This article is machine translated from english
What is a project?
A project on our platform is a dedicated space where engagement and participation take place. It’s where you structure an initiative, invite input, and guide participants through a process.
Projects are the core building blocks of your platform:
They can be used to gather ideas, run surveys, ask questions, or organize community discussions.
Each project contains phases (steps on a timeline) that define how and when users can contribute.
Projects hold their own content, settings, access rules, and branding. Making them distinct from each other.
Key things to know about projects on our platform:
Standalone spaces: Each project can be tailored to a goal (e.g., co-creating a policy, running a consultation)
Phases and timelines: Projects use phases to structure participation over time.
Access control: You decide who sees and participates in a project (admins only, selected groups, or open to everyone)
Optional folders: Projects can be grouped into folders for better organization but still function independently
In short: A project is the “container” for your initiative: everything from design, phases, and input forms to events and participation methods lives inside it.
In terms of hierarchy on the platform we separate a project from a folder and a phase:
A folder is used to group together multiple projects that have a certain similarity (e.g. infrastructure work, an area/district, …). We'll go more in depth about folders in this article: Creating and Managing Folders
A phase is used to describe what’s going on within a project (e.g. a project can start with a survey phase, after which an information phase follows to inform the users of the findings in the survey) We'll go more in depth about phases in this article: Creating and Managing Phases
Why is project setup important?
Setting up a project properly on our platform is more than just filling in a few fields, it lays the foundation for how your engagement will run.
A well-set-up project ensures:
Clarity for participants: users instantly understand what the project is about, how to contribute, and when
Smooth participation flow: well-structured phases and input forms prevent confusion or bottlenecks
Consistent branding and messaging: visuals, descriptions, and tags help the project feel coherent and professional
Proper access control: only the right audience sees and interacts with your project
Easier management later: good setup means less troubleshooting, fewer edits, and smoother archiving or duplication
A rushed or incomplete setup often leads to:
Missing context for users (they don’t know why or how to engage)
Broken timelines or inactive phases
Manual rework later (editing tags, fixing URLs, patching access rights)
In short: Good setup upfront saves time, avoids confusion, and makes your project more impactful.
What is a project lifecycle?
A project lifecycle describes the stages a project goes through from creation to closure. Understanding these stages helps you plan, manage, and communicate your project effectively.
The four main stages are:
Draft: The project is being built and isn’t visible to participants. Only admins, project managers, or reviewers (via preview links) can see it
Published: The project is live and visible to users. Participation is possible when there are active phases
Archived: The project is no longer open for participation but remains visible in the archive section of the platform
Published – Finished: A status applied automatically when the last phase has ended. The project is visible but no longer active
Why it matters:
Helps you know when to make changes (some edits aren’t possible after certain statuses).
Ensures participants see the right version of the project at the right time.
Keeps your platform organized: projects don’t clutter the homepage when they’re archived.
Testing your project before publishing it:
We have a feature called ‘preview link’ that allows you to share a project with key stakeholders before you Publish your project, this way you can test and preview your project while it is still in the Draft stage.
You can find out more about preview links in the support article: here.
Project Publication Status
This status can by default only be managed by platform admins, therefore Project Managers are required to contact their admins (or folder manager) in order to get their project published or archived.
ℹ️ Project managers can publish projects using the approval flow feature. For more details, see the Approval Flow Feature section below.
Note on Archived Projects:
Archived projects remain visible in the main project list. However, if you want to hide them from the navigation bar’s dropdown menu, you have two options:
Reorder the project list: Go to the “ordering” tab in the top left corner of the “Projects” list. Drag the archived projects to the bottom of the list.
Organize them into a folder: Move them into a “Finished Projects” folder to keep your active list clean and focused.
Different views for Project Management
The Project Management View helps you manage participation projects efficiently and in an organized way. It offers multiple views with filtering, editing, and organizing options.
Project List Tab
You can use the many filters to find projects better.
You can also take the following actions on this tab:
Copy or delete a project: Click the three dots next to the "End date" column
Edit a project: Click the project title
Folder List Tab
You can use the many filters to find folders better.
You can also take the following actions on this tab:
Delete a folder: Click the three dots next to the "Status" column.
Timeline View (available on higher-tier plans)
The Timeline View shows projects in a visual timeline for better scheduling and planning. Access it via the Timeline tab in the top-left corner.
You can use the many filters to show the timeline of filtered projects.
You can also take the following actions on this tab:
Change timeline view to: Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly, or Multi-year
Spot gaps to apply engagement strategies
Ordering View (available to admins)
The Ordering View lets admins reorder projects and folders.
You can:
View all projects
Reorder project by dragging and dropping
Customize the order for the project and folder legacy widget on the homepage.
Customize the oder the the "all projects" drop down in your navigation bar
What are the different project settings?
When creating and editing a project, there are several settings to help you configure your project to your needs. Below you’ll see a summary of these settings and a brief explanation of what they mean and are intended to achieve.
You can find the project settings when you are in the back office of your project in the top-right corner.
General
Project Name (Title):
Your project title is the first thing people will see, it’s how your work will appear on the homepage widgets, in the Projects tab and if you haven’t set a custom “slug,” this title will also automatically become the default URL for your project.
Project URL (slug):
The URL of your project
By default the slug (the part after '/projects/') is the title of the project. This can be changed in Project Settings. You can also change this for folders. Go to Edit folder and go to "Settings" and fill in you desired slug under "URL". This is not possible for inputs or ideas.
