Lots of new and updated modules
Services
The Services module allows you to share the services you offer, along with the ways they can be accessed or completed, and the steps involved. For example, your 'Pay a parking ticket' service might be able to be completed online, in person, by mail or over the phone. You can provide numbered steps for each of these methods.
See a demo, or check out the Services Overview for more information.
Initiatives
The Initiatives module allows you to showcase the medium- to long-term objectives and priorities of your council. These might include initiatives around health, the environment, transport, innovation, the arts or food. Add resources to your initiatives to provide additional information.
See a demo, or check out the Initiatives Overview for more information.
Departments
The Departments module brings all departmental information together in the one place, including contact details, information about the department head and more.
See a demo, or check out the Departments Overview for more information.
Elected Officials
The Elected Officials module gives visitors everything they need to know about your elected officials or councillors, including contact details, a bio, a photo and more.
This replaces and extends the Councillor module (part of My Neighbourhood), so if you're already using this, you may want to make some changes:
- Your existing Councillor pages (now known as Elected Officials pages) will still work, but there are now extra details you can include if you want: additional information (for example, their term), a feature image and link, WYSIWYG content and supporting information (accordion panels, side panels, links and documents).
- If you want a separate listing page for your officials, create an OC General page, and in the WYSIWYG add the OC CL Public Elected Officials Listing content list. It'll pick up all Elected Official pages across your site.
See a demo, or check out the Elected Officials Overview for more information.
A new Landing page template
We've added an OC 3 Columns with Images template for landing pages. It's similar to the OC 3 Columns with Search template, but without a search bar. If you've got a department that wants their own standalone site but you'd prefer not to create one, you could use this template to give them a department directory page with its own look and feel.
See a demo, or check out Landing Page Templates for more information.
An enhanced OpenCities admin
Simpler roles and users
To make it easier for you to create your own roles to assign to users, we've grouped tasks into four categories: content, files, forms and approvals. You can either select a category to include all the tasks within it, or select tasks within the categories individually.
We've also removed some unnecessary OpenCities roles, and added a System Administrator role. The System Administrator can create roles and email templates. We haven't assigned it to any of your users, so you'll need to do this yourself.
Check out Create users and Create roles and assign them to users for more information.
Get analytics on your dashboard
Know exactly what visitors are doing on your site with live insights from your Google Analytics account displayed directly on your OpenCities dashboard. See at a glance individual website hits, your most popular pages, desktop vs mobile totals, peak traffic times and how many visitors are on your site at a given moment.
Check out Get analytics on your dashboard for more information.
Export or import your content
If you're a Site Manager, use the Export Content feature to export content from OpenCities. You might want to do this so you can bulk-edit content in spreadsheet form. Use the Import Content feature to import content from another system into OpenCities, or to re-import content you exported for bulk-editing.
Check out Import Content and Export Content for more information.
Email templates for workflows
Now when you create an email template for a workflow, you can use the default message we've provided and tailor it to your needs.
Check out Create email templates for workflows for more information.
Improved search options
You're now able to go into search reports and see the most popular keywords your visitors searched for. In addition to adding keywords to individual pages, you can now use Best Bets to control which search results users see for each keyword.
Embed OpenForms directly in your website
You can now link OpenForms and OpenCities together, so you no longer have to manually copy embed codes from OpenForms when adding forms to your site.