This article covers how to map tags to Survey Questions, Activist Codes, Canvases responses, and VAN event statuses. For a comprehensive overview of the tags feature in Spoke, please refer to this article.

You can map your tags to statuses in VAN in two ways:

• Create default mappings on the “Tags” page

• Create campaign-specific mappings in the “Texter Sidebar” of your campaign

With creating default mappings on the "Tags" page, you are telling Spoke to always use the same VAN mapping for a tag whenever it is added to a campaign (unless you override it in that campaign). For campaign-specific mapping, you are telling Spoke that you only want a VAN mapping for a tag to apply to a specific campaign. 

Preliminary Steps

Preliminary Step 1: Add an API Key to Spoke

Before you can map tags to VAN, you will first need to have added at least one VAN API key to your Spoke team. If you haven’t preloaded your VAN API keys into VAN, check out this support article covering how to request an API key and save it to your Spoke team.

Preliminary Step 2: Connect your campaign to VAN

In order for tags to actually map back to VAN, you must select a VAN API key in the “Integrations” section of your campaign. 

In order to connect a campaign to VAN, you must select a key in the “Integrations” section of the campaign.

If you do not connect your campaign to a key, statuses you have mapped to tags will not be recorded in VAN when you save data in that campaign.

Preliminary Step 3: Create tags

In order to map a tag to VAN, you must have first created the tag on the “Tags page”. Check out this article for instructions on how to create tags.

Creating default VAN mappings for tags

Let’s say you want Spoke to always map a tag to a status on one of your VAN keys. To set up a default mapping for a tag, you’ll go to the “Tags” page. 

Note: you cannot only map tags to VAN Event statuses from the “Tags” page. In order to map a tag to a VAN Event status, see the instructions on creating campaign-specific VAN mapping below.

Adding a mapping to a key

Click “Add New Tag” or “Edit” an existing tag to start mapping your tag to VAN.

To get started, either create a new tag or click “Edit” to access a window where you can set up the mapping. Then, click on the “VAN Integration” field of the tag creation/edit window.

Click on the “VAN Integration” field to start the process of mapping a tag to a VAN status.

Next, select a VAN key. You will be setting the status you want the tag to map to whenever a campaign is connected to that particular key.

Select a VAN key from the dropdown menu. You can repeat this process for each key you have added to Spoke.

Now, you can begin mapping your tag to a status on that key. Click on the “Action” field. 

Click on the “Action” field to start the process of selecting a VAN status.

This will let you search for the status you want the tag to match in VAN. Start typing into the field to begin your search.

When you type into the “Action” field, you will bring up matching statuses in VAN.

Select the status you want for your tag on that key.

After you select a VAN status from the dropdown for your search, it will appear in the “Action” field.

Adding a mapping for a different key

To add another default status for a different key, select “+ ADD A VAN INTEGRATION MAPPING”.

Click “Add a VAN Integration Mapping” to map the tag to a status on another key.

To add another key, click on the “VAN Integration” field.

Click on the “VAN Integration” field to access another key selection dropdown.

Select the key you want to use for the mapping from the dropdown.

Select the key you want to map to from the dropdown.

Then, repeat the process of typing into the “Action” field and selecting the status you want mapped from the dropdown.

Start typing, then select the status you want mapped from the dropdown.

Create campaign-specific VAN mappings

Let’s say you wanted to override a VAN mapping you set on the “Tags” page just for a specific campaign. Or let’s say you didn’t want to use default mappings at all, because you wanted to sync your tags to VAN event statuses. You would need to override or set campaign-specific mappings for your tags in the campaign itself.

To set up campaign-specific VAN mappings, you must first have created the tag on the “Tags” page. 

Step 1: Enabling manual tags for a campaign

Next, you’ll turn on a setting called “Enable manual tags” in the “Texter Sidebar” of the campaign. Head to that campaign’s creation / edit screen and select the “Texter Sidebar”. Then, toggle on “Enable manual tags”. 

To enable manual tags, and to set up campaign-specific VAN mapping, click on “Enable Manual Tags” .

Now select “Allowed tags for campaign”.

Select “Allowed tags for campaign” to open a dropdown menu.

This will open a dropdown where you can select the tags you want to make available for campaign-specific mapping to VAN. Select “All tags” to access every tag in your campaign, or select the specific tags you want to map to VAN.

Click on the tags you want to add from the dropdown. You can select as many tags as you like, or select “All Tags” to add them all.

Step 2: Map your selected tags to VAN

Once you have selected tags from the “Allowed tags for campaign” dropdown, you can begin creating campaign-specific mappings to VAN. Click “Add New Tag Action Handler” to get started.

Click “Add New Tag Action Handler” to start creating campaign-specific VAN mappings for tags.

This will open a screen where you can select a tag to be mapped to a VAN status. Click on the “Tag that triggers the action” field.

To start the process of mapping a tag to VAN on a campaign-specific basis, click the “Tag that triggers the action” field.

Next, select the tag you want to map from the dropdown. Note that you will only be able to select tags you have enabled for the campaign in the “Allowed tags for the campaign” section above.

Select the tag you want from the dropdown.

After selecting the tag you want to map, click on the “Action Handler” field.

Click on the “Action Handler” field to open a dropdown.

Next, select whether you want to map the tag to NGP VAN Action (survey question, canvass response, or activist code) or to NGP VAN Event (a status for an event you have connected to the campaign).

Click on the “Action Handler” field to open a dropdown.

After making your selection, you will get a new field called “Tag Action Data”. 

The “Tag Action Data” field lets you type to search for the exact status you want to map.

Click this field and start typing to bring up statuses you can map to the tag.

Example of statuses brought up for a VAN Event.

Select the status you want the tag to map to for this campaign. Then, click “Add Action” to save your mapping.

Click “Add Action” to save your mapping.

 You can add as many campaign-specific mappings to your tags as you like by clicking “Add New Tag Action Handler” and following the same steps. Keep in mind that mutually exclusive mappings (i.e. two different answers to the same survey question) will cancel each other out. 

To delete a VAN mapping for a campaign, click the trash can icon next to the mapping.

Example of a campaign-specific VAN mapping for a tag. The trash can icon can be used to delete the mapping.