Release notes: Dialogue v3

August 2018 sees a whole new version of Dialogue, the result of several months' hard work. In Dialogue v3 we've concentrated on the admin and moderation tools, so it's now easier and faster to run successful challenges.

The big news

Simple two-click challenge creation

  • We've simplified & streamlined the process of setting up a new challenge.
  • Admin pages are now tidier, cleaner and easier to use.

Easier and faster to run challenges

  • New in v3, the Challenge Dashboard makes it much easier to successfully manage and facilitate challenges.
  • Instantly see how many ideas and comments you've received in all your challenges, and which challenges have had recent updates.
  • At-a-glance metrics on the Dashboard help to guide and track key moderator tasks.

Outcomes with impact

  • New, attractive summary report presents all ideas, comments and other details in an easy-to-read, editable format.
  • Full, one-click export of raw data for analysis and archiving.

More control 

  • It's much simpler to control who can find and participate in challenges.
  • Fine-grained settings now let you decide how users can participate in a challenge, for example allowing them to add ideas but not ratings.
  • You can also now edit submitted ideas (to correct typos, for example), and delete challenges (to comply with data retention periods, for example).
  • Choose how soon users are automatically logged out after inactivity, letting you control the balance of security and easy participation.

And more...

  • More than 30 other admin user interface improvements and, as you'd expect, many other behind-the-scenes changes for security and performance.

The juicy details

Improved Manage and Moderate Challenges page

The new-look Manage and Moderate Challenges page is an overview of all your challenge activity. We've made it easier to see at a glance what's going on in your Dialogue. It has:

  • Brand new columns for number of ideas, comments, challenge creation date and last submission date, so you can see really quickly what's happening with each challenge;
  • A simpler look with full-width information to get straight into challenge details (top-line stats and exports are now available via Site Settings);
  • Moderators now have access to this page too. Where previously they had a separate, more limited moderation page, they can now access all the stats for challenges they have permission to see, along with the challenge dashboards.

Simplified challenge creation and configuration:

  • When creating a challenge, you now start by simply entering your title and choosing your access setting (Public, Hidden, or Restricted).
  • The previous four (slightly confusing) combinations of access level (listed/unlisted and open-invite/invite-only) have been flattened into those three simple access levels.
  • BIG NEWS: Site admins can now delete challenges so you don't need to rely on us. Feel the power.
  • AND, in a similar relinquishing of control we have both simplified the toggles for user participation in challenges and handed those controls over to you, so you can decide how you want to run things. This means that - as site admins - you can now manage how your users participate in open challenges, such as whether they can add ideas, add comments, and add ratings all the time, some of the time, or none of the time.
  • In a further blast of common sense, social media buttons are now always shown on public challenges and removed on hidden and restricted challenges.
  • And related to that - the edit Twitter text field now only shows on challenges where the Twitter sharing widget will actually be displayed.

On the updated dashboard

  • Your new dashboard shows you what you need to do before you can publish, and you follow an easy 1, 2, 3 step process to get it all done. Everything you need to do for your challenge can be accessed from here: from set up, to moderation, to reporting.
  • The dashboard now shows moderation progress and how many ideas have had interactions from an admin or moderator, with easy access to those ideas that still need attention. It's these admin interactions that can help to make a really successful challenge, so we wanted to make it as easy as possible to track their progress. (If you haven't already, have a read of our Dialogue Success Guide for more hints).
  • Moderators can now see challenge dashboards (only the parts relevant to moderation and community management) so everyone works from the same place.

Moderation and community management updates

Alongside the new progress bars on the dashboard for moderating ideas, comments, adding admin comments, and applying topics to ideas, - we've also made updates to the moderation queues and pages for managing submissions:

  • There's now an extra tab in your moderation queues for Approved ideas and comments, so that they can be re-moderated if necessary.
  • There are now result counts in each idea and comment moderation queue, too e.g. in the Approved ideas queue you might now see '10 ideas in this state'.
  • If you're searching through the full idea list this now includes rejected ideas and those awaiting pre-moderation (clearly marked as such).
  • It’s now possible to add topics to ideas in hidden challenges.

Improved admin idea view

We've given you more control and have made the process more streamlined once you go into an idea to moderate it, comment on it, or to add a topic to it.

  • BIG NEWS: Site admins can now edit ideas from this page, meaning you can now correct typos or address requests for changes from your participants
  • We've removed the add rating, sharing and ‘report to moderator’ sections as they are only needed in the front-end.
  • There's now a handy link to view the idea in the public side of the site.

Much improved reporting

Two brand new reporting options, both available on your challenge dashboard.

The first is a Summary Report for each challenge. This is in .docx format, meaning it can be opened with Microsoft Word and other word processing software and can be edited. It contains:

  • A top-line summary table of the overall stats and info about the challenge;
  • All ideas with their comments, topics and other details like average rating laid out in easy-to-read tables;
  • Topic breakdown is included as an appendix.

The second export is a combined .xlsx challenge report. This is a file format opened in spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel and it contains:

  • A single download, but with separate tabs provided for the summary page, all ideas, all comments and all topics in a manageable and easy to interpret layout;
  • Topics are exported one per column in the ideas sheet;
  • Links are provided between an idea and its comments, and for comments back to ideas;
  • You have the option to export this in 'human-readable' format or in raw data form which includes the original HTML tags instead.

These two new options are designed to make reporting on your challenges and seeing the outcomes much easier than before.

More tidy things

  • All admin pages within a challenge have a consistent header with the challenge title, status and link back to the Challenge Dashboard.
  • The Manage Topics page now shows topics as a table with idea counts, rather than as a tag cloud.
  • Plus lots of other general consistency, de-cluttering, layout and style tidy-ups.

Security

  • Configurable session timeout which will log users out after configurable amount of inactivity (between six hours and one month, default 48 hours).
  • We've applied an upgraded CKEditor for better compatibility with modern browsers - this is the WYSIWYG text field toolbar you use when adding content.
  • Cookie policy updated for GDPR compliance.

Not to mention a bunch of other development improvements and bug fixes.

If you want to talk to us about all or any of these updates, please give your customer success manager a shout. We will be in touch to chat you through them in the next couple of weeks and will be happy to walk you through via screen-share if you'd like to do that.