How to set up an election

The Elections System in UnionCloud is constantly growing and improving, it's had numerous updates over the past few years, from the introduction of Self Nominations, the addition of a Live Election stats area, and more recently some small improvements to the User Experience when using Self Nomination, and Voting, which you can read more about in the Version History section.

Voting UserGroups / Data

You have two options for UserGroup data within Union Cloud, you can use the default usergroups, or create some of your own.

 Note: It's worth remembering that you aren't just limited to one usergroup, you aren't setting the usergroup up for the whole election, you can set up usergroups to apply to specific positions within an election, for example, you could use the 'Confirmed Students' usergroup for your SU President, and then create a Custom Usergroup called 'Self-Define Women 2018' to use for electing a Women's Officer

View Confirmed Students

As you can see here, by clicking show count this screen reveals the number of users in your Confirmed Students user group

In most cases we expect UnionCloud users will be using their 'Confirmed Students' usergroup, this is the Group that gets populated with students whenever the institution provide you with a CSV of Data, and you upload it, or alternatively if you're lucky enough when your institution automatically transfers the data to you. To check if you think this usergroup is correct, we recommend you navigate to;

You can find this page on your own site at url: <yoursite>/administrator/user_groups

Once at this page, if you click [Show Count] button next to any of the usergroups it will reveal the current number of users. Remember if you've just uploaded a file and you're wondering why this hasn't increased, these files are processed overnight, so the numbers won't update until the following day.

Add to Confirmed Students

Student Upload screen within the File Uploads section

If this number seems too low to you, it may be that your data is out of date, and some students have left, or there were errors in your previous upload or any number of reasons! Either way, it's time to fix the problem! Using the Navigation you should move to the upload files section Dashboard >> Admin >> File Uploads >> Student Upload

You can find this page on your own site at url: <yoursite>/administrator/upload_files/upload_student_file

Once in this section, you can use it to upload a file of Student Data to the 'Confirmed Students' usergroup, it's worth noting that this file can also be used to UPDATE, and DELETE students from your Confirmed Students Usergroup, for more information about what to put in this file, see the Upload Files Section

 Note: If you think there are too many students in this file, contact ZenDesk support!

Use a Custom UserGroup

Alternatively it might be the case that the usergroup you want to use for your elections isn't the confirmed students user group, there are numerous examples of why this might be the case, it could be that you have officers for specific campuses and you are creating usergroups for individual campuses, alternatively you might have a usergroup of students who self define as women, whom you want to use for a Womens' Officer election, whatever it is, this is the process to follow, navigate to;

You can find this page on your own site at url: <yoursite>/administrator/user_groups/custom_tree

Once here, you either create the new UserGroup, or expand the folder structure to find the usergroup you want to use. In this example we're going to create a brand new group, but if you were to reuse one, you can just move ahead to where we talk about adding users to the group.

• Select the 'Add User Group' button as highlighted in the screenshots below
• Complete the Name & Description Fields, the Permissions field should be left blank unless you want to assign this group permissions for something on your site.

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  Click button highlighted in Red Box to Create New Custom User Group.

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  Complete the Fields and click save.

Add users to Custom UserGroup

Once you have downloaded the template following the above instructions you should complete is as per the information on the pop up.
If the users you are uploading are already account holders on your UnionCloud site, you only need to include an email address for that user, and what date you want them to expire from this usergroup. Otherwise you will need to provide some more details. You should also remember that if they aren't already in you UnionCloud site and you are uploading them using this method, to complete all the data, and also check the Add users for e-voting checkbox.
Something to be careful of! Some versions of excel alter the data format, so before you upload this document, please do the following, select the data in both of the date columns, 'dob' and 'membership_expiry_date', columns D and F, right click on one of the columns, then choose 'Format Cells', on the formatting window choose date, and then make sure you select the 3rd option down as the date needs to be in the format DD/MM/YYYY. Then click okay.

