Usage

1. Setting milestones (administrators only)
Milestones, for example to determine a date for a poll (new milestones can also be added later at any time) help to tightly bind procedures of online-participation to events within the group. Furthermore, this setting enables to allot proposals and issues for discussions and polls to particular milestones. In this way, editorial work in terms of choosing relevant inputs such as for an assembly is minimalised.

After clicking on “new milestone“ you can state a title, description and date, afterwards the alteration needs to be saved. The milestone then becomes visible for any user in the calendar, inputs- including the date- can be changed at any time by clicking on the “edit“ button on the particular milestone.

2. Setting up an issue (administrators only)
Issues are texts about an existing regulation or a concept that is to be developed, and they form the base und thematic background for discussions. Under the tab “issues“ you find the “new issue“ button on the right. There, you can set up a new issue by stating a title and text. Please note that in contrast to the text the title of an issue cannot be changed afterwards.

Moreover, it is possible to add tags and select so called parent-pages that the issue is related to, so issues can also be structured into subchapters.

If corresponding milestones have been previously set up issues can be related to a particular milestone if they need to be altered by then. Do not forget to save your changes afterwards! Through successful polls issues will automatically be updated, administrators are also able to edit issues manually.

3. Create proposals
All members of a group are allowed to create proposals, which can be rated, discussed or altered by other participants. In order to do this you need to click on the group on the starting page or on “new proposal“ under the tab “proposals“. Subsequently, you can state title, text, tag and issues that are to be altered by the proposal, as well as the milestone that is linked to the propsal. Issues have to be activated in the group in order to suggest alterations of proposals. If all required inputs are made, please click on “save“.

All data on proposals can be changed afterwards.

4. Carrying out polls
Discussed proposals can be put to the vote. In order to do this you click on “vote“ on the main page of the proposal. The proposal will then be frozen (meaning it cannot be altered anymore) and subsequently carried out according to the settings chosen when the group was created (for instance “simple majority“, “voting period of two weeks“).