Users Dashboard¶
How Do I Find Users?¶
Quick Search¶
You can perform a quick search from the Users Tab. Enter the relevant information for any of the following fields in the search box in the top right of the screen:
- Name - Enter the user's first name, last name or both. Searching by both is fastest. The results only include exact matches. For example, searching for Jen won't return any Jennifers.
- Email - Enter the complete email address. Results only include exact matches.
- User id - Enter the complete user id. Results only include exact matches.
- Zip code - Put the zip in quotes. Otherwise you'll also find any email address that happens to include the digits in the zip code.
- User field value - Enter the custom user field name and the value you want to find. For example, if you have a custom user field called occupation, you can enter
occupation=doctorto find all users with that as their occupation. You don't need to use quotes around the field name or the value.
Click Search. You'll land on the search results screen where a list of matching users is displayed.
Advanced Search¶
Advanced search provides considerably more options than a basic user search.
To perform an advanced search:
Click the Advanced Search button at the top of the Users column on the left.
The default is All records which will show you all the users 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. Your results are returned on the search results screen.
Filter Options
The filter options are taken from those found in the Users 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.
- Advocacy Actions - status completed and action on one of the following page types: LTE, call, petition, letter, whipcount.
- Non-Import Actions - status completed and action on any page type except Import.
- Also Told A Friend - action on any page where the user sent at least one TAF email through the TAF widget. Does not include social media sharing.
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.
How Do I Change A User's Info? What Info Can I Access?¶
You can scroll through the user records for each user who met your search criteria using the Previous User and New User links at the top of the screen.
You can edit most user information from this screen, including email and contact information.
The following information is displayed:
User Id and AKID: At the top of the screen is the unique user id and akid. This value for the
akidis part of the string that ActionKit appends to links in mailings so the user is recognized. You can also append the akid to your URLs to view a page as the user.Email: Email address is unique for each user in ActionKit. ActionKit assigns a
user_idto each new email address, whether entered by a user on an action page, imported through the bulk uploader, or added through the API.You can change a user's email on this screen. However, you can't change the user's email address to one that is already in your database. You can merge users if you know that two or more email addresses belong to the same person.
End users can change their own email address from the user update screen. If an end user tries to change their email to one that's already in your database, the user will need to confirm by clicking a link in an email sent to the new address. The old address is unsubscribed but the two records are not merged (e.g. the action history from the old address is not added to the user record).
Name: The user's full name is displayed.
Source: The user source is the source of the first action taken by the user.
Subscription information: Displays the user's current subscription status and list membership(s). The Unsubscribe From All Lists link removes the user from all lists.
Read more about subscription status, including what happens to users who bounce or mark an email as spam.
This section also links to the User's Mailing History and Manage Subscriptions screens.
Actions: The table below the list memberships includes:
- The user's total action count.
- Links to View User's Action History and View User's Donation History.
- Most recent action taken.
- The action that last subscribed the user.
Tags: The Show User's Tags link displays the tags associated with pages on which this user took action.
Sharing: The sharing table displays:
- The count of the tell-a-friend messages the user has sent using the taf widget.
- The count of Facebook shares for which the user has clicked to share.
- The count of Twitter shares for which the user has clicked to share.
Donations: The donation summary table shows count, total and average of the user's one-time, recurring and total gifts, including imported donations and excluding $0 donations (usually free product orders). It also shows the user's highest and second highest one-time donations. See the sample queries for the SQL used to generate these counts.
Recurring Donations: Below the Donations table is a summary of every recurring donation profile associated with the user (if any) with a link to manage the recurring profile.
Dashboard: If you have defined a User Dashboard Report it will appear here.
Address: The user's address information (if any) is displayed here. ActionKit does some validation of address and zip. Also shown are:
- District: The user's US House district (if the user has a zip) and the House Rep's name.
- Language: Select from the dropdown to change the user's language (if you have any languages enabled in your instance aside from English).
Phones: This section displays the list of telephone numbers associated with this user. You can only have one phone number of a given type from a given source, meaning you can't manually enter two home numbers although it is possible to have one home number from the user and one entered by the admin. Possible phone types are Home, Work, Mobile, Emergency, Home Fax, Work Fax and Batphone.
Custom user fields: This section displays all custom user fields with responses for this user, plus any custom user fields set to always show. To add a value just type in the content box. If you'd like to add a value but you don't see the user field, select the field name from the Add dropdown. You can only enter content for fields that already exist. To add new custom user fields, click the blue and white plus icon, or the Custom User Fields button on the Users tab, as described in Creating custom user fields.