Next select the close button in the top right hand corner of the screen, choose Save when asked 'Want to save your changes to <document name.csv>' in the following box ensure that the 'Save as type' field says CSV (Comma delimited) as in the screenshot, then save the document somewhere convenient, with a sensible file name.

You will be presented with one final dialogue message, it is notifying you that not all Excel features are available in CSV files, and if saved in the current format you could lose some, this however doesn't affect you, so simply click Yes, and the document will close, saved in the location you selected.

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  Select Upload Members to access the Template, and upload box.

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  Click the highlighted button to download a CSV Template to upload.

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  This is the User Group Member Upload CSV.

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  Highlight the Date Columns, dob, and membership_expiry_date.

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  Choose Format Cells.

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  Select Date Format, and Choose the third option.

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  Ensure Save as Type is CSV(Comma delimited).

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  Select Save.

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  Ignore the warning and save as CSV File Type.

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  Use this dialogue again, to upload the file.

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  File uploaded successfully.

Login & Access Dashboard

Modeless menu box after login.

Access Dashboard

• Hover over Username
• Select Your Dashboard

If this option isn't available you don't have administrative permissions.
If this is the case, in the first instance contact your Lead Union Cloud administrator, and ask them to update your permissions, if this doesn't work, or they are unsure how, then contact ZenDesk.

Navigate to the Elections Module

Modeless menu for navigating the Dashboard.

Access the Elections Module

• Hover along the top Menu, moving the Mouse over 'Democracy' until the sub-menu appears
• From the sub-menu move the mouse of the 'Elections' heading, three items will appear

• Manage Categories
• Manage Positions
• Manage Elections

If these options aren't available to you, you haven't been assigned Manage eVoting permissions.
If this is the case, in the first instance contact your Lead Union Cloud administrator, and ask them to update your permissions, if this doesn't work, or they are unsure how, then contact ZenDesk.

If you have set up elections before, and already have your Categories & Positions set up, please feel free to skip onto the Manage Elections Section.

If you haven't set up Categories or Permissions before, or you need to create some more, these next steps will talk you through the process. The crucial thing to understand, is that it is important not to run several different 'elections' at once, you should run only one election, that has multiple categories, and then each category have within it, multiple positions. You can picture it working something like this;

Manage Categories

Screen showing all elections categories

You create a category for each different type/ group of positions you wish to hold an election for, you may wish to group your elections in a number of different ways, for example you could create a category for, Full Time / Executive Officers, One for Part Time/Representation Officers, One for NUS Delegation Elections, One for Sports elections, One for Society Elections, or you could potentially even create a new category for every different club / society, the only difference here, is how they are grouped when shown on the End User Elections screen, which you can see examples off in the How to set up an election guide.

Adding a new category

You can add a new category relatively easily, choose the 'Add Category' button below the grid to the left. This will open a separate screen with two boxes to complete,

• The Title of the Category

For example Exec Elections, Club Elections, Society Elections etc.

• The Description of the Category

Try to make this fairly descriptive to stop anyone accidentally putting positions into the wrong category at a later point in time. This is particularly a problem if you have a number of different staff processing elections! Be as clear as possible.

Manage Positions

Manage Positions Screen

Each position is an individual elected role, now that doesn't necessarily mean it can only be one person.

You can set the number of seats for a position when you are setting up an election, but for example you need to set up a unique position for each one you wish to run.

Therefore, you can't just set up a 'President' position, and use it for all of your Clubs / Society elections. You would need to set up a 'President', that is a part of the 'Executive' Category, and a Chess President, that is part of the Society Elections Category, or a part of a 'Chess Elections' Category if you set it up to be that granular. You will need to create the roles for each group. Though this only needs to be done once.

Add New Position Screen

You can add a New Position, from the Manage Positions screen, by clicking the button on the bottom left, that will take you to the screen pictured to the side. from there you just need to complete the dialogue options on screen