With the Form integration, you can now seamlessly combine the power of Forms and the Social Map to collect a more comprehensive and relevant feedback from your users!

Here's quick way to add a Form survey to your Social Map:

1. Access the Forms tab by clicking on the text block icon while editing the Social Map.
2. Click on "Add Form" to create a form survey.
3. Give your Form a unique title by clicking on the pencil icon.
4. Build your survey form by simply dragging and dropping the questions/presets/content elements to the form element section.
5. After dragging it will open up the element editor and allow you to add descriptions, mark the question required, make them public answers, or even include images. Click "Save Element" when finished
6. You can continue adding elements to your structure, click here for a more detailed explanation of the elements available in the Form Editor.
   
7. To save your Form click "Save Form" and you can continue to edit the Social Map.

most of the features available to the Form tool like Logic and

Sections, see here for more details about the Form Logic & Section.

The Marker Category is now a required element for both the Map Posts and Information Markers, it can help categorise the data you are collecting in your engagement. In addition, create a richer mapping experience and facilitate the analysis of feedback.

Categories allows your participants to choose from your pre-defined list (i.e. Issues, Ideas, Opportunities, etc) to classify their contributions as well as cater your form questions to the category they selected. You can link different forms to different Marker Categories.

You can add your own categories to the map (we recommend not using more than five) and give them a unique colour and icon.

Adding Map Post Categories

1. Navigate to 'Map Post icon' and then to the 'Markers tab'.
2. Select 'Add Category'
3. Fill in the details of your category 'Name, Description, and Form you wish to attach'
   💡 User Tip: You must create a Form question in order to create a marker category.
4. You can style the marker (how it will appear on the map) by changing its icon, colours, or optionally choose an icon from our icon library!
5. Select the blue ‘Save Category’ button to apply it on Social Map.

Once you've created the Information Markers Categories you can add a marker by clicking on "Add Marker" button you can click on the map where you would like the marker to be placed, or use the search field to place the pin at a specific address.

Complete the details for your information marker:

Users will then be able to see the information marker on the map and click on it to view the image, description, form and rating information if turned on.

💡 NOTE: Information Markers are square icons and Map Posts added by the community are circular.

You can let your participants react to posts from other participants by enabling the voting and rating features of the Social Map.

Voting lets participants show support (or lack of support) for a particular post, while rating lets you gauge the extent of that support.

You can select from four different voting and rating methods, depending on your use case:

Voting

Voting lets participants give a thumbs up or thumbs down to another participant's post. You can enable upvoting and downvoting to capture positive and negative sentiment, or only allow upvoting to capture agreement, praise or support.

Star Rating

Star rating lets participants react on a scale of 1-5 stars, which is ideal for understanding the degree to which a participant agrees or disagrees with the content.

Sentiment Rating

Like star rating, sentiment rating uses a scale of 1-5, but uses smileys instead of stars. This divergent scale lets you capture participant sentiment at a more nuanced level than just upvoting/downvoting.

Traffic-light Rating

Traffic-light rating lets your users provide one of three reactions: 'Stop', 'Pause', or 'Go'. This is great for gauging participant support for specific proposals.

⚠️ Warning

Changing the voting/rating method during a live engagement will result in any existing data you've collected being removed. This data cannot be recovered.

Voting and rating can be enabled independently of map posts, which lets you stage these feedback activities at different times.

For example, you can collect ideas from participants on the map in stage 1, close off participants ability to leave new ideas after a set time, and then allow participants to rate the ideas collected in stage 2.

The results of all voting and rating data are provided in the summary reports and an average score for all voting and rating activities is presented in the data table to facilitate further analysis.

The average score of any voting/rating activity is also displayed when a post is viewed from the map, appearing in the top-right of each post.

10 different base map styles can be used in the Social Map. Each base map style presents a different visual style or level of detail that can be selected to meet the specific needs of your engagement.

In some cases, using a more indicative, illustrative map such as the ‘Open Street Map’ or ‘Google Road Map’ may be appropriate, while in others, a more detailed aerial/satellite image may be preferable. Minimal base map styles can be used to create visually attractive styles.

The available base maps include:

Multiple base maps can also be defined for each Social Map, with the participant having the ability to select which basemap they want to use. If more than one base map is selected, the map that is first loaded can be set by choosing the desired base map from the ‘default base map’ dropdown.

To select the base map(s) to be used in the activity:

1. Navigate to the ‘Map’ tab and select the desired base map(s) to be included from the ‘Base Map’ options.
2. If selecting multiple basemaps, configure the default base map by selecting it from the dropdown.
3. It will apply it immediately unless you selected multiple base maps.

If only one base map is selected, the user will not be able to switch between base map styles.

