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Goal Setting

What are your goals for this course?

Please share any broad goals or specific skills you are hoping to gain throughout this program. (max 250 characters).

You have 250 characters left
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21 February, 2025

kim.callaghan says:

To learn everything I can about SPP, so we can make get great engagement results for our projects.

18 February, 2025

Anonymous says:

I am hoping to have a thorough understanding of the platform features, so I can assist Project Leads when they are designing their engagement pages.

14 February, 2025

samantha.sernoski says:

To learn how to best utilize and get the most out of SPP.

14 February, 2025

bryan.reid says:

My goal is to become my municipality's internal SPP expert. I'm hoping to learn about more of the tools, and how we can use them to our advantage. I'm also looking forward to learning about how other groups are using the tools.

14 February, 2025

amber.pedigobyrd says:

Learn more about the reporting features along with word clouds and tool capabilities.

14 February, 2025

natalie.johal says:

looking fwd to gaining deeper knowledge about the platform and exploring innovative uses of the tools that perhaps i haven't considered :)

14 February, 2025

ann.toole says:

To learn how to use Social Pinpoint

"Digital" Engagement

How does digital engagement bring in new voices and improve outcomes?
  • Reach younger, broader and more diverse audiences
  • Increase disability and language access across the board
  • Share information more effectively with passive engagers
  • Create deeper understanding of outcomes with interactive communications tools
  • Empower project managers with actionable data, more efficient analysis, and remove barriers to follow-through
  • Enable public agencies to build cross-project databases and newsletters
Graphic depicting the various types of digital engagement and their differences

Types of Digital Engagement by Sophia Robison (Social Pinpoint)

Page Settings

Depending on the scale of projects/pages, site administrative staff capacity, and the different departments or staff managing pages, considering how you may be streamlining collecting the necessary information to launch pages. Additionally, what best practices could be developed to keep pages up-to-date?

Provide a succinct overview of the project. The language in the page settings description will be the preview that loads when the URL is shared or searched.


NOTE: once you launch a page, if you had originally put filler text in for the description, you'll need to update both in the header block AND page settings, it won't automatically update both when you change one of them.

You can decide among your organization how you want to categorize projects across these three status options.

  • Open
  • Active
  • Closed

For customers with portal landing pages, you are certainly not beholden to this wording externally. Feel free to update the block headers on your portal landing page to reflect different wording for each status, such as "looking for feedback" and "in progress" instead of "open" and "active". Up to you!

Public:

  • Once published, a public page is accessible to anyone.
  • If you wanted the page to stay quasi-hidden, you could check "do not include in project list" so that someone would not stumble upon it on the main landing page, but it would still be publicly accessible.

Private:

  • Won't appear on the public list or in any internet searches
  • Available to anyone with an account who is given access to the page
  • Considering using private pages for advisory committees, internal staff engagement, or even with Council members--maybe this can be there they ask questions or get project updates?
  • Right/Left Sidebar: the entire page is divided with a 2/3 section and a 1/3 sidebar. Probably 75% of Social Pinpoint sites utilize the right sidebar (will you be my hero and use a left sidebar?!), and for good reason--it's a great way to display different types of content at once for those on a computer. On left sidebar designs, the sidebar content goes FIRST. On right sidebar designs, all of the sidebar content gets bumped to the bottom of the page on smaller devices, so be sure not to put any super important information there unless you're okay with it being bumped if someone is viewing on their phone.
  • Right/Left Sidebar Feature: these design options have four alternating sections: two sidebar sections and two full page sections. This is such a dynamic layout, as you can keep the top of the page looking like a standard page with sidebar information, but then utilize full page spreads further down if you have large content or want an engagement activity to be fully expanded (such as the social map). The sidebar content only gets bumped down to the bottom of its specific section not all the way to the bottom of the page.
  • Full: Do you have one or two large pieces of content (site diagram, hotspot, etc.)that you want to be fully expanded? If you'll be doing a Social Map, having it as a full page activity is always nice.
  • Narrow: great mobile-friendly option for a subpage with just one engagement activity or a small amount of content. This is the default for project subpages.
  • Story: this format alternates between narrow and full page formats. Meant to encourage vertical scrolling as someone works through a story of a project. Great way to share a process and how input shaped decision-making.

NOTE: Be careful when changing page design layouts once you have built the page out--just be sure no content gets lost in the shuffle (it's just a matter of dragging things over if you'll be eliminating sidebars, etc.)

If your multi-project platform is using Locations to filter projects, you can tag the appropriate one for your project.

If your multi-project platform is utilizing categories (mobility, environmental, etc.) to filter projects, you can check as many as you think relate to the project.

Building out Teams within your site can help with a few things:

  • Managing workflow
  • Customizing access and permissions
  • Filtering reporting

If you plan to use a Project Map, the project pages will need to be geolocated. You can use points, lines, or polygons to mark the location of a project page.

This is available but we want folks to receive training first (which you are doing right now!) so it needs to be "turned on". Contact your CSM or Helpdesk to do so.

  • Enable Translation
    • If you have also procured Localize translation services, checking this will enable translation of page content.
  • Remove from Project List
    • Consider this for a project you're publishing but not quite promoting yet, or something like development application pages that you don't want clogging your landing page.
  • Enable Project Follow
    • For site admins, this will allow for people to "follow" a project if they create an account with the platform.

Page Element Tools

screenshot of Fort Wayne, Indiana's Northwest 2035 Neighborhood Plan project page

Tools for Project Launch

  • Highlighting Events + Key Dates

    Using either Key Dates or the Events Feed (and building events pages), ensure that people know when any meetings or related events will be occurring.

    Events pages are a different type of sub-page, where you can build out a short registration form or even a quick-poll to get a sense of how many people may be attending.

  • Quick Poll

    You could use a quick poll to get a sense of initial feelings or familiarity with a project. Could be something more lighthearted just to create an interactive element.

  • Q + A

    Q + A is a great option to deploy from the jump. You could start gathering key concerns or information to clarify and demonstrate responsiveness immediately. You can allow for voting (upvoting or downvoting for a question or answer to demonstrate support or disagreement). This tool allows for you to customize your preferred moderation method, as well as if you want email notifications to come in so you don't miss anything.

  • Gather

    The Gather tool is a great option for people to share stories or memories with text, images, or videos so that as people begin to visit a new project page, they might be greeted with history and context surrounding the project. You could use this for a "contest" of sorts, allowing folks to vote on other contributions.

Week One Exercise

Tutorial Videos

How to Build a Web Map


How to Build a Gather Tool

Class Recording

We missed the five 5 or so minutes of the recording where the first two tabs (Goals Setting and Digital Engagement) are covered. We will re-record these sections and upload them at a later date.