The PlaceChangers platform

For complex projects, you can now add theme sections. Locations on proposal maps can be linked with themes, so that participants see only what's relevant to a theme.

Some of the updates include: Tweaks to confirmation emails and tweaks to  menu on consultation pages. We also smashed a bug which meant that the project editor would show an out of date site boundary. 

You can now set up a data use consent dialogue. If it is set up, respondents to your consultation need to provide consent for the use of their responses before being able to respond.

You can now share consultation drafts with clients for review. 

This is a big feature update. Ask your architect to export your building design in the open IFC standard and use those models as part of interactive 3D consultations on PlaceChangers

PlaceChangers Engagement tool now lets you assign custom question sets by proposal or location category. Use it to ask specific questions in relation to a specific area. Equally, you could ask respondents the same set of questions for, say, all green spaces to help appraise site options!

Plug in your site boundary and get detailed access analysis to these key local services.

Uploading large image files is now no longer a problem. Where previously you might have seen an error. The app now auto-reduces file sizes to a suitable size automatically. 

Using the consultation dashboard, you can now leave a reply to any responses you receive on your proposals. Add a brief reply to questions or comments that might need clarification. You can reply in private or public (for all other respondents to see).

Consultation reporting just got a whole lot more powerful. Tap into automatic suggestions for topics and sentiment for each response you receive. Accept and reject topic suggestions as you please. Add your own topic keywords to speed up analysis and grouping into issues. 

Consultation reporting just got a whole lot more powerful. The app now provides you with suggested useful responses automatically. You can also point out comments you found particularly useful to improve suggestions over time. 

Based on popular user request, PlaceChangers Engagement tool now temporarily saves responses on the users local device as 'drafts'. Users can then submit those drafts whenever they are ready to do so. 

If your campaign presents responses publicly, the app now lets participants 'like' other responses. This helps to avoid duplication and gives you a view on popular ideas. 

You can now configure guided tours with a simple drag-and-drop editor. Simply choose the locations and proposals you like to make part of your guided tour, move them in the order you like, and you are good to go. 

Map consultations now automatically include an interactive legend based on the proposals and themes included in your campaign.

The consultation reporting dashboard just got a whole lot more powerful. You can now add topic keywords on each response you receive to speed up the analysis. It's particularly powerful if you work in a team. 

Based on popular request, satellite maps are now the default base map layer for all map engagement campaigns. 

In PlaceChangers Site Insights, you can now generate coverage maps for a feature category at the click of a button. For instance, select public transport locations and define a walking distance. The app will draw a coverage map in an instant. Stop the guess work if your site is adequately covered with access to public transport. 

Based on poplar request, you can now toggle any map view to show either a satellite base map or a standard map. 

PlaceChangers engagement and consultation tools now automatically use the site boundary to configure initial consultation areas, so you don't have to. 

We brought the navigation for the consultation setup editor in line with the rest of the platform to raise consistency. 

The platform now references all dates and times across the platform correctly against Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Consultations now close correctly at 11.59 pm of the the respective end date regardless of where in the world the consultation takes place.  

You can now apply formatting to the description of any feature or proposal included in a consultation. This lets you add lists, paragraphs, or additional images. 

Chances are you will be reusing a series of questions for all consultations. A good example might be a question on postcode or age. You can now save a set of participant questions as a template. Templates can be easily loaded into future consultations to reduce the time required to create a new consultation. 

We have listened to user feedback and our own user testing. Guided tour now more fully featured than ever. Configure a series of proposals as a guided tour. Public consultation views will show participants a location preview and buttons to easily toggle between proposals. Take your participants on a tour and ask for feedback on places that are relevant. 

You can now apply specific colours to paths that are part of your consultation. Say you want to indicate that a set of cycle paths are funded by different funders. Now you can do so by giving respective path features a different colour on the map.  

We have loaded in official transport locations from the Department for Transport. Locations available include bus stops, rail stations, and metro stops. 

Emails to consultation respondents now include confirmation on the number of responses they left as well as links back to the consultation they participated in.  

Based on popular requests, the consultation reports' detailed view now shows the date when a suggestion or comment was made and the respective session ID. 

