Add the Questions (Q&A) tool.

Use the Questions tool to respond to queries from your community.

Deepa Prabhu avatar
Written by Deepa Prabhu
Updated over a week ago

Q&A is a managed space which allows your community to ask questions about your projects.

The Questions Tool allows you to approve all incoming questions and then respond either privately or publicly to the questioner. This makes the tool perfect for answering community questions publicly, thus helping to improve information flow, clarify queries about your projects, and also helps to address personal questions raised by participants via a secure private forum. We highly recommend using this tool for most projects, as it is the simplest way to open up your consultation and allow your community to get in touch

To use the Questions tool, you need to add it to your EngagementHQ page. The following steps describe how to add the tool.

  1. Select the Projects link from the top menu of EngagementHQ and click on your specific project from the drop-down menu. 

This will display the Project page.

2. Click on Tools. A list of tools are displayed that can be added to your page.
Select the Questions tool and click Save.

The character limit for the title of this tool is 255 however, there is none for the description field. You can change the name of the tool by clicking the pencil icon. In the displayed Name field you can mention the desired name of the tool and click on the Save button to save the changes.

Click on the Questions tool. The new Questions page is displayed. This page has three sections; Details, Settings and Manage Questions which are described below.

Details:

Click on the Details tab.

  • Change the Title of the tool by entering a title in the title box provided. 

  • Enter an introduction for the participants in the Introduction box.

  • Click save to update the content added / changes made.

Settings:

The settings page has two parts- Participation settings and Email Notifications and Acknowledgements.

The Participation settings allows you to change the participation type for the tool. By default only registered members will be allowed to participate. You can enable the "Allow unverified participation" button if you want members to engage with an email and screen name and not having to register.

You may enter a Thank you message in the space provided to thank users for their participation. This will be visible above the tool description once they submit a question.

You can set different email notifications to the participants in the Email Notifications and Acknowledgements.

  • Notification sent to admin when a new question added

  • Notification sent to user when their question has been answered

  • Notification sent to user when the answer to their question has been updated

  • Notification sent to user when their question has been answered privately

  • Acknowledgement sent to an anonymous user when they ask a new question

  • Acknowledgement sent to a registered user when they ask a new question

The following steps describe how to set up email notification using the Notification sent to admin when a new question is added. The other notifications are done similarly and are not outlined below:

  1. Click the arrow against the "Send email to admins when a question is submitted" tab.

The email configuration tab will open. Enter the subject of the email in the Email subject field. In the Email text field you may enter the content to be included in the notification mail.

Note: You can use placeholders here. For example [CLIENT_NAME], [SITE_NAME], [PROJECT_NAME] or [QANDA_NAME] in your subject (including the brackets) and these would get populated when the email is sent.

Enter the email address of the recipients in the Recipients box. Click Save to configure the email. Multiple email addresses can be added (without any commas).

NOTE : The process for setting up the other notifications is similar to the one described above. The following points describe the functionality of each of the notifications:

  • Notification sent to user when their question has been answered: An email notification is set up to be sent to the user once their question is answered.

  • Notification sent to user when the answer to their question has been updated: An email notification is set up to be sent to the user when the answer to their question is updated or had any changes.

  • Notification sent to user when their question has been answered privately: An email notification is set up to be sent to the user once their question is answered privately.

  • Acknowledgement sent to an anonymous user when they ask a new question: An email notification is set up to be sent to an unverified user to acknowledge their question.

  • Acknowledgement sent to a registered user when they ask a new question: An email notification is set up to be sent to a registered user to acknowledge their question.

Manage Questions:

You will see all the participant questions populated here under different tabs;                  New, Privately Answered, Publicly Answered, Archived and Junk.

When the buttons for "Answer publicly" or "Answer privately" are clicked and the questions answered and saved, they will move to the respective tabs. 

NOTE: Questions can be moved to Junk only once they are Archived. To understand how to respond and to delete questions please see the article on Managing the Questions tool.

NOTE 2: The order of the questions appearing in the project page will be the most recently answered question on top.

Click on save once the questions are answered.

3. Click on Publish when you are ready to start using this tool. 

4. Once published the Unpublish  and Archive buttons are available.

5. Use the Unpublish button to bring the tool back to draft mode, to make any changes. It can then be published again.
6. Clicking on the Manage button in the tool box will take the admin to the tab 'Manage Questions.
7. When this consultation has concluded click the Archive button. The below screen is displayed.

8.Enter the Archival Message and click Save to complete the archiving.

Contact our support team if you need any further assistance via chat or email support@engagementhq.com

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