Introducing the consultation activity type

We're pleased to announce the release of a new activity type in Citizen Space, built for consultations. It brings new features to the overview page and dashboard, designed to help admins run their consultation process and keep respondents informed throughout.

What's new

A timeline on the overview page

Consultations run through stages, and the new timeline shows respondents where things are up to. It appears as a collapsible block in the overview sidebar.

You build the timeline yourself, adding each stage with a date, title, description, and status (Not started, In progress, In review, or Complete). It updates manually, so you stay in control of what's communicated and when. It's particularly useful in the gap between a consultation closing and a report being published.

A dashboard built around the consultation workflow

The top row of the dashboard now reflects the natural flow of a consultation: responses collected, responses published, and activity status. The new response publishing block shows how many responses are awaiting moderation and how many have been approved, giving you visibility of where you are in the publishing process.

You can also now configure your own insight charts. Pick the questions you want to surface and the chart type that suits the data. Donut and bar charts are supported alongside the existing responses-over-time view.

A new "Exports and reports" block puts direct links to the most common exports (XLSX response data, PDF and DOCX summary reports) right on the dashboard, with a link through to the full exports page for everything else.

A preview of your timeline appears on the dashboard too, with a quick link to edit it.

Why we built it

Two things drove this work. The first was feedback from customers running statutory and policy consultations who told us they needed better ways to communicate progress to respondents, particularly in the quiet period between a consultation closing and a formal response being published. The second was our view that the platform should make best practice consultation feel intuitive, with the structure of the work reflected in the structure of the tool.

Providing information at the point of response is a well-established principle in good consultation design. The new activity type extends that thinking beyond the moment someone submits a response, helping you maintain a clear line of communication with respondents through to the publication of outcomes.

Available now

The consultation activity type is rolling out as a core activity type, available to all Citizen Space customers. Settings and default content mirror the existing Survey activity type, so it will feel familiar from the start.

If you're an existing customer and want to talk through how to use it for your work, get in touch with your Customer Success Manager. They can walk you through it and help you set up your first one.

If you're new to Citizen Space and want to see how it could support your consultation and engagement work, get in touch. We'd be happy to show you around.

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