Imports, custody and exports on a phone

Bringing a file in, deciding its rows, keeping track of every copy and taking a file out all work on a phone now — in the Field OP app on iPhone and Android, in the app in a phone's browser, and in the console at a phone's width. The steps are the console's steps, with the same words and the same rules; this page says where they are and the few things a phone does differently.

Where they are

In the app, More (top right of My missions) lists them under Admin: Import, Export and Custody. In the console they are under Admin in the rail, or under More in the tab bar on a phone.

What appears is what your role may do. Somebody who looks after the campaign's data brings files in and decides their rows. An observer reads the files brought in, each import and the copies register, and is offered nothing that changes them; each of those screens says Read only at the top. Export is the Export grant's alone: taking a file out needs it, and so does the list of exports that have left — anybody without the grant is not offered the screen. Every export is still listed under Custody as a copy, with who holds it, for everybody who reads that register. A volunteer has none of these screens.

Bringing a file in

Import → Bring in a file (the console's New import). Only a Data Steward brings a file in and moves an import along; everybody else who reads people sees the imports read only.

Where it came from. Choose the source; each one shows its classification and, for a voters' list, the date it must be destroyed, beside its name. Make a new source asks for its name, kind and classification. A restricted voters' list also asks how long it may be kept and the date it is destroyed, and says before it is created that neither can be changed afterwards.
The file. Choose a CSV or an .xlsx workbook from the phone's Files (at most 25 MiB). The phone sends it as it is and never opens it: its cells are other people's details. If the workbook has several sheets, you are asked which one holds the list, and the same file goes again with your answer — you do not choose it twice. The phone keeps its own copy of the file only until it is sent, or until you leave the screen without answering; a copy left behind because the app was closed in the middle is deleted the next time the app starts.

Each import then has its own screen: the file as it arrived, with its fingerprint (the same file uploaded twice has the same one, and you can copy it), and four steps, each a screen of its own.

What the columns mean. One card per column: its first few cells, what the platform proposed and why it proposed nothing when it did not, and what it becomes — chosen from a list grouped the way the console groups it. A column that says whether somebody may be contacted, left alone while an e-mail or phone is imported, has to be declined by name.
Validate and process. Validating reads every row and says what processing would do, in five totals; processing creates and updates people a batch at a time. Both run on the campaign's side, so you can lock the phone or put it in your pocket: the screen reads the import again when you come back, and nothing is lost if it stops asking. If validation has not answered in fifteen minutes, or a run has been in progress for longer than any run takes, the screen says so, stops asking and gives you the buttons back — validating again is safe, and a stalled run can be taken back. Undoing an import asks you to sign in again if your sign-in is more than five minutes old.
The rows. A card per row, by classification. Opening a row shows it beside the person it matched — their name, address and contact details — and the answers it can take: create a new person, merge into the match, or skip. A whole classification can be decided at once, behind a question that says how far it reaches.
Doors we could not place. The addresses the import made with no point on the map, the miss rate by town, and each door's way to its household, where it is placed by hand.

A restricted voters' list asks for its undertaking before it is processed. The clauses are shown in full; you tick that you acknowledge custody of that list in your own name, and the acknowledgement goes in the same request as the run — both happen or neither does. Nobody can sign it for you.

Three refusals say what to do: an undertaking not yet signed, an agreement the organization has not accepted (the tenant administrator accepts it under Admin → Agreement in the console), and a plan with no room for the people the file would add.

What a phone never shows

A full date of birth, a sex or a gender is a restricted class. An import keeps those columns apart from the moment it arrives, and they are never shown on a phone — not in the app, and not in the console on a phone, upright or held sideways — whatever grant you hold. The phone does not even ask for them: every page of rows is read with them withheld. A computer's window narrowed to a phone's width stops showing them at once, before the withheld page arrives. Each card says, by name, which columns it is not showing, so a file never seems to have lost a column. A holder of the Restricted Data grant reads them in the console on a computer or a tablet.

A column held back because its cells looked like dates of birth or a sex or gender can be kept restricted from a phone. Saying it is ordinary data needs its cells on screen, so it waits for a computer or a tablet.

Taking a file out

Export → Ask for a file needs the Export grant and a purpose in writing of at least twenty characters, kept for ever; you name the columns one by one and may narrow by tag, postal prefix and, once a campaign is chosen, its canvasses, turfs, lists, answers, follow-ups and dates. Once a campaign is chosen, your grant and your role have to reach that campaign. A grant given for another campaign is refused with "Your grant does not reach this campaign or this ground."; a staff role you hold only in another campaign, with "Nothing you hold in this campaign allows this."

A file is fetched once, by the person who asked, within 24 hours. On a phone, Download once says so before it fetches, asks you to sign in again if your sign-in is more than five minutes old, and opens the phone's own share sheet: save it to Files or send it on. The copies register already names you as its holder, and once you fetch the file it names which kind of device took it — the phone, the app in a browser, or the console — even when the file was asked for on another: an export asked for in the console and fetched on a phone is recorded as the phone's. The download's entry in the audit trail (Admin → Audit log, export.downloaded) says the same. The rows an import did not process come down the same way, from the import's rows, and are registered the same way.

A file drawn from a restricted voters' list asks you to sign the undertaking for that list first — on a phone exactly as in the console. The clauses are shown in full, you sign in your own name, and the file is fetched once you have.

Custody

Custody lists every copy the campaign has made — an export, a walk sheet, a mission bundle — with who holds it, and puts first the copies of a voters' list held by somebody who signed nothing for it.

Sign for a list you hold. If you hold a copy of a voters' list you have not signed for, Custody says so and opens the undertaking: one list at a time, in your own name. In the console this is Custody → Sign for this list, at /custody/sign.

What you have signed. Settings → Undertakings you have signed, in the app and in the console, lists every undertaking you signed in this organization — which list, when, under which wording — and shows the words again. It shows yours and nobody else’s, whatever your role.

Close out a source records what was outstanding from it at that moment and who was holding it, and freezes that record. It does not destroy anything, and the screen says so before you confirm. It is offered only to a role that may change the campaign's records, and asks you to sign in again if your sign-in is more than five minutes old. The certificates produced are listed under Certificates.

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