New subscribers to the parent are not added to the lists of child groups in Action Network. Subscriptions flow up the hierarchy in the network but must be forced to flow down. We accomplish this by using a Ladder.
Ladders are processes triggered by some input to the database. The trigger can be an action by the subscriber such as opening an email, or signing a petition, or being included in a list uploaded to the group where the ladder is open and working.
The primary group assignment ladder is part of the welcome process for new subscribers. This was created years ago by Jean Shenk and has worked spelndidly.
In 2018, FDPA launched the Polling Place Outreach (PPO) effort to collect petition signatures and enroll new subscribers as people exit the polls. This presented a new challenge for assigning people to county groups. We could get people’s names and email addresses, but most wouldn’t take time to write detailed address information. Without an address Action Network can’t identify a person’s county or legislative districts.
However, knowing where someone votes is almost as good. Michael Kearney devised a process for inferring county of residence from the polling place. This made it possible to assign new PPO subscribers to their county group with reasonable accuracy.
I (Richmond Shreve) built a ladder triggered by the upload of the PPO petition signers list. The ladder responds to uploads to the state list and assigns each person to a county group if it finds a match in the inferred county field.
It didn’t work — not at first
Initially, the logic of the ladder failed to make matches in many cases where the data was actually present and correct. I was stumped and AN wasn’t able to help. By making most of the uploads directly to the individual county list, we got the job done.
Subsequently, admins in the Philadelphia region noticed discrepancies in the number of subscribers in key zipcodes if the report was taken from the state list than if it were taken from the county list. Over a period of weeks the sleuthing led to a glitch in AN’s code. That’s been fixed and it looks like our ladder now works.
I’m still not absolutely sure there aren’t residual problems. I’m watching and testing.
rbshreve2@hotmail.com