PlaceIt Map Upgraded

PlaceSpeak is continuously improving and developing new features to help organizations in all industries and sectors meet their engagement goals to make better decisions. Based on feedback from our clients, public participants  and extensive research, PlaceSpeak’s development team has been hard at work.

We’re happy to announce the launch of new functionality in the PlaceIt Map for place based commenting. PlaceSpeak’s  PlaceIt Map continues to be a popular and flexible tool to collect geo-spatial feedback. There have been a number of feature updates for both Administrators and Participant users.

Going beyond the whats and whys, many online public consultations require a more spatial approach — the “where”. In the Nation’s capital of Ottawa, in a park consultation participants could provide feedback on important aspects of the park along the Ottawa River. People could identify places on the map that they enjoyed in the park and suggest where additional upgrades could be made to benefit park users  This was a much more interactive and easy option than asking people to describe or write down the addresses of existing locations.

Other examples include asking residents to share images as part of a photo contest; or  mark on a map where they would like to see more street lighting, or indicate problem areas in their neighbourhood which might require more traffic calming features or stop signs. Either way, PlaceSpeak’s PlaceIt Map for geo-spacial engagement provides the means to collect feedback in a more interactive and easy way. Key functionality on PlaceIt:

Administrators can:

• choose the layout of the comment markers for public input
• define the frame of the map to focus on the consultation area
• add informational markers, including images and text descriptions
• upload boundary polygons to define the specific areas of consultation (like park boundaries or neighbourhoods) on the map.
• choose to pre-moderate comments before they appear on the map

Participants can:

• browse the map and zoom in to the consultation area
• add markers to the Map and respond in the form created by the engagement Administrators
• add markers that include both text and images
• delete their unwanted comments
• Vote up or down the comments of others.
• comment anonymously (however comments are attributed to them in the data)

All data collected are time and date stamped and segmented by the PlaceSpeak map boundaries. Data also includes the coordinates of the marker for easy geospatial referencing on GIS tools. 

Participant User Side

On the Administration side, Admins can continue to add marker content, select map styles and upload boundary files; but now they can also add images and text content to the base map. 

Administration User Side