You remember this functionality with which consultation respondents leave suggestions anywhere on the map. Previously this worked by a simple click on the map. At times, this interfered with Zoom actions. We've now placed a simple 'add idea' button to the bottom bar. A click on it, enables participants to leave an idea anywhere. 

If you have an existing website, it's best to provide a simple embed to link to a campaign. On click or move, the embed widget now shows a hint to open the campaign in a separate tab. 

You can now create feature groups. With this feature, you can group multiple features on your consultation together into groups (such as projects). Participants can filter for locations associated with a group on the map and also in the list view. In addition, your reports will now summarise responses by any feature groups that you configured - a powerful time saver. 

You can now create features, such as house types, and apply them to multiple locations on your project. All responses to any of these locations will be summarised under a single feature.

Map pop ups now perform better across both Android and Apple devices. 

Nothing tells the story of your project better than a good render or video. You can now easily embed any video or 360 degree render on any point of interest in your campaign. 

Public consultation views have been tweaked for usability on smaller mobile devices. The response dialogue on map views is now consistently part of a location preview box, instead of being a separate element on the map. 

You can now quickly and easily export your public responses as CSV for further analysis in Excel or elsewhere.  

You can now define focus areas for your respondents. Focus areas will help take respondents on a tour. Respondent can toggle between areas and see the name of the area and a response question to consider. It's great if you have proposals in multiple areas, or want to ask for feedback on different areas near your site. 

You can now set up organisations and add your colleagues. Inviting your team members to collaborate on setting up engagement campaigns and consultations will now be even easier. 

You can now choose to show a 'sign up for updates' box on the landing page. Those who sign up get an automatic note when the engagement campaign or consultation is due to close and when it closed keeping everybody informed.

Makes it even easier and quicker to set up lots of similar locations in your project. And as bonus: Interactive locations on the map now pulse making  them simple for participants to spot!

We added a bunch of things that improve the user experience for members of the public. Locations that can be responded to now pulsate. It's now possible to jump to a location in the list view to the location on the map. All input elements have a new style to make it clearer where comments can be left. We also tidied up the participant questions view. 

Consultation projects can now easily be duplicated. Great if you work on a project with similar kinds of setup where you can set up a draft project, duplicate it as many times as necessary to adapt further. You might even use it to create templates. 

We now provide a simple widget that you can add to any other website in just a few clicks. The widget updates dynamically, so to show if the consultation is active or not and how many responses there are. Embed it anywhere you like. 

If you asked participants to leave you an email contact for follow-up, those email addresses are now presented in a new contact manager. 

Based on user feedback, we've spent April with some essential house cleaning and dusting. In the process, we squished bugs that bugged our users for a while. Setting up projects and reporting should now be smoother all around. 

We have worked hard to improve the way locations are handled. This change allows for greater flexibility in handling user-generated locations associated with responses.

Consultation reporting just got a whole lot more powerful. Tap into automatic suggestions for topics and sentiment for each response you receive. Accept and reject topic suggestions as you please. Add your own topic keywords to speed up analysis and grouping into issues. 

Consultation reporting just got a whole lot more powerful. The app now provides you with suggested useful responses automatically. You can also point out comments you found particularly useful to improve suggestions over time. 

If your campaign presents responses publicly, the app now lets participants 'like' other responses. This helps to avoid duplication and gives you a view on popular ideas. 

You can now configure guided tours with a simple drag-and-drop editor. Simply choose the locations and proposals you like to make part of your guided tour, move them in the order you like, and you are good to go. 

Map consultations now automatically include an interactive legend based on the proposals and themes included in your campaign.

The consultation reporting dashboard just got a whole lot more powerful. You can now add topic keywords on each response you receive to speed up the analysis. It's particularly powerful if you work in a team. 

Based on popular request, satellite maps are now the default base map layer for all map engagement campaigns. 

In PlaceChangers Site Insights, you can now generate coverage maps for a feature category at the click of a button. For instance, select public transport locations and define a walking distance. The app will draw a coverage map in an instant. Stop the guess work if your site is adequately covered with access to public transport. 

Based on poplar request, you can now toggle any map view to show either a satellite base map or a standard map. 

PlaceChangers engagement and consultation tools now automatically use the site boundary to configure initial consultation areas, so you don't have to. 

