The July release of Citizen Space is primarily focused on small features that present a better user experience for your respondents or your admins. Co-funded by two Citizen Space customers. The changes that have been made are:
- created editable holding pages for unpublished consultations;
- added a new answer component type; and
- improved our skip-logic feature
What’s new
Holding page for unpublished consultations
We know that for some of our customers, it’s really handy to have the ability to temporarily take a consultation offline to make some minor amendments (with minimal disruption for users). Previously, when a consultation was retracted, respondents visiting that URL were presented with a Citizen Space login box, which could cause confusion.
Now, whenever a consultation is retracted, a message is displayed explaining that the consultation is unavailable. While a consultation is unpublished you have the option to edit this message. You’ll notice a new link on the Consultation Dashboard entitled “Edit Unavailable Message”. You can also review and edit the message prior to retracting a published consultation. Full instructions can be found in this article.
This message can be used to explain why a consultation has been temporarily taken offline and provide an estimate of when it will be available again.
Example uses of this feature include:
- Being able to edit a consultation record which may have gone live with the wrong supporting documents or a spelling mistake
- Promoting a consultation URL before it’s published, and using this message as a holding page
Handily, this message can also include formatted text, links and rich media such as images and maps.
Postcode-formatted answer component
Often, you may need to ask respondents for their postcode as part of an online survey. This information could be later used by your GIS team in order to map from which postcodes the respondents came. In order to ensure a respondent has entered this in the correct format, administrators can now add a ‘postcode-formatted’ answer component. This single-line text input field works by validating the respondent’s answer to ensure it’s in the correct format for a postcode.
Applying unconditional skip logic rules to multiple pages at once
When building a consultation with skip logic enabled, you might find that there are several pages that should jump to the same destination page when submitted. This often happens when you have several conditional branches that all need to resolve to a general “Thank you” page at the end of the survey, for example.
Previously, you would have to add an unconditional rule to each of these pages individually. Now, though, you can simply select the button labelled “Set Destination for Multiple Pages at Once”, at the top of the Skip Logic Settings page. Further information on this feature and using skip logic can be found in this knowledge base article.