Restore Canvassing HelpBranch Manager Guide
Complete control over your branch — manage canvassers, build routes, monitor live activity, and access every report to understand your data.
Dashboard
Your landing screen after login. The dashboard gives an at-a-glance health check of branch activity.
Live View
See all your branch's canvassers in real time on an interactive OS map. Open it from Live Map in the sidebar.
Activity Feed
A resizable feed panel at the bottom of the live map shows recent visit activity in real time. Drag the top edge of the feed to resize it, or collapse it entirely using the close button — a Feed button appears in the topbar to bring it back.
Branch Users
Manage the canvassers and assistants in your branch from the Branch Users panel.
Adding a New User
Use + Add Canvasser to create an account directly and share the generated credentials. Use ✉ Invite User to send an email invitation — the user receives a link to set their own password.
Choose Canvasser, Branch Assistant, or Branch Manager. Branch assistants can manage routes and view reports but cannot invite users or change branch settings.
Users can be assigned to multiple branches. A multi-branch canvasser sees all their branches' routes and data.
Managing Existing Users
Local Parties
Add parties that are relevant to your local area but aren't in the national list — regional parties, independents, or local groups. They appear alongside national parties when canvassers record party support for residents in your branch.
Local Issues & Tags
Issue tags let canvassers record what concerns residents raise. You manage two types: local issue tags specific to your branch, and suggested tags submitted by canvassers from the doorstep.
Local Issue Tags
Create tags for issues unique to your area — "High street decline", "Local hospital", "Cycle lane plans". These appear in the resident form alongside the national tags managed by admins.
Enter a tag name and optionally link it to a party (to indicate it reflects support or opposition to that party's policies).
Mark the tag as Positive, Negative, or Neutral. This feeds into the Issues Swing report to show directional changes over time.
Suggested Tags
When canvassers suggest new tags from the resident form, they appear here with Pending status. A badge on the Suggested Tags nav item shows the count awaiting review.
See the tag name, which canvasser suggested it, any party link, and the sentiment they set.
Approving adds the tag to your local issues list immediately, available to all canvassers. Rejecting discards it. Both actions are logged.
Routes & Literature
Create routes and areas for your canvassers, and manage the literature list they can record leaving at doors.
Creating a Route or Area
Choose Route (an ordered sequence of waypoints) or Area (a freehand polygon zone).
Click the OS map to add waypoints (routes) or draw a boundary polygon (areas). Click existing points to remove them. The route line draws in real time.
Name the route, add an optional description, assign it to your branch, and optionally set a planned start date.
The route appears immediately in the canvassers' Routes tab with Available status.
Route Actions
Route Statuses
Boundary Overlays on the Route Map
Clicking a ward while the ward overlay is active loads that ward's Census 2021 demographic data in the panel on the right.
Managing Literature
Go to Literature in the sidebar to manage the list of printed materials canvassers can record leaving at doors.
Reports
A full analytics suite scoped to your branch. All reports are real-time and filterable.
Branch Visits
Visual charts and stats for your branch — outcomes chart, by-canvasser chart, per-outcome counts, and a party support breakdown showing positive, undecided, and negative proportions for each party. Filter by date range. This is the analytics overview.
Visit History
A searchable log of every visit recorded in your branch. Search by address or notes, and filter by outcome, literature, or party. Each row shows the address, canvasser, outcome, and notes. Click an address to open the full household record.
Data Export
A searchable, filterable table of all residents on record in your branch. Each row includes name, age, gender, address, party support level, reason tags, and issue tags. Filters:
Export to CSV using the download button. Exports are logged in the audit trail.
Visit Heatmap
A geographic density map of where visits have been recorded across your branch. Filter by date range and outcome. Two display modes:
Toggle ward boundary overlays from the heatmap controls for geographic context.
Party Swing
Tracks changes in residents' party support over time. Every time a resident's party, support level, or reason tags change between visits, it's recorded as a swing event.
Filter by party and date range. The transition log shows individual swing events — who changed, from what to what, on what date, at which address.
Issues Swing
The equivalent of Party Swing for issue tags — tracks when national or local issue tags are added to or removed from resident profiles. Filter by issue type (national vs local), the specific tag, and date range.
Supporters
All residents marked as supporters in your branch, with their contact details — name, email, mobile. Search by name. Export to CSV for follow-up campaigns.
Branch Settings
Configure your branch from the Branch Settings panel in the sidebar.
Ward Demographics
From Branch Settings, click View Demographics to open the Census 2021 data panel for your configured ward — population totals, age profile, ethnicity, religion, employment status, and qualification levels sourced directly from ONS Nomis.
Policy Articles
Write and publish articles to brief your canvassers on issues they'll encounter at the door. Canvassers can read these in the Policy tab and star them for quick doorstep reference.
You'll see all published articles for your branch, plus national articles created by admins (read-only).
Enter a title, optional category label, and the article body. The editor supports Markdown formatting — headers, bold, lists, links.
Published articles are immediately visible to all canvassers in your branch. Draft articles are only visible to managers. Edit or delete at any time.