election day — the one a paid cycle runs from — is in Admin → Billing, and changing one does not change the other.

New campaign, renaming, archiving, the roster, cutting turf and planning or changing a canvass are offered to the roles that may create field work — an organizer, a field lead, a campaign manager. A captain sees the canvasses they lead and how each is going, acknowledges calls for help, and changes who walks the missions of a canvass they lead; the plan itself is changed by the people who run the campaign. An observer reads everything here and changes nothing.

Who is in it

Who is in it is the campaign's roster, with each person's name and the address they sign in with. A campaign manager adds somebody by typing part of their name or e-mail address and choosing them — a colleague on another campaign, or a volunteer who has signed in — and gives them a role from The team you build — Volunteer, Captain, Observer or Organizer. The wider roles are a tenant administrator's to grant, and the form says so. You can record which languages somebody speaks, and take somebody out. Each member can also say for themselves which languages they canvass in, under Settings → The languages you canvass in, in the console or the app; what they say shows beside their name here, and they can take off a language a manager wrote down for them.

Names are seen by the campaign's staff and by each person themselves. A volunteer or a captain does not see anybody else's name or address here. Somebody new to the organization is invited by an administrator first, or asked to a shift.

The same screen's How somebody signs in panel shows the link to send and, on its own, the campaign's sign-in name that the phone app asks for.

Being on the roster is what makes somebody assignable. Assigning a mission is never a way to give somebody access they did not already have.

Universes: who the campaign means to reach

A universe is a rule about who you mean to talk to — built in Organize, used in Field.

Organize → New universe builds the rule out of recorded facts, nested with and, or and not, with a plain-English sentence underneath saying what it says. Save it and its own screen has Count them, which runs the rule live against the file; the number is a live answer with a date on it, never a total something keeps up to date. Editing the rule clears the count, because the old number was about the old rule.

On a phone the rule is built the same way with less nesting on screen: in the console at a phone's width a group inside another folds to one line that says what it asks, and in the app (More → Organize → Universes) one group is on screen at a time, with the path to it named above it. The score condition is never offered, on any screen.

The same screen answers who a turf will actually reach — who is on the list, who is inside a turf, and who no turf covers. Goals record a target for a universe; nothing marks a goal met by itself, because deciding it is met is a person's judgement. Snapshots freeze the rule and its membership as evidence and can never be edited afterwards.

Cutting turf

Cut turf from the campaign's Ground panel. The default is to draw it: tap or click corners on a map of the real streets, drag a corner to move it, undo what you did last, and close the shape. It works the same with a finger on a phone as with a mouse — in the console at any width, and in the app. The count under the map follows the shape as you draw it — stops, eligible households and a time estimate — so cutting turf is a decision rather than a guess. If a map is the wrong tool for the moment, describe it instead takes a bounding box or pasted GeoJSON; both ends produce the same turf. Drawing turf has the whole of it.

A turf's own screen has the ground drawn, what it holds, and the walk — the stop order, with arrows to move a stop up or down (in the app, drag it). A stop you moved is marked as held in place so a later re-order does not undo your decision. Opening a walked turf again asks why, on the page.

Two honest notes the screen makes itself: the time estimate is three minutes a dwelling, a placeholder until real timings exist, and the walk order follows where the doors are — along each street, up one side and back down the other, starting from the turf's south-west corner — but it does not know footpaths, fences or one-way streets. Move a stop when the ground says otherwise.

Addresses whose location is only approximate are left out of a turf, and the count while you draw says how many, so nobody is sent to a door on a guess. Place them on the map first if they belong in the walk.

Prepare the map cuts the offline map pack a volunteer's phone downloads for that turf. It takes a minute or two. A turf with no pack still works — the phone shows the list — but the volunteer gets no map.

A turf's shape cannot be edited once it is cut. Splitting one around a park, merging two, and cloning one are not in the product yet.

Canvasses: the days at the doors

Plan a canvass from the campaign screen. A canvass moves one way — being planned, scheduled, under way, complete — and can be called off at any point before it finishes. Only the moves that are actually available are offered.

The plan holds the window in the canvass's own time zone (six in the evening means six where the doors are), who it is for (a universe, which you can re-freeze with Refresh the list — phones that already downloaded keep what they took), the meeting point, the goal and the instructions.

Edit the plan and its lead changes the name, the window, where everybody meets, what volunteers are told and the goal — and sets who leads it. The lead is chosen from the campaign's captains first, then the people who run it. Set a lead on every canvass a captain should run: the captain's board of calls for help and their live view of the day both follow from it. Only what you changed is saved.

Only a captain, an organizer, a field lead or a campaign manager in this campaign can lead a canvass. Anybody else — a volunteer, an observer, the candidate, somebody not in the campaign — is refused, whichever screen or tool asks — the campaign's records refuse it too — because leading a canvass is what lets somebody see its missions, who walks them and its calls for help. Somebody who leads a canvass and is then given a role that cannot lead, or is taken out of the campaign, stops leading it at that moment, even where the canvass still shows their name; choose a new lead.

