This article provides information on what the 'Who's Listening' widget is, and when you can use it.
What is 'Who's Listening'?
In the past, we have seen administrators using the photo gallery as a workaround to introduce the project team, i.e. give names and faces to the teams behind the consultations. Since the photo gallery is not meant for this and it looked clunky, we decided to create a new widget for this.
Why and when should I use it?
The 'Who's Listening' widget has potentially many use cases. The three most prominent ones that come to mind are:
To humanise the consultation - sometimes, when we do online community engagement, we risk forgetting that our participants don't see us or any other faces. By including high level personal information and a picture, you can show your audience that there are human beings listening to what they have to say. In the long term this will increase your overall engagement.
To introduce members to each other - this is a use case for protected projects in which you only allow a few selected members to engage. You could use 'Who's Listening' to introduce each member of the group for all to see who is involved. It might be worthwhile to rename the widget in this case.
To have a better place to show contact information - many projects we see display phone and email contact information. We usually find this information in the project description or in a custom widget. Rename the 'Who's Listening' and you have a beautiful designed alternative.
How do I set it up?
The ‘Who’s Listening’ widget is set up just like any other widget. The steps to set it up on your project page, are as follows.
On the project page, click on the Add Widgets button. A list of widgets is displayed on a draw from the right of the screen. Click on Who’s Listening.
Now you can see the Who's Listening widget page open. This page enables you to add profiles of your team members. You can include as many team members as you like and provide the necessary information to be displayed. You also have the option to copy profiles of team members from other projects.
Adding Team Members
To add profiles to the Who’s Listening widget, click on the button 'Add Team Member'.
On clicking this button you can see two options, Add Team Member and Copy Existing Team Member.
You can perform the following actions using these two options:
Add Team Member - click on this option to add each of your team members. You can include as many team members as you like and provide the information to be displayed in the Who’s Listening widget of your project page. The following screen is displayed on clicking the Add Team Member option.
In the Add Team Member screen, enter information in the Name, Organization, Role, Email, Phone and Bio fields. Other than Role and Name, it is not compulsory to fill information in any other fields. Only the information that you enter will be displayed at the front end. When you upload the photo we recommend a square photo that is at least 200x200 pixels large. The corners are cut out automatically.
Note: There is no character limit for the description field here.
After entering the necessary details, click on the Save & Close button. You can view the newly added profile in the Who’s Listening page as indicated below.
Note: The phone number field supports upto 20 characters.
Similarly, you can add multiple new profiles by clicking on the Add Team Member button. To edit a profile, click on the pencil icon seen beside the profile to view the Edit Team Member page.. Make the necessary changes in the provided fields and click on the Save & Close button. To delete the profile, click on the Delete button. Please note that the Delete action CANNOT be undone.
Copy Existing Team Member - this option allows you to copy an existing profile from another project to your current one. To perform this action, click on the Copy Existing Team Member option. The Copy Existing Team Member page is displayed.
In the Select Project box, select the project from where you want to copy the profile. The profiles available in the selected project are displayed on the screen. Select the profile that you want to copy to your project. You can copy all profiles by selecting the Select All checkbox. Finally, click the Add to Widget button to add the profile(s) to your project. The profile is now available in your project’s Who’s Listening widget.
The Title of the widget can be changed or hidden as required.
The Who’s Listening widget page contains a drop-down menu with the following two options: Show Top and Show Recent, as displayed below.
Select the Show Top option to view the profiles in the order of the date of creation. Select the Show Recent option to view the profiles in the order of newest first. In the box next to the drop-down menu, enter the number of profiles to be visible in the preview and published project. If the count of this number doesn't include all the profiles added in the widget, it will show the link 'More...' in the widget on the front end, to show all the profiles. A pushpin icon next to the profiles indicates that these links will be displayed in the preview of the Who’s Listening widget of the project.
Contact our support team if you need any further assistance via chat or email support@engagementhq.com