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Manage Your MyCity Dashboard

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OpenCities Product Team

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The MyCity portal allows your community to engage with your city or council by submitting pages to add to your site. They can submit events and business and community directory pages.

Before we create your MyCity site, you will have filled out the MyCity Requirements Form, in which you indicate what types of content you want your users to submit. When we hand over the site, these options will be configured on the dashboard, so you won't need to set them up. You can remove or add options as you need to.

My City dashboard

Add a Dashboard Option

There are a few steps to take before adding an option to your MyCity dashboard. Firstly, you'll need to ensure you have all the pages in the back end to facilitate users submitting pages. You'll need a "Submit" page for each type of page, a "Submitted" page, and a folder to hold the user-submitted pages. You'll then need to assign those pages in the Site Management settings to ensure that users are directed to the correct pages when submitting them.

Here are the steps in brief:

  1. Set up your Publish folder pages
  2. Set up a folder for user-submitted pages
  3. Edit the content type settings
  4. Create a dashboard item link

Set Up Your Publish Folder Pages

For your users to submit pages, you must have a "Submit" page and a "Submitted" page in your MyCity site tree. These pages live in OC Folders we created as we set up the site; there is a "Publish" folder on the top level, with a folder for each page type below it.

Publish folders in the site tree

If your site tree does not have these pages, you can recreate them. These instructions will go through all the steps, starting with the folders. You'll need to repeat these steps for each page type you need.

Create Your Folders

If you already have some folders, you don't need to recreate them:

  1. Right-click the home icon next to your site name and select Create Page.
  2. Select OC Folder as the content type.
  3. Give your folder a name (such as "Publish") and select Publish.
  4. Right-click on your new folder and select Create Page.
  5. Choose OC Folder as the content type.
  6. Name the folder for the page type you want to add ( e.g., "Event," "Directory," or "Business") and select Publish.

Now, you can create your submission pages. We'll go through the "Submit" page first.

Create the "Submit" Page

  1. Right-click on your page type folder and select Create Page.
  2. Choose OC Module Interface as the content type and select your template depending on the page type you're adding:
    • Event: OC Event Publish Form
    • Directory: OC Local Directory Publish Form
    • Business: OC Business Publish Form
  3. Fill in the necessary fields and Publish your page.

Now, for the "Submitted" page, this is the page users will see as confirmation once they've submitted a page.

Create the "Submitted" Page

  1. Right-click on the page type folder and select Create Page.
  2. Choose OC General as the content type. Your template is up to you, but we recommend using the OC Full Width Without Image template.
  3. Type your confirmation message into the WYSIWYG Editor, fill in the necessary fields, and Publish your page.

When all the submission pages are ready, you must create a folder to house user-submitted pages.

Set Up a Folder for User-submitted Pages

You'll need an OC Folder to house each page type that users can submit.

Submission folders in site tree

We will have created folders for each content type you indicated when we set the site up, but if you're adding a new option, you'll need to make it yourself:

  1. Right-click on the home icon next to your site name and select Create Page.
  2. Choose OC Folder as the content type.
  3. Give your folder a name indicative of the page type you're adding (e.g., "Events," "Directory," or "Business").
  4. Publish your folder.

Edit the Content Type Settings

Now that all your folders and pages are set up, you must assign them to your Site Management settings.

  1. From the main menu, go to More > Site Management > your MyCity site > Settings.
  2. Select the page type you add to the dashboard, such as Event. If you add Directory or Business options, you'll find separate menus for OC Directory and OC Business under Local Directory. Mostly, the fields will be the same for each page type. They're also all predictive fields, so start typing in the Page name and select the correct one from the list.
  3. Add the URL for the folder holding user-submitted pages to the Location to create new pages in MyCity field.
  4. Add the URL for the  "Submit" form page to the Location of the submit form page field.
  5. Add the URL for the "Submitted" message page to the Location of the submission success page field.
    submission URL fields in site management
  6. In the Publish to field, select the location (on your main or subsites) where you want to publish user-submitted pages after you've reviewed them.
  7. When you're finished, select Save Settings and Save.

We'll go through each page type settings in more detail in our Manage MyCity page type settings article.

Create a Dashboard Item Link

The last step for adding an option to your dashboard is to create a top task link to the "Submit" page to display on your users' dashboard.

Dashboard items in the site tree

  1. Right-click on the page at the top of your site tree titled "Dashboard."
  2. Select Create Page and choose OC Top Task as the content type.
  3. Give your page a descriptive Task title (such as "Submit an event") and fill in the necessary fields.
  4. In the Add link URL field, select Insert links and use the content selector to navigate to the relevant "Submit" page for that task.
    Add link to dashboard item
  5. Select Save when you've found the correct link.
  6. Icons for each page type will be included in your theme, and you can select the one your need from the Select task icon drop-down menu under Additional options for top tasks on homepage. These are the icons included in your MyCity theme:
    the icons included in a my city theme
  7. Publish the page. 

Check your dashboard to make sure the correct link appears.

Remove a Dashboard Option

To remove an option from your dashboard, you can simply archive the top task page and the related folders and submission pages:

  1. In the site tree, navigate to the OC Top Task page for the option you want to remove.
  2. Right-click on the top task page and select Archive Page.
  3. Follow the prompts to confirm you want to archive the page.
  4. If you need to restore the page, scroll to the bottom of the site tree and select Show archived content.
  5. Right-click on the page you want to restore and select Restore Page.

We recommend always archiving content you don't want to show in case you change your mind. If you Delete a page, there is no way to retrieve it. Learn more about archiving and deleting pages.

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