Proposals

The Proposals component allows people to create, comment, endorse, and give support to proposals.

From this starting point, there could be other configurations, such as:

how many proposals a participant can create
how many supports as a maximum a participant can give to proposals
how many supports as a minimum a participant must give to proposals so their supports are valid
whether you want to enable that participants comment on proposals
whether you want that proposals have images, attachments, WYSIWYG editor, geolocated address, scopes, etc.

Some examples of where this component was used:

Proposals list example in COFE Proposals list example in Metadecidim Proposal detail example in Metadecidim

To configure the Proposals component:

Sign in as admin
Go to admin panel
In the main sidebar, click in the button for the space that you want to configure the component for. For instance, it could be "Processes", "Assemblies", or "Conferences"
Go to components
Click on "Add component" button
Click on "Proposals"
Fill the Add component form

Add component

Add component form

Table 1. Add component: Proposals form
Field	Type	Description
Name	Required	What is the title of this component. For instance, "Proposals"
Order position	Optional	Which order will it have in relation to the other components. Having a lower number means a higher priority. For instance, if you have two components, "Proposals" with weight "10" and "Meetings" with weight "0", then "Meetings" will be first when ordering.

Table 2. Add component: Proposals form - Global settings
Field	Type	Description
Scopes enabled	Optional	Check if you want to have Scopes filtering in this component.
Scope	Optional	Which Scope does this component belongs to.
Support limit per participant	Optional	Must be a number. How much supports a participant can give to proposals.
Minimum supports per user	Optional	Must be a number. How many supports does a participant needs to give to proposals so their supports are counted. If they don’t reach this number, their supports will not be taken in account.
Proposal limit per participant	Optional	Must be a number. How many proposals a participant can create.
Maximum proposal body length	Optional	Must be a number. How many characters a proposal body can have as maximum.
Proposal editing	Required	Choose one of these two options: "Allow editing of proposals within a specific timeframe" or "Allow editing proposals for an infinite amount of time". In case it’s within a specific timeframe, you must specify the time in "Proposals can be edited by authors before this many minutes passes". Note that if you answer a proposal then it can’t be edited anymore.
Proposals can be edited by authors before this many minutes passes	Required if "Proposal editing" is "Allow editing of proposals within a specific timeframe"	Must be a number. How many minutes after the creation of a proposal it can be edited by its author.
Threshold per proposal	Optional	Must be a number. How many supports a proposal needs to have to be considered as "validated". See screenshots.
Can accumulate supports beyond threshold	Optional. Only applies if "Threshold per proposal" is configured.	Whether the proposal can accumulate more supports than the threshold.
Proposal answering enabled	Optional	Whether administrators or valuators can answer proposals.
Official proposals enabled	Optional	Wheter administrators can create official proposals.
Comments enabled	Optional	Whether you want to have comments in the meetings.
Comments max length	Optional	What are the characters limit that participants will have when making comments. Leave 0 for the default value.
Geocoding enabled	Optional	Wheter participants can define a geocoding address for their proposals. Need to have Geocoding enabled. See screenshots.
Allow attachments	Optional	Check to allow participants to attach files to their proposals.
Allow card image	Optional	Check to show a card image when participants attach images to their proposals. See screenshots.
Actions permissions can be set for each proposal	Optional	Whether you want to be able to set permissions for every one of the proposals. Most of the time you will want to leave this option disabled.
Collaborative drafts enabled	Optional	Check to enable collaborative drafts in proposals.
Participatory texts enabled	Optional	Check to enable participatory texts in proposals.
Amendments enabled	Optional	Check to enable amendments in proposals. If active, configure Amendment features for each step.
Amendments Wizard help text	Optional. Visible if the "Amendments enabled" option is checked.	What’s the help text visible when creating new amendments.
Announcement	Optional	A general announcement that’ll be visible on the general proposals landing page.
New proposal body template	Optional	A pre-defined text that will be used when creating new proposals. Useful if you want to define a format that participants need to follow when creating new proposals.
New proposal help text	Optional	What’s the help text visible when creating new proposals.
Proposal wizard "Create" step help text	Optional	What’s the help text visible when creating new proposals in the "Create" step.
Proposal wizard "Compare" step help text	Optional	What’s the help text visible when creating new proposals in the "Compare" step.
Proposal wizard "Complete" step help text	Optional	What’s the help text visible when creating new proposals in the "Complete" step.
Proposal wizard "Publish" step help text	Optional	What’s the help text visible when creating new proposals in the "Publish" step.

Example of threshold setting

Example of card image setting

Example of geocoding setting

In the cases where the space that this component will be used has Phases, for instance, in Participatory Processes, then you can also define different behaviors per Step.

