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:

  1. Sign in as admin

  2. Go to admin panel

  3. 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"

  4. Go to components

  5. Click on "Add component" button

  6. Click on "Proposals"

  7. 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 threshold setting
Example of threshold setting

Example of card image setting

Example of card image setting

Example of geocoding 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

Example of hashtag 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 icon

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 icon

Answer proposal

Allows you to answer a proposal.

Permissions icon

Permissions

Preview icon

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: