Testing an activity before it goes live

As well as testing their activities in Citizen Space's preview mode, some people like to run a test phase or pilot phase and receive actual test responses.

You can do this by publishing privately, sharing the URL with a select few test subjects to submit responses, and then retracting the activity. Once you've checked that you're happy everything's working as you expected, you can remove the test responses from your dashboard and change the activity back to the public setting ready for the launch.

Set up activity for testing

  1. On the activity's navigation bar, go to Design and build and select Settings. Select the checkbox to make the activity 'private'. (This is only temporary for the test phase and we'll be changing it back to public before it goes live.) Remember to save this change using the 'Save' button.

    Changing the activity to private will change the ending of the URL to what we call an obfuscated URL - the ending will be a mix of letters and numbers which no one could possibly guess. This means that only someone you've shared the private URL with (our test subjects) will be able to access the activity while it's set as private.

  2. Publish the activity using the Draft / Publish button in the activity's header. Select the button and then select the green 'Publish' button.
  3. Copy the private URL to share with your testers and ask them to submit responses. The URL can be found via the Share icon on the activity's navigation bar.
Activity navigation bar with Share activity icon highlighted.

Post testing steps to publishing your activity

  1. When everyone is finished submitting you can retract the activity by selecting the 'Published' button and then selecting retract.
  2. Once you've conducted your research, tested the tools that you need to and/or received feedback from your testers, you may wish to clear out the test responses from your dashboard. This article explains how you can remove responses from your dashboard.
  3. Lastly, change the activity back to 'public' by returning to Design and build, selecting Settings, and then un-selecting the private checkbox on the 'Title and url' page. Don't forget to save this change using the 'Save' button. You'll see that the URL will have changed back to what it was originally - this public URL is the one that you need to promote when you officially launch the activity. 
  4. Now you're ready to publish your activity via the 'Publish' button when it's time to go live.