Meet the updated Lighthouse / Connect sync

At long, long last, we have good news on the Lighthouse / Connect sync!

Our new synchronisation process is now up and running and you should see significant improvements in the accuracy of membership data in Connect.

We know that this not being fixed has been a long-running source of frustration for many people for a long time and this is hopefully an encouraging step towards improving our data and tools.

The synchronisation process ensures that for every member & registered supporter on Lighthouse (in Great Britain), a MyCampaign record should be created and then matched to MyVoters where possible. 
MyCampaign records linked to a membership will have the following information associated with them:

The matching process won’t be perfect and there will be some people who validly don’t have linked MyVoters records - but Lighthouse and Connect should be much more closely aligned now and this should let you call, canvass and post with confidence!

This also only applies to local parties within Great Britain. Connect doesn’t currently support address formats outside of this area, so members living outside of Great Britain won’t appear in the system.

Unfortunately, this being fixed, does mean that we need Data Officers to do a little work!

What to do now

We’ve updated our Process Guide on how to tidy up your membership data in Connect - and if you don’t have elections, it will make your life a lot easier if you can make time to do this.

The automated process will get this correct in most cases, but there are always edge cases and things that we can’t resolve automatically. For these, we need a local person with local knowledge to work through the process of resolving these issues.

You can view the updated process guide here: https://www.libdems.org.uk/lighthouse-process-guide-3

There’s also a Geek Sheet that explains in more detail how the synchronisation process works: https://www.libdems.org.uk/lighthouse-geek-sheet-12 

If you have elections in May - this probably isn’t a priority right now, but would be ideal to do over the summer.

What to do if you run across an issue

If you run into an issue whilst doing the matching process and you get a record you can’t work out what to do with, just drop us a Connect Support request.

Please include as much information as possible on what’s wrong as it’ll help us resolve the issue quickly and easily.

Other changes

There have been a few other changes to the data that’s synchronised from Lighthouse that are worth bearing in mind.

Firstly, email addresses are only synchronised currently where the All - Email or Local - Email are set to true on Lighthouse. The same rules are in place for phone numbers.

We’ve also tightened up on the synchronisation of under 18s, for safeguarding reasons. As a result, nobody under the age of 13 will be synchronised to Connect and for people aged 13-18 email addresses and phone numbers won’t be synchronised to Connect.

This data will still be available in Lighthouse and can be identified by using the Under 13 and Under 18 Member and Supporter reports.

It’s also important to note that some records will be marked as being under 13 or under 18 due to errors in the provision of dates of birth by users.

Where this is the case, please contact the member in question to confirm their age. If they are over 13/18, then you can update their date of birth by:

• Getting them to complete the Demographic survey, linked from their profile (more on that here)
• Submitting a problem report containing their correct date of birth (more on that here)

If they are under 13 and don’t have a parent contact listed on Lighthouse, it’s important that you contact HQ by submitting a problem report relating to the under 13 in question as quickly as possible.

You can find out more on the party’s safeguarding processes here: https://www.libdems.org.uk/complaints-compliments 

Movers Process

Now that we’ve got our registers process running more smoothly, we’ve also been able to run the Movers process for the first time since 2020.

This process transfers data between people who’ve moved across the country to their new records where we can be confident that it’s the same process.

This should mean there’s a little more data on people in your patch than there was a few days ago.

Additional Fields

We’re in the process of consulting on some additional fields to add to Connect from Lighthouse. There are some very strict limits on how much data we can synchronise to Connect, so we can’t move everything, but if there’s anything else you’d find useful, please let us know by emailing support@libdems.org.uk

Learn more about our roadmap

We recently hosted two sessions at Conference to share with you more information on the party’s technology project and what we’ve got planned.
You can catch up on that session here.

We’ve also planned another session later this month, that you’re very welcome to join us at! You can register for that here.

You can also keep up to date with all of the changes to the party’s technology & tools here on the Tech Blog.