Furthermore, the language part of the URL (eg: /en-CA/) is not important for the functionality of the URL - it only brings information. Therefore you can share your project URL without the language part and it will still work.
Redirects and shortened URLs
You can not delete the "/project/" or "/folder/" section on the url when editing the slug yourself. If you want this part of the URL to be removed you need to ask the support team to create a redirect for you.
The support team can create redirects for you as long as the domain stays the same. This is most useful to be able to share shortened URLs for your project.
Tags and Areas:
Whether you generate dozens, hundreds or even thousands of ideas through your platform, it helps to have a good method to categorize, filter and find ideas that relate to specific tags. This is possible through our tag functionality, which allows you and the users to categorize input.
Tags and areas are used on our platform in 2 ways:
User notifications: When a user registers, they can select certain tags and/or areas to follow. When you assign a project with these tags, users will get (if enabled, see article 'Emails on the platform') an email notification saying that a project they might be interested in is published. We also have a ‘for you’ widget on the homepage builder (see article 'Homepage Builder') where projects that fit the user’s preferences where the projects will appear that have overlapping tags and/or areas with the ones that the user follows.
Ideation projects: Ideation projects come with the option to assign a ‘tag’ to your idea. Only tags that have been chosen on the project-level can be chosen by users to add to their idea. If you want to assign tags to your project, but don’t want users to assign a tag to their idea, you can disable this by removing the section in the input form (see article 'Ideation Proposals and Input Management')
Notes:
If you delete a tag from the project, ideas that already have been tagged will keep their tags. You can remove the tags manually in the Input Manager tab, or if you wish to delete all reference to the tag from all of your projects, you can delete it from the Settings panel in the Admin panel.
The tags are managed in the platform settings and only accessible to platform admins. There is a list of pre-defined tags, to remove this the platform admins has to contact our support team via the chat bubble.
Description
Every project has a short project description that is, together with a project image, shown on the homepage. This and other settings are defined in the Project settings through the General and Description tabs. You can fully customize your longer project description, using the text-editor or have more advanced design options by using the content builder.
To get more in-depth into our content builder feature, read our support article: here.
Input Tags
In this section you can select which tags can be used by users within the project during a proposal or ideation phase to assign to their input.
Access Rights (Project Level)
The access rights on the project level (which are different from the phase level access rights, see section in Phase Settings below) allow you to configure 3 things: discoverability, visibility and assigning project managers that act as admins within the context of the project.
To learn more about our project-level access rights, read our article on ‘Access Rights’
Data
If you’ve already set up your project and run some tests (for example, by filling out a survey), you can choose to reset all participation data. This action will keep your project setup intact but will permanently remove all data collected so far, essentially giving you a clean slate for real participation.
More project settings can be found when going back to the project back office main page:
Timeline
The Timeline is the default tab you’ll see when you access your project’s back office. It allows you to manage the phases of your project in a clear, chronological order. Phases must be set up sequentially, and only one phase can be active at any given time.
Use the Timeline to structure your project and clearly communicate its schedule and approach to end-users.
Within each section of the Timeline, you can configure the specific phases you want to include. For more details on configuring the phase settings, see the article: Creating and Managing Phases
Participants
In this tab of the project settings, you can track participation in your project. You’ll see when users have participated, how many have taken part, and view available demographic insights.
Note: If your project allows participation without an account, or if anonymous participation is enabled, demographic information will not be displayed.
Traffic
In this tab of the project settings, you can track the visits on your project page, as well as their language, device type and source from where they came from before they landed on the project page.
Messaging
You can use the Messaging app to send emails to users who have participated in or are following the project.
ℹ️ If your project allows participation without an account or anonymous participation, those users cannot be contacted through the Messaging tab.
Events
You can find the events in the project settings, as the events aren't directly related to a phase, but always to the main project. Events allow you to link between your process and events happening outside the platform, for instance a launch event, offline participation sessions, theme-related events, or the release of final conclusions.
Events are displayed in a card view under timeline and separately in a tab on the project page. We still show the relevant events for every phase (happening when the phase is active) in that phase.
How to create a project?
Click on the Projects tab in the back office of your platform
Click on New Project in the top right
Fill in a title for your project in all available languages for your platform
Create a timeline of different phases that outline your project
Configure the project settings as per your preferences
How to copy a project?
To copy a project, go to the project management view, click the three dots in the far right of the bar to the project you want to duplicate, and select Copy project. You can then rename it and update the details as needed.
You can also use this as a quick way to create multiple similar projects that only require minor adjustments.
How to delete a project?
Navigate to the Projects tab in your back office
Find the project you want to delete in the list
Click the 3 dots at the right and click Delete Project
Confirm
How to publish a project?
The status of a project can by default only be managed by platform admins (or folder managers within their folder), therefore Project Managers are required to contact their admins (or folder manager) in order to get their project published or archived.
Approval Flow Feature
We have a feature ‘approver flow functionality’, and if this is enabled for your platform, you will be able to request project publication approval from your admin or folder manager. This request will trigger a notification to the admin or folder manager requesting them to review and approve the project. Once approved, the project manager can publish the project at their own leisure.
ℹ️ The approval Flow Functionality is available to Premium and Enterprise Price Plan, if you would like this feature disabled you can contact our support team via the chat bubble.
Archived Projects:
Archived projects remain visible in the main project list. However, if you want to hide them from the navigation bar’s dropdown menu, you have two options:
Reorder the project list: Drag the archived projects to the bottom of the list in the All Projects tab in the back office.
Organize them into a folder: Move them into a "Finished Projects" folder to keep your active list clean and focused.