Staff Notes: This section allows you to add notes about this user. Previously added notes are displayed with date, time stamp, and staff account that entered them. Any text you enter into the Add a note… field will be recorded when you click Save. Click Edit to make a correction to a previous note. Editing a note will not change the original date and time stamp. Removing all of the text from a note and clicking Save will delete the note.
Can I See All The Actions A User Took? Their Mail History?¶
Yes. From the user record, click the User's Action History link or the User's Mailing Contact History link.
Can I Unsubscribe A User? Subscribe?¶
You can add and remove subscriptions for users from the Subscriptions tab on the user record. If privacy records are required in the admin, users cannot be subscribed through the Subscriptions tab.
How Do I Refund A Donation? Change A Recurring Donation?¶
Your database may include donations processed through ActionKit or externally. Donations are managed differently depending on where they were processed.
Donations (one-time and recurring) that came through an ActionKit page into your merchant vendor account should always be managed through ActionKit. This is also true for recurring profiles set up outside of ActionKit with one of the merchant vendors we support that you've imported. And, it's true for PayPal, if you're using our PayPal integration. If you make changes directly with your merchant vendor they may not be reflected in ActionKit.
To manage these donations, go to the user's Donation History screen (reached by clicking View User's Donation History on the user's record) and use the links in the Actions column. There are also links to Reverse and View payments through the user's Action History screen (reached by clicking Action History on the user's record). The links are:
- View Payments: This link appears for recurring payments and takes you to the recurring profile screen to manage the profile and view all the payments associated with this recurring profile.
- Reverse Payment: When you fully reverse a one-time payment or the initial payment when a recurring order is created, status in
core_orderwill change to "reversed". Sometimes, you can use this link to issue partial refunds, discussed below, as well as full reversals. - Cancel Recurring: Clicking this link will ask you to confirm the cancellation of the recurring profile.
- Re-send Confirmation Mailing: Clicking this link will re-send the confirmation mailing the donor received after their donation. Use this if a donor has misplaced their original confirmation mailing showing their donation details.
Warning
If you've made changes to a donation, those changes will NOT be reflected in the re-sent confirmation mailing. The confirmation mailing you can resend is an exact duplicate of the original.
Note
Re-sending a confirmation mailing is only available for donations made on or after February 2019.
External Donations: External donations must be managed through the relevant vendor. For example, ActBlue donations can only be refunded through ActBlue. You'll see a link on the user's Donation History screen to reverse the payment as described above, but this doesn't prompt a refund. It just changes the payment status to "reversed" in the ActionKit database to reflect what has happened at the vendor. The same is true for donations imported against an import stub account.
Can I Delete A User's Action?¶
You can't modify user's actions through the user record, but you can delete actions taken on a petition, letter, signup or survey page. To do this, find the action on the user's Action History screen (reached by clicking Action History on the user's record) then click delete.
If you delete a user's action it is removed entirely from the core_action table and cannot be re-instated so you'll be asked to confirm before ActionKit will delete the action.
What Are Custom User Fields?¶
A custom user field is used to store information about a user. A custom user field defaults to allowing one value; the old response is overwritten every time the user submits a new response. When a custom user field does not allow multiple values, the value will always be overwritten by a user action, in the admin or by import.
Can I Add Custom User Field Entries For My Users?¶
In addition to using the API, you have several choices for adding values to a user field:
- You can ask users to enter values by including the field in your user form on any page. To do this, you'll need to customize the fields used on the page, see User Form Fields. Validation and defaults are not applied to custom field values entered by users.
- You can enter values yourself through the user record.
- You can also import custom user field values from a CSV or TSV file using the uploader. Validation and default values are not applied to imported custom user fields.
The field name, the user response and the user_id (parent_id) are saved to core_userfield, along with a timestamp (updated_at).
Here's an example of the query you'd use to find each user's id and response:
select parent_id as 'user_id', value as 'pets'
from core_userfield
where name='pet_name'
Join to the core_user table on parent_id=core_user.id to get user's name or email.
Note
updated_at was added to custom user fields in Spring 2020 and will be blank (NULL) for any fields created before this, until they are saved again.
Note
action_id was added to custom user fields in Spring 2020 and will be blank (NULL) for any fields created before this, and for any fields last updated by staff / not updated by an action.