Creating and publishing a project

In District Engage, a project represents a workspace for a particular set of consultation activities.

Creating a project

To create a new project:

1. Log in via your District Engage website.

2. At the top right of the page, click on your username, then click Dashboard. This will take you to your personalised dashboard page.

3. In the top-level menu bar, click Projects.

4. In the top right of the screen, click +Add project.

5. You can also use the left-hand navigation bar. Click the + icon to add a project.

6. Note: fields are optional unless marked required, but filling in all the relevant fields will give your project the best chance of success.

7. Give the project a title.

8. Select the Department or (Campaign) team you would like to assign the project to.

9. Provide a brief summary in the Summary field that explains the purpose of the project.

10. Click Save to save your product as a draft. Once this is done, you will land on the project edit page where you can start creating your project.

11. Add a Description. The description is the primary content that will be visible on your project’s publicly visible landing page. Help people understand what the consultation is for by providing a clear and concise description. If your description is several paragraphs long, you can tick Collapse description to cut your content shorter and add a Show more button. This is a rich content editor, which means you can add things like hyperlinks, tables, quotes, and style your text. For more information about the editor, see the complete District Engage documentation.

12. Add an Image for your project to help community members visually identify the page.

13. Update the Consultation status

14. Set an End date for the project by either typing it into the field or clicking on the calendar icon and choosing the date.

15. Add relevant Contact details. You can add a field for each contact. Use the dropdown list to choose which contact type you’re adding.

16. If required, you can add further blocks of content. For more detailed information about each content type you can add, click here. You don’t need to add all your content now; you can create the project and update it later.

17. Through Advanced settings you can:

    1. Select the relevant Categories and regions this project applies to. You can only choose one region, or if the project is state-wide, choose All regions.

    2. Select which department teams and campaigns this project relates (Department & campaigns). You can choose more than one.

    3. Provide a location name for this project and provide the location co-ordinates for this project (Location details).

    4. Add a unique URL to help make your page easy to find and navigate to (URL settings).

    5. Under Participation settings, choose the participation moderation type and the participation default status. This will set whether comments and other publicly visible feedback areas will be published by default, or whether they require moderation first.

18. Once you’re ready to save your draft, click Save.

Note: Words in the project Title, Summary and Description field are indexed for the frontend project search.

Publishing a project

Once you have saved your project as a draft, internal users with the appropriate permissions will be able to publish the project. A user role has associated publishing permissions and controls what you can publish and what state you can change a content update to. For more information about user roles.

To publish a project:

1. Navigate to the project you would like to publish.

2. On the project overview page, click the Edit tab.

3. On the right hand side of the page, click Publish.

4. A pop-up window will appear with the two different publishing options. Click Publish now if you would like your project to be published straight away. Click Schedule to publish later and fill in the publishing data and time in the Publishing schedule field, if you prefer to publish at a later stage.

5. Once you have finished, click Confirm.

6. In case you selected the Publish now option, your project will be published straight away.

7. In case you selected Publishing schedule field, your project will be scheduled for publishing on the set date.

Access your publishing schedule

All content changes that are scheduled for publishing in the future, including the initial publishing of the project, are listed in the Publishing schedule of that particular project.

To access the publishing schedule of a particular project:

1. Navigate to project you would like to see the publishing schedule of.

2. On the project overview page, click the three dots next to the Frontend button.

3. From the dropdown, click Publishing schedule.

4. This provides you with a list overview of all content updates that are scheduled for publishing.

Edit a scheduled publishing date

Once a publishing date has been scheduled for a project, this publishing date can be edited.

To edit an existing publishing date:

1. Navigate to the page you want to edit, then click Edit.

2. Make the content changes.

3. Click Publish.

4. A pop-up window will appear, with the radio button Schedule to publish later selected.

5. To edit the future scheduling data, click on the calendar icon in the Publishing schedule field.

6. This will open a calendar. Select the new date for scheduled publishing.

7. Click Confirm. Your project will be scheduled for publishing on the new date.

Clear a scheduled publishing date

Once a publishing date has been scheduled for a project, this publishing date can be cleared/removed.

To clear an existing publishing date:

1. Navigate to the page you want to edit, then click Edit.

2. Make the content changes.

3. Click Publish.

4. A pop-up window will appear, with the radio button Schedule to publish later selected.

5. To clear this future scheduling data, click on the calendar icon in the Publishing schedule field.

6. This will open a calendar. Click Clear to remove the existing publishing data. The calendar will automatically close.

7. Click Confirm. Your project will no longer be scheduled for publishing.

Changing the status of a project

Once a project has been created, the project will be in either one of the following statuses:

To change the status of your project:

1. Navigate to the project you want to edit, then click Edit.

2. In the upper-right corner, you will see the Save as a draft and Publish button with a dropdown.

3. Select your preferred status. A pop-up window will appear. Click Confirm to save your changes.

4. The status has now been updated, and the relevant users will be notified via email.

Enhance project visibility

To maximise the visibility of your projects in search results, it's crucial to follow our SEO best practices.

1. In your project summaries, incorporate key terms that align closely with the project's content and objectives.

2. Ensure the title contains key terms that accurately reflect the content.