Petitions

A petition collects signatures for a demand, apart from campaigns: signers leave their name and email, and the counter shows how many have joined. Right after signing, the petition can offer a campaign to go further, and a campaign can invite its supporters to share a petition. A petition starts, like a campaign, from a description of the demand: what is asked, to whom and why, in the petition's language. The AI turns it into a draft, with a title, a description, a full text written in Activoice and a form header, which the steps below let you edit. This page walks through the petition editor step by step. Your AI assistant reads it too when it works on a petition with you.

Each step has its own page in your Activoice admin, at https://admin.activoice.org/petitions/<petition_id>/edit/<step>; the step slug is given with each section below. A step opens once every step before it is complete: while the content is missing, the later steps stay locked in the admin, as in the campaign editor.

Content (content)

• Title and description — the description (pitch in the API) is a few sentences shown under the title, before the form, with basic formatting (headings, bold, lists, links). Who the petition addresses belongs in the title, the description or the full text.
• Cover images — a landscape one for desktop and a portrait one for mobile, each resized and cropped to fit. Your AI assistant can upload them through a temporary signed upload when it has access to the file bytes and an HTTP upload tool. Otherwise, upload them in the admin.
• Full text — either a link to a page hosted elsewhere, optional, opened in a new tab by "Read the petition"; or a text written in Activoice, which visitors expand on the petition page without leaving the form. The draft comes with the generated text written in Activoice; switch to a link to host it elsewhere.

Blocks publishing: a missing title or description, or an empty text when the full text is written in Activoice.

Form (form)

• Form header (form_header in the API) — the heading above the signature form, written in the petition's language. Left empty, the form shows "Add your name", translated for each visitor.
• Fields — first name, last name and email are always asked. Phone, postal code, country and address are each hidden, optional or required. The CRM fields picked for the petition are asked too.

A new petition enables CRM by default. The Form step keeps the inline activation switch; when the organization enables CRM for every page, the switch stays on. Edit opens the petition's CRM settings whenever the switch is checked, including when activation comes from the organization. Saving this dialog also enables CRM locally, without saving or resetting any other fields you are editing. Cancel leaves the saved settings and the inline switch unchanged.

Leave the Destination lists field empty to inherit the organization's destinations, shown as its placeholder, or pick lists to replace them for this petition only; Reset to organization defaults empties every field of the dialog again. The same CRM destination options as campaigns apply: one to five destinations, existing or new tags for Action Network; the selection replaces all organization destinations. Mailchimp audiences remain organization settings; only its manual contact fields are editable here. Changing these settings does not move or resynchronize existing contacts.

For Pardot, select a Salesforce source campaign in this dialog before enabling CRM, saving CRM settings or publishing. New prospects use that source; existing prospects keep their original source. An existing live petition without this setting continues to record signatures, but sends none of them to Pardot until you configure it. There is no automatic catch-up of these signatures.

Signers join the mailing list only when they tick the newsletter box, set up by your CRM integration (checked by default or not, required or not, with your privacy policy link), or when consent is already remembered for their email address. Confirming the identity proposed by a personalized CRM link also remembers that address's consent when the contact is already subscribed.

The visitor's device remembers only the last consented email address per organization, shared by its campaigns and petitions, with no address history. The checkbox stays hidden for that address, ignoring letter case and surrounding spaces. The signature identity fields remain visible. Editing the email to a different address shows the checkbox again with your configured default value and required setting. Older consent cookies without an email address are ignored, so those visitors are asked again. Signing again with the same email updates the signature and counts once.

Where the public toolbar is shown, its initials or profile button opens My information to edit the visitor's identity and configured CRM fields. Save remembers those changes and sends them to the CRM when the visitor opts in or their consent is remembered, without recording a petition signature. The visitor still submits the signature form to sign. Embedded petitions show this button only when their toolbar is enabled with withToolbar.

Follow-up (follow-up)

The campaign offered right after signing, with the signer's name and email already filled in. The thank-you page lists the campaign's channels, the most effective first; the signer picks one and lands in the campaign with that channel already chosen. When the campaign has several recipient groups or finds the recipient from the signer's address, the channel depends on that choice, so the thank-you page names the channels and offers a single Take action button instead. It is shown only while that campaign is live. When you choose it, you are asked whether that campaign should also invite its supporters to share this petition on its success page; answering yes replaces any petition the campaign already shares. The two links are independent: the campaign side is also set in the campaign's Settings step.

Ask for a donation adds a donation ask to the thank-you page, paid into your organization's Stripe account (see Donations). While the follow-up campaign is live, the ask moves to that campaign's success page, after the action: enable it on the campaign too. Through the API, ask_for_donation and donation_intro_text; the readiness report returns donation_settings_required until the organization can take donations.

Settings (settings)

• URL — the slug of the petition page, /petitions/<slug>/, on your organization's custom domain when it has one.
• Publication — a draft is not public. On a draft, the step's Publish button (in place of Next) saves the settings, publishes the petition and opens the Share step. Once published, the petition collects signatures; ended, it keeps its counter visible and accepts no more signatures. The counter appears from 100 signatures, with automatic milestones like the campaign counter.

Blocks publishing: a missing slug, which the step proposes from the title and requires before saving. Publish stays disabled, and the status box lists what is missing, while another step is incomplete. Publishing is refused, and nothing is changed, while anything listed on this page is missing.

Share (share)

The petition's public link, the personalized link for your CRM's contacts, and the snippet to embed it on your website: the signature form alone by default, or the full petition page. See Embedding a petition.

The petition's page in the admin opens on Analytics: visits, signatures, conversion rate, the funnel from visit to signature and share, where visitors come from, and how signers answered the newsletter question. Signatures lists every signature, where each one can be deleted, for example to answer a data protection request, and all of them exported as CSV. Signers also appear in Users; anonymizing one there keeps their signatures whole in the petition, only detached from them.