Words pins the script and the survey the canvass uses. Only published versions of this campaign's content are offered, and choosing one pins that exact version; a bundle already on a phone is not changed under the volunteer holding it.

Missions: who walks which turf

Assign a mission names the ground, the window, optionally the shift it belongs to, who walks it, and who records if two people go together. Walkers are chosen from the campaign's roster.

Anybody on the roster can walk, not only volunteers. Putting an organizer, a field lead or the campaign manager on a mission takes nothing away from them: the walk appears under their My missions, and everything else their role lets them do in the campaign stays exactly as it was — while they are on it and after they are taken off it. For a volunteer it is the other way round: their missions are all they can open, so a volunteer taken off their last walk can open nothing until they are given another.

A captain or a candidate on a walk can open that walk and nothing else until it is finished. Walking a mission lets anybody read the people on it and what was recorded at their doors, which a captain or a candidate cannot otherwise read, so while they walk they are a walker like any other: a captain does not see their roster, the canvass they lead or its calls for help, and a candidate does not see the People screens. Their own follow-ups and the shifts they were asked to stay theirs. When the walk is finished — or a day after its window closes, or when they are taken off it — they have everything back. If a captain leading a canvass is going to walk part of it, make sure somebody else is watching its calls for help while they do.

The missions table shows each one's turf, status, window and walkers. You can add somebody, withdraw somebody, or Take back a mission — which asks for a reason of at least ten characters. The reason is kept on the mission and shown beside it to the people who run the canvass — its staff, its observers and the captain leading it. The audit trail keeps only that a reason was given and how long it was, and the volunteer never sees it.

The captain leading a canvass adds and withdraws volunteers on its missions too. They see the missions and who walks them, and not the ground: where the turf would be, their table says it is not shown to them. Putting somebody who runs the campaign, or another captain, on a mission stays with the people who run the campaign, and so does taking a whole mission back, which frees its turf.

Shifts, and people who sign up at a stall

Ask people to this shift searches the campaign's people and invites the ones you tick. Who was asked shows each invitation and its answer, and lets you record an answer somebody gave you in person. A volunteer answers on their own phone, and sees nobody else's answer.

Somebody you ask who has never used Field OP needs an invitation of their own to sign in: an administrator invites their address from Admin → Who can sign in, and the message carries the link that lets them in. Asking them to a shift does not, on its own — the campaign's sign-in page makes no account for an address nobody invited (since 10 October 2026). The platform also has a rule that a first sign-in by somebody on a shift still to come, at an address the campaign has confirmed for them, puts them on the roster as a volunteer with no walk yet; nothing in Field OP confirms a person's address yet, so that does not happen today. Somebody you later take off the campaign stays off: signing in again, or being asked to another shift, does not put them back; add them on the roster when you want them again.

Mint a join code for the poster produces a code for a stall or a poster while the shift is open, the only time a code lets anybody sign up. It is shown once, replaces any existing code for that shift, and never appears in the audit trail. Somebody who scans or types it lands on a short public form: first name, last name, and an e-mail or a phone. They are shown the collection notice word for word, and the page tells them the truth — you are not signed up to anything yet; a person decides, not a form.

Those sign-ups arrive under Signed up at a stall, with how to reach each person. Accept is what puts somebody into the people file, and the confirmation says so before it goes; Decline does not.

Plan a shift, change its time, the number wanted or its notes, close it, call it off or open it again on the same panel — and all of it, the follow-up queue too, on a phone in the app's More: Shifts and follow-ups says how, and who may do which.

Safety

The campaign screen carries a Safety board. A volunteer can call for help, check in, check out or leave an incident note from their phone, and it appears here with the kind, how long ago, the mission and what they said. I have seen it acknowledges it.

What happens when a volunteer presses "I need help":

1. The call goes on this board within fifteen seconds, with whatever they wrote.
2. At the same moment an e-mail goes to the lead of their canvass and to every campaign manager, field lead and organizer of the campaign — anybody whose role is narrowed to some places, teams or lists is left out, as is the volunteer themselves; walking a mission yourself does not narrow you. It says who asked (the name the campaign has for them), when, which campaign, canvass and turf, and links to this board. It never carries what they wrote and never a location: those stay here, for the people who may read them. Each address is the one the person signed in with. An e-mail to staff about somebody in trouble is not marketing, so it has no unsubscribe and the organization's sending limits never hold it back (one address gets at most twenty calls for help a day). If the mission is taken back or finished before the e-mail leaves, it still goes.
3. The volunteer is told who was told: "an e-mail is on its way to 3 people running this canvass, and it is on the safety board" — or, when nobody could be e-mailed, that only the board has it.
4. Their mission screen has two buttons right under I need help: Call 911 — emergency, and Call the campaign, which rings the campaign's safety number.

