Using EViD Maintenance to Configure Station Settings

The EViD tab on the Voter Focus Console offers an optional feature—EViD Maintenance—that can save time with configuring your EViD Stations.

Note: The EViD Maintenance feature is designed for counties that always send the same EViD stations to the same locations. It would not be useful for counties that randomly assign EViD stations to voting locations.

Using EViD Maintenance, you define the individual configuration for each EViD station in your county. For each EViD, the EViD Maintenance program can hold:

  • The Place ID of the site where the station will be deployed for early voting and/or Election Day.

  • Whether the EViD should be set up for early voting mode or election day mode. If the latter, whether the EViD should use clerk or inspector mode.

  • Ballot printing and ExpressVote settings, if applicable.

  • The IP address, if configured for a static IP LAN connection in Poll Place Mainte­nance.

These settings are then included in the image on voting activators. When a voting activator is loaded onto an EViD station, the EViD finds the settings for its own serial number and acquires all the information it needs to operate, with no intervention on the user’s part.

Important: If changes to EViD Maintenance settings are made before activators are loaded onto EViDs:

You will need to re-export, create a new activator image, and make (or re-make) the activators.

OR

You can make the changes manually at the affected EViD stations using Tech Utilities.

If a new EViD is deployed during voting, you need not rerun EViD Maintenance; simply set up the station manually at the voting location using Tech Utilities.

The information in this table is not included in staging activators, and this step is not required prior to creating a Staging activator. To set a static IP address or ballot printing settings for testing during staging, use Tech Utilities to set these options after the EViD has been staged.

If you want to add your early voting settings, run EViD Maintenance and add the settings before you run the Database Export program for early voting. If you know where a station will be used for election day, you can enter the election day settings at the same time you fill out the table for early voting.

Be sure to do an Upload EViDs on Web Messenger before early voting begins, to send the EViD stations to Web Monitor.

 

If you included election day information when you set up the EViD stations for early voting and no settings have changed, you need not run EViD Maintenance again for election day. Otherwise, EViD Maintenance to include the election day settings should be performed before you run the Database Export program for election day voting.

If there are any changes between early voting and election day, be sure to do an Upload EViDs on Web Messenger before election day voting begins, to send the updates on EViD stations to Web Monitor.

EViD_Maintenance_dialog_with_pointers.png

The Express Vote column displays to the right of the BP Type column for counties that are licensed to use ExpressVote and have activated this option with EViD Support. This column enables an EViD to print Activation Cards to an ExpressVote printer. See Install and Configure ES&S ExpressVote Printing for more information.

For more information on each of these fields, see the EViD Maintenance Dialog topic.

These settings can reused for a future election or imported from a previous election.

Using the EViD Maintenance import and export options, the current EViD settings can be exported to an Excel spreadsheet (XLSX format), which can serve as a backup or be imported into the EViD Maintenance dialog for a different election.

The use of EViD Maintenance also helps when monitoring EViDs with Web Monitor.

If you send the EViD Maintenance settings to Web Monitor (by doing an Upload EViDs operation on Web Messenger), Web Monitor will show the status of each EViD station at each voting location even before they have begun to communicate. This lets you see which EViDs are not yet communicating and identify any issues proactively. If you don't use EViD Maintenance to set up your EViDs, the Upload EViDs operation will insert one dummy EViD station for each voting location displayed on Web Monitor. You will see individual EViD stations only as each one begins to communicate.

  1. Go to EViD > EViD Maintenance.

  2. If this is the first time you are running EViD Maintenance, click the Import from EViD Activators button on the top right side of the dialog. This will import the most recent settings previously used for your EViD stations. You can then make any changes needed to bring the table up to date. The Import from EViD Activators option can only be used one time: the button will not be visible the next time you run EViD Maintenance.

  3. To edit the existing settings for a station, click in the column you want to change and type the new data. As you move out of a line, the data for that line is saved.

  4. To enter a new station, click in the row marked by an asterisk.

  5. From time to time, click the Refresh button to update the table you are viewing with the latest data in the database. This is useful when multiple people are filling out the table at the same time.

  6. When you finish setting up the table, click Exit to close the table.

Simply click in the column you want to change and type the new data. As you move out of a line, the data for that line is saved.

Click in the row marked by an asterisk.

Enter_new_evid_station_in_maint.png

Note: Zeros in EViD IDs are denoted by the slashed-zero character to distinguish them from the letter O.