Why is the title field required for Action Alerts?

Shane Davis

Convio is a member of the Advocacy Coalition (and GetActive was as well). The vendors in the Advocacy Coalition, working with Congress, are committed to providing accurate, legitimate data to Congress. The Vendor Coalition is working on a draft set of standards that all vendors will be asked to adhere to when sending messages to Congress electronically.

Convio decided it was important to begin to conform to those standards, which are meant to ensure that data being submitted from our systems is legitimate from the end-user and not something that our systems "made up" in order to get a webform to submit, such as "making up" a Title for the end-user to make the Advocacy Alert a slight bit easier for them to fill out.

An ever-growing list of webforms require the title field, so no amount of hidden data will create a legitimate submission to those webforms. We must have the end-user set the title themselves, and that must come from the pre-determined list of titles that are a part of the standard. This list may not contain every possible title, and may not contain the title that the end-user wants to use, but they should pick the title that best matches their status. Just like we cannot reliably determine what gender an end-user is is without their input, we cannot reliably determine the best title for the end-user.

From the standpoint of deliverability, it is extremely important to require a title field that conforms to the majority of webforms to which alerts are submitted. It may take a slight bit more effort on the work of the end-user when filling out an Advocacy Alert, but this helps ensure that the Action Alert reaches its intended target.

Kristina Hall

I would like to add a little clarification around why we cannot update Advocacy titles to something custom:

Basically, when someone submits an advocacy alert, our system takes their response and sends it to webforms for the targets of the alert. So the options we allow on the advocacy alert title have to match the options available on those target webforms. If we allowed more options on title (such as "Dr.", or "Rev.") then anyone who selects an added option that doesn't have a corresponding option on the target webform, would have their action alert fail and wouldn't be received by the target due to the webform rejecting the invalid title.

KayW

I have a question about adding title fields, and this is all I could find posted on this - and I believe it needs updating. We have 2 alerts posted presently - one has Dr. in the title field, the other has Dr. and Rev. So I know Convio has added those fields. My question is, how do I make sure the Rev. field is added? On the latest alert I posted, only the Dr. field was included. Here are the URLs to our two alerts - please take a look and let me know what the current policy is on this - thanks!

https://secure2.convio.net/cws/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=139

https://secure2.convio.net/cws/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=171

Kristina Hall

The 5 standard titles are:

Mr.

Ms.

Mrs.

Miss

Dr.

Basically, if any of the targets of the Alert require specific information then the options to select those fields will grey out so the admin cannot change it. It's based on a per-target category as some forms allow different fields than others. Again, the target form is what configures this, Convio just matches the information requested by the target.

Here is a link to the help document that has a few examples:

http://help.convio.net/site/PageServer?pagename=Admin_Advocacy_Alerts_Select_Contact_Fields

KayW

Krisina,

When you say standard, are you referring to standard for Convio, or standard for the target (Congress etc)? I am asking because, I noticed with other vendors, Rev. is inlcuded in the title choices. As we are a faith-based organization, we would like Rev. to be included for us. Is this something we can request to be added to our account?

Kristina Hall

Hello Kay,

I would recommend opening up a Support case at this point to see what your options are on adding the Rev. title to your Action Alerts. It is my understanding that this is not a possibility, but they might be able to offer you a better explanation or some other options.

Thanks so much!

Kristina

Andrew Hedden

In the past some client have had this title field customized to include other titles however if that title that was put in does not exist as a choice on a legislator's web form and it's required for submission then the constituent's response may not make it to the legislator. This is why we have to go for the most commonly used list of titles to ensure high deliverablity and avoid making customization to this field.