Give the campaign a safety number. It is on the campaign screen, under Safety number (on a phone, If a volunteer needs help): a number somebody answers while your canvasses are out. Anybody who may change the campaign can set it; until one is set, volunteers see 911 alone and are told the campaign has not given a number.

There is deliberately no location on this board, because there is no location anywhere in Field OP: the app draws a volunteer's own position on their own screen and sends it nowhere.

The board is a screen, and the e-mail is not a pager. Nothing rings on anybody's phone, and an e-mail is read when somebody looks. Before every canvass, check:

• the campaign has a safety number, and somebody will answer it;
• the canvass has a lead, who will get the e-mail;
• who is watching the safety board for the whole of the canvass — name them;
• every volunteer knows the I need help button and that 911 is on the same screen.

Paper

Not every walk happens on a phone. Print the walk sheet produces a PDF for a turf, and the copy is recorded in the custody register like any other. Type a sheet in takes what came back: you give the day of the walk and who walked it once, then record each door — the outcome from your campaign's own list, who answered where the outcome needs a person, the six asks, and a time. Each row is sent as you record it.

Nothing typed in is edited afterwards. A correction is a new record that supersedes the old one, and both are kept.

Typing a sheet back in records what happened at each door, so it is offered to an organizer, a field lead and a campaign manager. Anybody else is shown no way in, and a sheet opened by its address says it is read only.

A sheet has come back opens the right turf from the sheet itself: type the id printed under the square in its corner, or, where the browser can read a code on its own (Chrome and Edge on Android and most computers), press Scan with the camera and hold the square up to it. The browser reads the code on the device and the picture goes nowhere; a browser that cannot read one is offered only the box. A sheet from another campaign says so rather than opening.

On a phone the sheet is typed in one door at a time, with Previous door and Next door, on the console and in the Field OP app alike. Box F — asked not to be visited again — stops the campaign knocking at that door for good, and the app asks you to confirm it in words before it is sent. A door already marked do-not-knock takes no entry at all.

Closing a canvass

Close this canvass when nothing is still live. If missions may still be sending doors, the panel lists them with each one's deadline; closing anyway needs a written reason and the button changes to Close with exceptions, so nobody closes over live work by accident.

Afterwards the same panel becomes the result: doors left, turfs finished, and the follow-up the day raised, by kind, with a link into Work.

What comes back

Work is the follow-up queue — a lawn sign asked for, somebody who wants to volunteer, a question for the candidate. Tabs for Mine, Unassigned and All follow-ups; take one on, hand it on, put it back, mark it done, open it again, or call it off. A captain does that for the follow-ups the doors of a canvass they lead raised. You can write one down yourself, and the trail records that as a person's judgement rather than a rule's.

Insights and Home show the numbers. Every tile carries the sentence its measure is defined by and the version of that definition, and every tile opens on the records behind it — so a number you do not believe is a number you can check.

Field in the phone app

Everything on this page is in the Field OP app too, for the people who may do it. More, under Field — and Your team — lead to Canvasses and Campaigns: the roster, the ground, planning a canvass in the zone the doors are in, editing it and setting its lead, assigning a mission (with a shift, those who said yes first where an administrator turned that on, and the languages households said they speak), the missions on a canvass, Review and close, and a returned sheet — Scan the sheet reads its square with an iPhone's camera, or in a phone's browser that can read a code, and anywhere else you type the id printed under it. A turf in the list opens the app's own turf screen — its map, its stops and its walk — and a canvass's meeting point can be chosen on the map as well as typed. How it is going shows each walk's households left and flags a walk that has gone quiet for an hour — which is a guess about a walk, never a fact about a person. Shifts and sign-ups on a canvass opens its shifts, their rosters, the poster's code and the stall's sign-up sheet (Shifts and follow-ups).

A captain sees Canvasses and Campaigns marked Read only: the canvasses they lead, how each is going, and the campaign's roster, with no button the campaign's records would refuse them. Two things on a canvass they lead are the exception: a captain changes its shifts' times, numbers and answers under Shifts and sign-ups, and does not plan new ones; and a captain adds and withdraws volunteers on its missions, and does not assign new missions or take one back. A captain is shown no ground — turf is read by the people who plan the campaign — and is not offered a returned sheet, which those people type in.

Nothing a staff screen reads is kept on the phone: it is read while the screen is open, read again when you come back to it, and a phone with no signal says so. Nothing on any of these screens compares one volunteer with another. A volunteer sees, on their own mission, What happened to my calls — whether a call for help they sent has been seen. It lists only what they sent, not their partner's.

Next: The phone — the volunteer's side of the same walk · People and imports · Getting help