This article features a sneak peek into some upcoming changes to the Ideas tool.
The Ideas tool is an online space where participants post, comment, and vote on ideas. It is simple to set up and perfect for quickly and easily involving your community.
The Ideas tool enables participants to engage with each other in an open environment. Posts, comments, votes, and images are visible to the community. This simple tool is perfect for online ideation, creating an online competition, or understanding the community's priorities.
The Ideas tool can be completely open for imaginative thinking or created to source ideas for a specific consultation. There are many ways that you can use the Ideas tool to meet your consultation needs or to engage with your community, such as:
Generate ideas from your community about a project, such as park redevelopment.
Get community feedback on preferred projects to implement by asking the community to vote on a curated list.
Create a photo contest whereby participants can upload and vote on images.
Create a competition to help name a park or new street.
Posting an Idea
When adding the Ideas tool to a project, admins can Preview it to see how it looks for participants. Your community will see the Title and Description you give your Ideas tool in the About panel.
To add a contribution, the participant can select New Post. They can add text, select a tile color (all accessible colors), or add an image (if this is enabled). After uploading their image, participants can crop, rotate, zoom, or flip it before they Save Changes.
They can then add more details if they wish to. If unverified participation is turned on, the participant must add an email and screen name and accept the terms and privacy policy before selecting Post to submit.
Schedule Voting on Ideas
You can also set the Ideas tool to have scheduled posting and voting periods. By selecting Scheduled voting in the Settings tab of your tool, you specify when voting starts and concludes. This splits the tool into an ideas period (from tool publication) and a voting period. Idea posting will be locked at the scheduled voting start date.
For example, to understand what projects your community wants to prioritize:
Create an Ideas tool as you normally would, including instructions for how you want your participants to vote.
Select Preview and add a post with the name and description of each project. Note that the Admin's username will be visible on the board.
You can also upload a photo for better engagement.
Repeat until you have a list of ideas completed.
In Settings, under Voting, select Scheduled voting and choose dates to Start voting on and Conclude voting on.
You can use this whenever you want to prioritize projects. Post your curated projects, lock contributions, and commence voting for prioritization.
Voting should start when you Publish the tool, so your participants can’t add their own ideas.
How else can a participant interact with the Ideas tool?
Share post
After posting a contribution, a participant can share their idea or share the Ideas board by clicking on the share icon.
Voting (like a contribution)
All participants can vote or unvote by selecting the thumbs up icon (previously the heart icon). When an anonymous user visits a tool with unverified participation enabled, they will be prompted to enter an email and screen name before voting.
A participant can vote on their own contribution.
Comment (if enabled)
Participants can comment on other’s posts by selecting the thought bubble icon.
Participants are notified via email when someone comments on their idea. This is the default setting and cannot be deactivated.
Edit/Delete/Report contributions
Registered participants can edit or delete their posts if the tool is live and open for contributions (scheduled voting has begun). Once scheduled voting has finished, participants cannot edit or delete comments or contributions.
Registered participants cannot edit or delete anyone else’s contributions or comments.
Unverified participants cannot edit or delete their own contributions or comments.
All participants can report a post or comment to moderation. If a contribution is deemed to be inappropriate, it will be removed from the board and deleted from the count of contributions.
View/Search
Each board with posts can be filtered by Newest, Oldest, Most votes, and Most comments.
Users can search the posts by title.
Participants can use the i icon to hide or view the About section of your Ideas board.
Add the Ideas tool to your project when you’re ready to start brainstorming with your community, and learn how to use the Ideas tool in conjunction with Surveys and Places.