Field Canvasser Guide

1. Install the app on your phone

VoteUnity is a Progressive Web App — there's nothing to download from the App Store. It runs in your phone's browser but installs to your home screen like a native app.

iPhone (Safari)

1. Open vote.unityclub.net in Safari (not Chrome).
2. Tap the Share button at the bottom of the screen.
3. Scroll down and tap "Add to Home Screen".
4. Tap Add in the upper-right corner.
5. Open the new Unity Club icon from your home screen, sign in once, and you're done.

Android (Chrome)

1. Open vote.unityclub.net in Chrome.
2. Tap the three-dot menu in the upper right.
3. Tap "Install app" or "Add to Home Screen".
4. Confirm.

2. The Dashboard — finding your sites

When you open the app, you land on the Dashboard. Sites are sorted by GPS distance, closest first. The list re-sorts as you drive.

What's on a card

• Site name and address
• Distance from your current location
• The most recent disposition read: 🟢 Favorable 🟡 Mixed 🔴 Unfavorable 🚫 No Presence
• The most recent vote intent: ✅ Yes ❌ No ❓ Undecided
• A 📌 Assigned to you badge if you've been assigned to it
• A check mark if you've already canvassed it

Filter chips

Two rows of chips at the top of the dashboard:

• Status: All · Unvisited · ✓ Visited · 📌 My Assignments
• Disposition: 🟢 Favorable · 🟡 Mixed · 🔴 Unfavorable

✓ Visited and 📌 My Assignments are special — when you tap them, you'll see every matching site across the whole campaign, regardless of how far away. Tap All or Unvisited to come back to the nearby-200 proximity view.

Search

Type in the search bar at the top to find a site by name or address. Tap the 🔒 lock icon to keep the same search active while you walk between cards.

Add a new site

Tap the gold ＋ button at the bottom right. Required: site name and street address. Three helper buttons make filling the rest easy — use whichever fits how you're standing right now:

• 📍 Use My Location — captures your phone's GPS and reverse-geocodes it into a street address. Best when you're standing at the site.
• 🔄 Look Up Address from Coords — you type the latitude and longitude (e.g. from a dropped pin in Google Maps), and the app fills in the address. Good for when someone texts you coordinates.
• 🌐 Look Up Coords from Address — you type a street address, and the app fills in the latitude and longitude. Use this when you have an address from a permit, schedule, or notes.

You don't need to use any of them — if you leave latitude/longitude blank and just type an address, the app will geocode it automatically when you save. The buttons just let you preview the result first.

3. Canvassing a site

1. Tap a card from the dashboard to open the site detail.
2. Tap 📍 Navigate to open Apple/Google Maps with directions, or tap → En Route to start the in-app drive view.
3. The app watches your GPS as you approach. When you're within 300 ft of the site (configurable in Settings), it auto-checks you in.
4. Talk to the crew. When you're done, the app detects you've left the site and pops the Log Visit wizard automatically.

4. Logging the visit

The wizard is three quick steps. Don't overthink it — your honest gut read is the data we need.

Step 1 — Visit Read

Pick the site disposition (overall tone of the crew):

• 🟢 Favorable — the crew is friendly toward Unity Club, asking how to help
• 🟡 Mixed — split crew, or a friendly tone but not committed
• 🔴 Unfavorable — hostile, the other slate has them, or actively against
• 🚫 No Presence — you arrived but no crew was on site (early, late, between shifts, off that day). Picking this skips the vote-intent and contacts steps so you can submit in one tap and move on.

Pick the vote intent — your read on whether this crew will vote Yes for Unity Club:

• ✅ Yes
• ❌ No
• ❓ Undecided

Add any issues raised — wages, safety, leadership, contract gripes, the rumor about the other slate — anything specific worth tracking.

Step 2 — Contacts (optional)

Add specific people you spoke with — the loudest yes, the loudest no, anyone who matters by name. For each contact you can override the disposition or vote intent if they're different from the overall crew read. Phone is optional.