Table 3. Add component: Proposals form - Step settings
Field	Type	Description
Announcement	Optional	A general announcement that’ll be visible on the general proposal landing page.
Endorsements enabled	Optional	Check if you want that participants show public support for these proposals.
Endorsements blocked	Optional	Whether participants will be able to see the endorsments but don’t make any.
Supports enabled	Optional	Whether participants will be able to support proposals in this step.
Supports blocked	Optional	Whether participants will be able to support proposals in this step.
Supports hidden	Optional	If supports are enabled, checking this will hide the number of supports.
Comments blocked	Optional	Whether you want to enable comments for this phase.
Proposal creation enabled	Optional	Whether you want to enable proposal creation by participants for this phase. See New proposal form
Proposal answering enabled	Optional	Whether you want to enable proposal answering.
Publish proposal answers immediately	Optional	Wheter you want that the answers of proposals are published at the same time that you’re answering them or you want to control when to publish the answers.
Enable costs on proposal answers	Optional	Wheter you want to add economical costs to proposal answers. Useful for importing to budgets.
Amendment creation enabled	Optional. Visible if "Amendments enabled" option is checked.	Participant can amend proposals. See Amendments.
Amendment reaction enabled	Optional. Visible if "Amendments enabled" option is checked.	Proposal’s authors will be able to accept or reject Participant’s emendations.
Amendment promotion enabled	Optional. Visible if "Amendments enabled" option is checked.	Emandation authors will be able to promote to Proposal the rejected emendation.
Amendments visibility	Required. Visible if "Amendments enabled" option is checked.	Choose one of "Amendments are visible to all" or "Amendments are visible only to their authors"
Announcement	Optional	A general announcement that’ll be visible on the general proposals landing page.
Hashtags added to all proposals	Optional	Automatically add a hashtag to every proposal. See screenshots.
Hashtags suggested to participants for new proposals	Optional	Suggest hashtags to participants for new proposals. Participants can select more than one hashtag. See screenshots.

Example of hashtags setting

Permissions

An administrator can choose which kind of Authorizations a participant need to have to make certain actions in the proposals:

Endorse
Support
Create
Withdraw
Amend
Comment
Vote comment

Manage proposals

Manage proposals table

Export

Allows exporting the proposals in different formats.

Proposals as CSV
Proposals as JSON
Proposals as Excel
Comments as CSV
Comments as JSON
Comments as Excel

Import

Import from another component
Import from a file

New proposal form

Citizens proposals

New proposal form

Proposals can be created by participants if the setting is "Proposal creation enabled" is checked for the active phase.

If a participant belongs to a user group, then they will be able to create proposals as that group also.

This form depends a lot in which settings you’ve enabled in this component. It can be really short (with only a Title and Body by default) or very long (Title, Body, Hashtags, Address, Scope, Category, Image and Attachment).

Table 4. New proposal form - default (by a participant)
Field	Type	Description
Title	Required	What is the title of this proposal. For instance, "Bike lane in Main Street". Must have at least 15 characters as minimum and 150 characters as maximum. Must start with a capital letter.
Body	Optional	What is the full description for this proposal. Must have at least 15 characters as minimum and 450 characters as maximum by default but can be changed with the setting "Maximum proposal body length".

To detect duplicated proposals before publishing them, the proposal creation has a wizard form with multiple steps. This also allows participants to save proposals drafts (unpublished) in case they need to fill too many fields.

New proposal form (by a participant) - Compare

As an example of what the form could look depending in the settings enabled, here’s a screenshot of the form for a proposal with the following settings: "Hashtags added to all proposals", "Hashtags suggested to participants for new proposals", "Geocoding enabled", "Allow attachments", "Allow card image" and "Scopes enabled".

New proposal form (by a participant) - Complete

After completing these fields the participant can see a preview of their proposal before publishing. They can also modify the proposal before publishing it.

New proposal form (by a participant) - Publish

Published proposal made by a participant

Official proposals

Administrators can create official proposals. There will be a filter to show only official proposals in the proposals navigation page.

New proposal form - default (official proposals)

Table 5. New proposal form - default (official proposals)
Field	Type	Description
Title	Required	What is the title of this proposal. For instance, "Bike lane in Main Street". Must have at least 15 characters as minimum and 150 characters as maximum. Must start with a capital letter.
Body	Optional	What is the full description of this proposal. Must have at least 15 characters as minimum and 450 characters as maximum by default but can be changed with the setting "Maximum proposal body length".
This proposal comes from a meeting	Optional	Check if this proposal comes from a meeting.
Select a meeting	Required if the "This proposal comes from a meeting" checkbox is checked	Dropdown selector with all the meetings of this space. The author of the proposal will be the meeting.

As an example of what the form could look like depending on the settings enabled, here’s a screenshot of the form for a proposal with the following settings: "Hashtags added to all proposals", "Hashtags suggested to participants for new proposals", "Geocoding enabled", "Allow attachments", "Allow card image" and "Scopes enabled".

New proposal form - with multiple settings (official proposals)

Actions

Table 6. Actions
Icon	Name	Definition
	Edit	Edit form for a proposal. It’s the same form as "New proposal". Only visible when the proposal is an "Official proposal".
	Answer proposal	Allows you to answer a proposal.
	Permissions
	Preview	To see how it’s shown in the frontend to participants.

Origin filter

When navigating in the proposals listing, you can filter the proposals by origin.

Proposals origin filter

There are five origin options:

All: select all the origins
Official: proposals created by administrators
Citizens: proposals created by participants
Groups: proposals created by participants that belong to a user group and choose that option when creating the proposal
Meetings: proposals created by administrators that have checked this option when creating the proposal

Proposal types and mechanisms

There are different kind of proposals mechanisms that can be enabled in proposals, such as: