Start and end dates

Citizen Space's default setting is that all activities must have both a start date and end date set before they can be published. This controls when the call-to-action box is displayed on the overview page, and for online survey type activities, ensures that people can only respond to the survey when the activity is open or live.

However, it is possible for us to make start and end dates optional across your site. This is a Delib-only setting so if you'd like to use this feature, please get in touch with your Customer Success Manager. Once implemented, it will apply across all activities on your site, so you may need to have a quality control process in place to ensure that start and end dates are still set for those activities (such as formal consultations) which require them.

If made optional, the start and end dates can be used independently of one another, so you can choose to have a start date but no end date, or vice versa.

Below are some examples of activities where you may prefer to avoid having start and/or end dates displayed:

• Long-running surveys or sign-up forms where data is regularly exported or acted upon but there is no official end date, for example mailing list sign-up forms or long running feedback surveys
• Activities for sharing information or updates, such as a project page
• An activity that has been designed to act as a front page grouping together and linking out to multiple other activities, which may have different open and close dates from one other

Editing existing activities

Once this feature is implemented on your site, you can retrospectively remove the start or end date from existing activities. However please note:

• If you remove the end date from a closed published activity, it will become open.
• If you remove the start date from a forthcoming published activity, it will become open.