Release notes: Citizen Space v4.4

Citizen Space v4.4 was rolled out to customers in the week commencing 17 June 2019.

It was the third release from our new Kaizen (continuous improvement) milestone process, and the first for which we employed an internal, points-based voting system (using our very own Points Simulator tool) for Delib team members to democratically prioritise what improvements should be included in the release. We're continuing to adapt this new process in order to roll out frequent releases comprised of feature requests, bug fixes, and security and accessibility enhancements to Citizen Space.

What's new?

New question component type: number!

It's been a while since we rolled out a new question type so we're excited to announce the latest answer component for online survey questions, developed in response to several feature requests: a number component!

The field has validation to only accept numbers as digits (e.g. 3), with respondents seeing an error message if they try to enter a non-numerical answer (e.g. three). On most modern mobile browsers, it will bring up a number keyboard for respondents to input their answer.

The default setting is to only permit whole numbers zero and above (eg. 5 or 57 or 500), but you can configure it to allow numbers with decimal places (e.g. 5.5. or 57.99) or below zero (e.g. -1) if required.

Settings can also be customised to set minimum and/or maximum values that will be accepted, such as to restrict respondents to numbers that lie within a set range.

One important thing to note: the number answer component should only be used when asking for data that has a numeric value, for example when asking about quantities of people or things, such as, "How many employees do you have?". To collect numbers that are used for identification, e.g. ID numbers or telephone numbers, you should still use the single line text component.

Easier to manually add multiple offline responses

Previously, after adding an offline response manually, you had to go back to the consultation dashboard if you wanted to add another response. We've listened to your feedback and now, once you've submitted a manual response, there will be a link to return to the input form to add a further response, rather than having to go via the dashboard.

As before, once a response is added, you'll see the green "Response saved" confirmation at the top of the View Response page and a new "Add another response" button to go straight back to adding the next one.

We're hopeful that this subtle but effective addition will help speed up your manual response entry workflow, whilst decreasing clicks to create a simple, smooth pathway when entering multiple responses manually.

Analyst-only questions now visible in the 'Responses by Question' area

Prior to this release, you couldn't view response data for analyst-only questions within the Responses by Questions page. Now, analyst questions will be included in the question list, making it easier to filter and/or group using analyst question data. Analyst-only questions will be differentiated in the table view with a pale blue highlight, in consistence with colouring seen on the Analyse Responses and Add Response pages.

Hopefully this will be helpful in many use cases, such as when needing to group responses by their origin, eg. "All responses that were manually added from an offline event who agree with Point A".

Continued fixes in filtering and grouping responses in analysis

If you recall from our previous release (v4.2) in May, we made some minor tweaks to the filter and grouping filters within analysis by adding a shiny new "Clear all" button to remove all filters in one go. However, we found a minor blip when navigating between the Responses by Question and Responses by Respondent pages where the filter sometimes got stuck. We were able to clear things up here and filters can now be cleared, regardless of page navigation. Phew!

Continued accessibility improvements to comply with WCAG 2.1

We're continuing to implement minor updates to individual pages in Citizen Space, as part of the larger WCAG 2.1 requirements. You probably won't notice any changes here but know that these improvements will continue to come through these releases whilst we work to make Citizen Space WCAG 2.1 compliant.

Bug fixes and minor security improvements

Last but not least, we've continued to tackle minor bugs and carried out improvements to tighten up security in this latest release. As always, we aim to fix bugs as quickly and as often as we can and will be sure to keep you updated as & when they're fixed.