We brought the navigation for the consultation setup editor in line with the rest of the platform to raise consistency. 

The platform now references all dates and times across the platform correctly against Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Consultations now close correctly at 11.59 pm of the the respective end date regardless of where in the world the consultation takes place.  

You can now apply formatting to the description of any feature or proposal included in a consultation. This lets you add lists, paragraphs, or additional images. 

Chances are you will be reusing a series of questions for all consultations. A good example might be a question on postcode or age. You can now save a set of participant questions as a template. Templates can be easily loaded into future consultations to reduce the time required to create a new consultation. 

We have listened to user feedback and our own user testing. Guided tour now more fully featured than ever. Configure a series of proposals as a guided tour. Public consultation views will show participants a location preview and buttons to easily toggle between proposals. Take your participants on a tour and ask for feedback on places that are relevant. 

You can now apply specific colours to paths that are part of your consultation. Say you want to indicate that a set of cycle paths are funded by different funders. Now you can do so by giving respective path features a different colour on the map.  

We have loaded in official transport locations from the Department for Transport. Locations available include bus stops, rail stations, and metro stops. 

Emails to consultation respondents now include confirmation on the number of responses they left as well as links back to the consultation they participated in.  

Based on popular requests, the consultation reports' detailed view now shows the date when a suggestion or comment was made and the respective session ID. 

You remember this functionality with which consultation respondents leave suggestions anywhere on the map. Previously this worked by a simple click on the map. At times, this interfered with Zoom actions. We've now placed a simple 'add idea' button to the bottom bar. A click on it, enables participants to leave an idea anywhere. 

If you have an existing website, it's best to provide a simple embed to link to a campaign. On click or move, the embed widget now shows a hint to open the campaign in a separate tab. 

You can now create feature groups. With this feature, you can group multiple features on your consultation together into groups (such as projects). Participants can filter for locations associated with a group on the map and also in the list view. In addition, your reports will now summarise responses by any feature groups that you configured - a powerful time saver. 

You can now create features, such as house types, and apply them to multiple locations on your project. All responses to any of these locations will be summarised under a single feature.

Map pop ups now perform better across both Android and Apple devices. 

Nothing tells the story of your project better than a good render or video. You can now easily embed any video or 360 degree render on any point of interest in your campaign. 

Public consultation views have been tweaked for usability on smaller mobile devices. The response dialogue on map views is now consistently part of a location preview box, instead of being a separate element on the map. 

You can now quickly and easily export your public responses as CSV for further analysis in Excel or elsewhere.  

You can now define focus areas for your respondents. Focus areas will help take respondents on a tour. Respondent can toggle between areas and see the name of the area and a response question to consider. It's great if you have proposals in multiple areas, or want to ask for feedback on different areas near your site. 

You can now set up organisations and add your colleagues. Inviting your team members to collaborate on setting up engagement campaigns and consultations will now be even easier. 

You can now choose to show a 'sign up for updates' box on the landing page. Those who sign up get an automatic note when the engagement campaign or consultation is due to close and when it closed keeping everybody informed.

Makes it even easier and quicker to set up lots of similar locations in your project. And as bonus: Interactive locations on the map now pulse making  them simple for participants to spot!

We added a bunch of things that improve the user experience for members of the public. Locations that can be responded to now pulsate. It's now possible to jump to a location in the list view to the location on the map. All input elements have a new style to make it clearer where comments can be left. We also tidied up the participant questions view. 

Consultation projects can now easily be duplicated. Great if you work on a project with similar kinds of setup where you can set up a draft project, duplicate it as many times as necessary to adapt further. You might even use it to create templates. 

We now provide a simple widget that you can add to any other website in just a few clicks. The widget updates dynamically, so to show if the consultation is active or not and how many responses there are. Embed it anywhere you like. 

If you asked participants to leave you an email contact for follow-up, those email addresses are now presented in a new contact manager. 

Based on user feedback, we've spent April with some essential house cleaning and dusting. In the process, we squished bugs that bugged our users for a while. Setting up projects and reporting should now be smoother all around. 

We have worked hard to improve the way locations are handled. This change allows for greater flexibility in handling user-generated locations associated with responses.