Skip this step entirely if no one stood out by name. The site-level read is the important data.

Step 3 — Review & Submit

Double-check your read, add any internal notes (visible only to canvassers, not the crew), and tap ✓ Submit Visit.

Re-visiting a site

You can visit the same site as many times as you want — every visit is logged separately. Useful when a crew that was hostile last week is friendly today, or when a new contractor's crew shows up.

To re-visit: tap a site card with a ✓ Visited badge from the dashboard, OR tap the matching entry in the Activity feed. Either way you land on the site detail page — tap Check In and run through the wizard again. The site's current disposition will update to your latest read, and the visit history will keep both reads on the site detail page.

5. Assignments & teamwork

Admins can assign specific sites to specific canvassers — your turf. Sites assigned to you show a 📌 Assigned to you badge on the dashboard. Tap the 📌 My Assignments filter chip to see only your turf.

If you have admin access, you can also assign yourself or others by tapping the 📌 icon in the dashboard header, selecting sites, then choosing canvassers from the picker. Or, on a site detail screen, tap ＋ Assign Canvassers.

6. Activity feed

The middle tab shows recent canvasses across the whole team. Useful for:

• Avoiding double-canvassing — see what your teammates just hit
• Seeing momentum — quick glance at how the field is moving
• Tap My Activity to filter to just yours
• Tap any feed entry to jump straight to that site's detail page — handy for re-visiting somewhere a teammate just hit, or following up on issues they flagged

7. Settings, privacy & troubleshooting

Privacy

• Your password is hashed — even admins can't read it.
• GPS coordinates are only used while the app is open. We don't track your location in the background.
• Visit data (disposition, vote intent, issues, contacts) is visible to admins for the campaign.

Tracking settings

• Auto check-in radius — default 300 ft. Adjustable by admins.
• Auto check-in — toggle off if you'd rather check in manually every time.
• Departure reminder — toggle off if you don't want the wizard to pop when you leave a site.

Sync settings

The dashboard refreshes in the background so you see new visits from teammates. Default interval is 30 seconds. Slower intervals save battery.

Maps

Choose Apple Maps or Google Maps for directions. Apple Maps is the iOS default; Google Maps generally has better traffic data.

Change password

Settings → 🔒 Change Password. Minimum 8 characters.

8. Frequently asked questions

What if I'm wrong about a site's disposition?

Just canvass it again. Your latest visit overwrites the dashboard read. The full history is preserved in the visit log on the site detail screen.

Can I edit a contact after I've added them?

From within the wizard, tap the ✕ on a saved contact row to remove it and re-add. After the visit is submitted, contact records are admin-edit-only.

The list isn't sorting by distance anymore.

iOS sometimes pauses GPS in the background. Open the dashboard, leave it open for a few seconds, and the watcher will restart automatically. If it doesn't, force-close and reopen the app.

The app feels stuck or shows old data.

Pull down on the dashboard to manually refresh. If that doesn't help, sign out and back in. As a last resort, delete the home-screen icon and re-add it.

"Could not save visit" — what now?

The error message now includes the specific reason (e.g. HTTP 401: Unauthorized or HTTP 500). Note the exact wording and share it with your coordinator — that tells them exactly what to look at. Most often this means your session expired; sign out and back in usually fixes it.

The Visited filter shows a low number.

If you see a number you don't expect (say, "✓ Visited (4)" when you know the team has done 22), your installed app is running a stale cached version. The fastest fix on iOS: delete and re-add the home-screen icon. On Android: long-press the icon → Uninstall, then re-install from Chrome.

I lost my login.

Ask an admin to reset your password — see "Need help" below.

What about my data plan?

VoteUnity uses a tiny amount of data — text and small JSON only, no photos or video. Background sync at 30s intervals uses about 1 MB per hour of active canvassing.

9. Need help?

Reach out through your campaign coordinator. They have the admin login and can reset your password, change your assignments, or help with whatever's blocking you.

For app bugs or feature requests, give the coordinator a heads up and they'll forward it.