Regions

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ControlShift's Regions feature allows an organization to divide their geographic area of focus into smaller chunks – this idea is also sometimes known as turf cutting or turfing. 

FAQ

Q: What are regions?

A: Regions are a way of dividing your organization's geographic purview into separate discrete geographic shapes – these could be parliamentary constituencies, counties, state outlines, multi-state regions (e.g. Pacific Northwest), countries, continents, or any combination of those and other geographic shapes.

Once Regions have been uploaded, an organization can use these shapes to automatically track items created in specific areas, to assign content to certain admins, to provision custom admin teams, and to make it easier for supporters to find content near them.

Q: Why would my organization want to use regions?

A:  Depending on your organization's structure, it may be useful to divide the content that's created on ControlShift into separate discrete regions. Location-based content will be automatically assigned to the appropriate region, and because teams can also be assigned to regions, the organization can automatically show newly-created content to the appropriate admins.

More specifically, here are some use cases we've seen:

• A large international advocacy organization is made of of country-level and continent-wide offices. Mapping their existing organization structure using ControlShift's regions allows newly-created petitions and events to be assigned to the appropriate country or continent's office. This ensures that content is not missed by the appropriate office, and that petition creators and event hosts receive the support they need from staff members in their own country or region. 
  
  
• A US-based advocacy organization has a complex affiliate structure with multiple levels of affiliates overseeing parts of states, full states, or multi-state regions. Event hosts and group leaders are usually supported by the most local affiliate (e.g. a St. Louis affiliate), but statewide and regional affiliates (Missouri affiliate and Great Plains affiliate) also need access to the items and users. The organization uses regions to mirror their existing affiliate structure into the platform. Because of the additional complexity, the regions are nested – ensuring that affiliate staff members see what they should while not overwhelming them with items outside their region.
  
  
• A New Zealand based organization has staff members that oversee activities in specific parts of the country. Members are similarly encouraged to attend events in their district. The organization mirrored their districts into ControlShift using regions. Staff members can now see the events that are happening in their areas, and members are also able to filter public lookup pages to see events in their district.

Q: How are regions created?

A: ControlShift's regions can be tied to any geography that means something to your organization – this could be counties, state outlines, multi-state regions (e.g. New England), countries, continents, or any combination of those and other geographic shapes. In order to load the regions, we'll need you to send us a KML (or KMZ) file with the appropriate shapes. We'll then upload those shapes for you, and the regions will be visible from the org admin homepage > Settings > Regions.

ControlShift also has shapes for some common regions, which are automatically available to customers. Once your shapes are shown on the Regions page, choose the appropriate option in the dropdown and click to Create. We'll automatically create a region for each shape.

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Getting Started

If your organization does not have any regions yet enabled, you can get started by sending us a KML or KMZ file of the appropriate shapes. Once we receive the file, we'll upload the regions for you, and they'll be visible in Settings >Regions.

ControlShift also has shapes for some common regions, which are automatically available to customers. Once your shapes are shown on the Regions page, choose the appropriate option in the dropdown and click to Create. We'll automatically create a region for each shape.

If needed, you can also manually add a new region. This may be useful if a region's shape has changed or if a region was mistakenly excluded from a collection. To manually add a new region, click the New Region button. From here, enter the name of the region, and choose the appropriate shape for the region. When you're done, click Save and the new region will be added.

Each already-created region will be listed on Settings > Regions, and the list will also show if an individual region is included in a larger region (for nested regions with a parent/child structure).

If you click the name of the region, you can see more information about it, including any child or parent regions, the shape of the geography, any events or teams associated with the region, whether the region is associated with a particular theme, and if the region is publicly visible. If you need to make any edits to the region, including updating its name, you can do that from here.

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Assigning Content to Regions

Once regions are created, the platform will automatically assign newly-created petitions, events, and groups to the appropriate region based on their designated location or other factors. Users with moderation privileges will be able to see the automatically-assigned region from the moderation queue or from the asset's Admin > Details page.

When deciding what region to assign a petition, event, or group to, we'll look at a few factors:

• If an event is being created in a Calendar with a specific region assignment, it (and all other events in that calendar) will be assigned to that region.
  

  Tip: If your organization is hosting a series of virtual events, and you'd like them to be assigned to the same regional admin team, you can add them to a regionally-assigned calendar. This will provide a single lookup page for your supporters and ensure that admins don't need to reassign events to the appropriate team.

• If the petition, event, or group is associated with a location, we'll check if that location corresponds to a region. If it does, we'll assign the item to the appropriate region.
  
  
• If the petition, event or group is associated with a location, but the location doesn't correspond to a region, and if the content is created by an admin on a regional team, we'll assign the item to that admin's region. (If the admin belongs to multiple, non-hierarchical regions, no assignment will happen because we won't know which region should be assigned.)
  
  
• If the petition, event or group is not associated with a location and is created by an admin on a regional team, we'll assign the content to that admin's region. (If the admin belongs to multiple, non-hierarchical regions, no assignment will happen because we won't know which region should be assigned.)
  
  
• If the item being created is associated with a regionally-defined object (e.g. a location-less campaign sponsored by a regionally-assigned group or a location-less virtual event that's part of a regionally-assigned petition), then the item will receive the same region assignment.

If needed, admins can reassign an item by clicking Edit in the moderation queue or Assign (or Change) from the item's Admin > Details page.

Please note: events and groups without location information will generally not be automatically assigned to a region and will need to be manually added to the appropriate region. 

If your organization is using Regions for permissions, it is important to confirm that content is assigned to the appropriate region to ensure that it is visible to the correct admin team. 

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Regional Teams

One of the key features of the Regions feature is the ability to create regional teams. These teams are assigned to a specific region and members of the team will have their admin lists pre-filtered to show content from that region. This can be useful to limit confusion and/or chaos at large organizations that have a lot of user generated activity.

Please note: assigning a user to a regional team does not prevent that user from using their assigned admin permissions on items outside of their region, but their view will be pre-filtered to only show the items in their region(s). For example, a user with event admin view permissions for events in New York will, by default, only see New York events in their all events list and moderation queue. However, that admin will also be able to see the admin view of events in California, if they go to the event's page directly. 

To get started creating a regional team, go to the admin homepage > Settings >  Teams & Permissions > New Team. From this page, enter the Name of the team and choose the appropriate Region from the dropdown. Once you select a region, the permissions options for the new team will change. 

Regional teams have fewer permissions available to them because not all permissions can be associated with a region. For example, the ability to add a story to the homepage carousel is not something that's tied to a region, therefore it is not an available permission. From the list of available region-specific permissions, choose the regions that you wish to grant to the new team and click to Save.  More information about the Teams feature is available. 

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Regional Filters

When an admin is part of a regional team, their admin lists will be automatically filtered to include only the items in their region. This filtering happens automatically for admin petitions, events, and groups lists and the moderation queue. For these admins, the regional filter will appear as an unremovable filter at the top of their lists. 

These admins will still have the option of adding other filters to further refine their lists. Admins who are not members of regional teams can also filter by region, but they will see the full list of available regions and will be able to add or remove the filter at will.

If a region has been made publicly visible, then it will also appear as an advanced filter on public event lookup pages (including the all events lookup page, the calendar lookup page, and the local organizing map).

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