The Settings tab in the left-hand menu allows you to manage platform configurations and settings for your District Engage site.
Proceed with Caution
Advanced site settings are controlled by superusers, and are not accessible to ordinary users. Any changes made here will affect your entire site, so proceed with caution!
How to access "Settings"
Content
Default types
These settings define the base functionality for tools such as pages, stages, and updates.
These settings are primarily for the purpose of system configuration. Users generally don't need to adjust these settings during regular use.
Maps
This sets the default settings for how Maps will display on your site.
You can customise the following settings:
- Style: Set the default style for your site maps.
-
Center: This configures the default location for your maps. You may want to set the default location to your region or city.
You can copy the coordinates from most map apps including Google maps.
- Zoom, Min zoom, Max zoom: Set the initial level and limits of zoom for maps.
All these settings can still be configured individually for each map.
Default pages
Select a page from your site-wide page library for your default Privacy policy and Terms of use.
Categories
Adding Tags and Regions to a project helps participants to search for consultations and related projects on your website. In addition, by following a region/tag category, participants will also receive notifications for projects in that category.
You can customise the tag and region categories for your website in Settings Categories.
Click here for more info on how to manage regions/tags on your website.
Media and files
This displays an overview of all media assets currently uploaded to your website, including images, PDFs and documents. It lists the title, type of media, and details about its creator.
- To upload new content, click on the + Create item button.
- Click on the ellipsis for each title to Preview a media asset and its metadata, or to Delete the asset.
Child Content Publishing
This enables you to apply site wide rules for the content publication workflow. You can select:
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Child content publishing requires parent publication: This option means that if there is child page content, it cannot be published without first publishing the parent page.
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Auto-publish approved child content on parent publication: This option means that all approved child pages are published automatically when the parent page is published.
When Child content publishing requires parent publication is enabled: if a parent project is not published, internal users won't be able to publish any child pages or surveys related to that project.
When Auto-publish approved child content on parent publication is enabled: if a parent project is published, all the child pages, updates, events, timeline, documents, maps and participation tools related to that project will be published too.
These two settings are enabled by default on District Engage.
Project settings
This enables you to apply the following default settings:
- Expand mini timeline by default: When this is enabled, the expanded project timeline will be visible without having to click the dropdown.
- Disable map search: When selected you can hide the map search feature from the search block.
- Search box label: You can specify a label to display above the search input field.
Redirects
This setting helps you manage URL redirects for your website to ensure users can still access your content when the URLs change.
For example, if you have an old project URL that you want to redirect to a new project page, you can set up a redirect so that anyone accessing the old URL is automatically taken to the new project page.
How to create a redirect
- Click + Create redirect
- Fill in the fields for the Source and Target URLs
- Specify the Redirect status from the dropdown menu
- Note that the hostname and leading/trailing slashes will be trimmed
For example:
- Source URL: /old-project-page
- Target URL: /new-project-page
In this case, any user trying to access /old-project-page will be redirected to /new-project-page.
Structure
Home page
Choose which website page will be your default home page.
Click here for more info on editing the home page.
Menus
Create your Main navigation and Footer navigation menus. Edit the Title, URL and Icon for each menu item, and click + Add link to create new menu items.
Click here for more info on editing the site menu.
Configuration
Site settings
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Site name: Specify the name of your District Engage website. The name change will affect the entire site and will be publicly visible. The site name will also be displayed in:
- Browser tab
- Social media links
- 'From' section in emails
- Enable maintenance mode: Set your entire instance of District Engage to maintenance mode. This prevents unauthenticated users from accessing any part of your website. This should only be used for major maintenance work or emergencies.
- Enable site wide message: Display a site wide message on the frontend. A Rich Content box will appear. Compose your message, and add images, links or tables as required. Your message will automatically appear on the frontend.
Site wide message
- Enable splash overlay: Display a full-screen overlay message on the frontend. A Rich Content box will appear. Compose your splash text, and add images, links, or other media as required. The overlay will automatically appear on the frontend when users first visit the site or after 90 days.
Comment
When making a comment on a participation tool, internal users may use an official name, e.g., "Project Team", rather than their personal display name.
- To override the automatic display name for internal users, select Override display name on official comments.
- You can also choose which Roles will have their display names overridden on official comments.
This official label will appear on all responses to public feedback, including comments, discussions, and Q&A's.
Comment settings
Google Tag Manager
Tick the box to enable Google Tag Manager (GTM) for your site. You will be asked to provide your GTM app ID.
Notifications
Tick the box to disable bulk email notifications.
Survey
This lets you set a confirmation message that is displayed when users submit a survey. This message can be overwritten for each tool.
This setting can also be configured on a tool level when creating a participation tool.
Set a site-wide default for your submission moderation preference. This setting will automatically be applied when creating a new tool and can be overridden per tool.
See participation tool submissions article for more detail on how each moderation workflow functions
Appearance
Customise the appearance of your site's frontend including:
- Palette
- Style
- Hero image size
- Custom CSS
- Google font (choose from one of the 1500 fonts available)
- Footer content
- Logo
- Footer logo
- Icon (displays as favicon in the browser)
In the Dashboard, you can hide the menu labels under icons by selecting Minimal menus.
You can learn more about colour palette and style in our styleguide.
Performance
Manage the default cache expiry, and clear the site cache.
Natural Language Processing tester
The NLP Tester allows you to test the natural language processor, which is used for all user submissions and comments on participation tools. This feature helps to extract sentiment and named entities from the text.
Translation settings
Translation settings let you decide if users visiting your site will be able to translate the content into another language. By default, this setting is disabled. To enable it, tick the checkbox for Google Translate.
When translation settings is enabled, users can change the site language by selecting from the options available in the language dropdown located in the website footer.
There are 40 available languages for users to choose from.
Translation settings enabled: website public view
People
Single sign on
Enable or disable Google and Azure SSO capability.
User settings
- Tick the box to allow only authenticated (signed-in) users to view any page on the site.
- Tick the box to disable user registration.
Team Settings
Configure team settings by navigating to Settings People Team settings.
- Enable Teams: Turns on team functionality across the platform, allowing you to group users and control their access to projects
- Restrict Access to Team Users: When enabled, new teams will by default be restricted to team members only, with content only visible to those in the team
Important: Disabling Teams
Disabling teams will remove all team-based access permissions and assignments across your instance of District Engage. Only disable teams if you're certain you want to remove all team functionality.
Learn about configuring the login / register forms and details here.
Report
Activity log
The Activity Log provides a comprehensive overview of all actions performed by users across all projects and tools within the platform. This feature allows administrators to monitor and track various activities.
API Connectors
This section houses settings for integrating with third-party services, such as Slack. Future integrations may include services such as Mailchimp or Salesforce. This area will allow you to manage and configure these API connections to enhance the functionality of your engagement platform.
Stay tuned for updates as we expand the available API connectors to streamline your workflows and enhance your user experience.