In addition to the standard base map styles, custom base maps can be brought in from third party services including MapBox or a custom Web Mapping Service (WMS).

To add a custom base map:

1. Navigate to the ‘Map’ tab and select either the Mapbox Custom or Web Mapping Service option.
2. Provide the details as required for the service (for Mapbox, a Username, Style ID and Access Token is required. For a WMS, a WMS URL is required).
3. Select the blue ‘Save Social’ button to save changes on Social Map

💡NOTE: Mapbox has recently introduced a new 'standard' style which isn't supported - you would need to use the 'classic' Mapbox styles available, see here: https://docs.mapbox.com/api/maps/styles/

As a Site User you can control the pitch and bearing of the initial map so that it can load the map with a 3D perspective for the contributor.

• Configuration is located under the 'Zoom Level' field.
• The first configuration is for 'Bearing'.
• The initial bearing (rotation) of the map, measured in degrees counter-clockwise from north. For example north is 0, east is 90, south is 180 and west is 270. This can be set for your preferred orientation.
• The second configuration is for 'Pitch'.
• 'The initial pitch (tilt) of the map, measured in degrees away from the plane of the screen (0-60). This can be set for your preferred orientation.

You can restrict the location of where users are allowed to add map markers using the masking layer. This will mean that your participants will only be able to make contributions within a defined geo-graphical area such as a ‘study area’.

To do this, check the ‘Restrict markers to mask’ checkbox under the Mask setting.

Bookmarks can be added to display pre-defined geographic locations within the study area that help visitors navigate the map to focus on key areas.

Bookmarks are displayed at the top, centre of the map as a dropdown menu. Selecting the bookmark will automatically zoom and pan the map to the nominated location.

To add bookmarks:

1. Navigate to the ‘Map’ tab and scroll to the ‘Location Bookmarks’ setting.
2. Select the ‘Add Bookmark’ button to create the bookmark and configure the following attributes:
   a. Title - Sets a title for the Bookmark that will be displayed
   b. Location - Sets the centre point of the map area using either an address or latitude/longitude coordinates
   c. Zoom Level - Sets how zoomed in or out the map will display.
3. Select the blue ‘Save Bookmark’ button and repeat until all Bookmarks have been added.
4. Select the blue ‘Save Social Map' to apply changes to Social Map.

In some cases where there are hundreds or even thousands of contributions appearing on the map, it may be desirable to cluster the map markers so that the map appears clearer.

Enabling the ‘Marker Clustering’ setting will allow individual map markers that are in close proximity to one another to be displayed as a single aggregated marker. The Marker Cluster then displays the number of contributions within it, and when clicked by a user will zoom the map in and disaggregate the individual map markers.

It is worth noting that marker clustering doesn’t affect the data. It's just a way of visually consolidating the markers. It can be easily enabled/disabled from the block settings any time.

Once you have Marker Clustering enabled you can edit the following properties

• Cluster Max Zoom - allows you to control the zoom level at which the marker clustering takes place. When the map is zoomed out beyond the specified 'Cluster Max Zoom' level, the individual map markers will be replaced by the aggregated cluster markers.
• Cluster Minimum Points - sets the minimum number of contributions required within a certain proximity to trigger marker clustering. For example, if you set the 'Cluster Minimum Points' to 5, then a cluster will be formed when there are at least 5 contributions in close proximity to each other. If there are fewer than the specified minimum points, the map markers will be displayed individually.
• Cluster Radius - determines the distance within which map markers are considered to be in close proximity to each other for clustering. A smaller cluster radius will result in tighter clustering, while a larger radius will allow markers that are further apart to be included in the same cluster.

The Social Map uses the Google Places API to take the precise location of each map marker and display them as an address through a process called geo-coding. This makes it easier to interpret the results of the Social Map if you don’t have access to mapping software or skills, by making the location more human readable (as opposed to x/y coordinates).

The geo-coded address can be displayed on the front-end of a participant’s contribution to provide more context. This can be people for non-sighted users who can’t see maps or for people who have difficulties interpreting them.

To enable this feature, navigate to the ‘Display’ tab and find the ‘Display Marker Location’ which is set to not display by default. From the dropdown select either ‘Display approximate location’ or ‘display precise location’. The ‘approximate location’ setting will provide the street name only and will remove any specific street numbers. The ‘precise location’ setting will include the exact street number and name.

Warning

Using the ‘precise location’ option will display exact address information which may have privacy implications. You should thoroughly assess the potential risks prior to enabling this setting.

Please note that the geocoder may not be completely accurate, especially if a marker is dropped in a public space or in developing areas. The geo-coder will try and find the nearest address to where the pin is dropped. If address location is critical to your analysis we suggest collecting this information in another way.