Project Engagement Workflow

Project Engagement Overview

The project-based workflow applies whenever a government organization sets out to plan and execute a new policy, program, or capital project. Zencity can support you throughout the project lifecycle to pull relevant feedback, inform residents, and involve your community in the decision-making process. Here is a summary of the process steps:

Project Engagement Workflow Steps

There are four stages to fostering community engagement in a project, with each step deploying targeted actions using digital tools. If you don't have all of these tools, that's okay! Focus on the steps and tools that are most relevant to you. These steps are outlined below:

Phase: Project Planning

Purpose: Assess community sentiment around the project, map key concerns and opportunities, and understand where your residents stand on the initiative.

Zencity tools:

• • Organic: Get a snapshot of relevant community sentiment around your initiative topic by creating a customized project in Organic Projects. Sign up for a project digest in Subscriptions (main navigation menu) and review feedback to map key concerns and opportunities.
  • Pulse Survey: Define the initiative that you would want to pull in feedback from your community about and share with the Zencity Team for design. Zencity will digitally distribute the questionnaire to your residents, using census data to reach a representative sample. 
  • Community Survey: Review specific community input about the project and collect suggestions about its various aspects from your latest survey report. 

Phase: Project Launch

Purpose: Communicate with your residents throughout the project’s lifetime. From conception to implementation, provide updates and gather ongoing feedback.

Zencity tools:

• • Organic: Inform residents about your new Engage Project hub and share any relevant updates through your social media accounts via Organic Publishing and the Press Release Generator in Organic News Feed.
  • Engage: Create and launch an Engage Project to share key information on your initiative topic with aids like videos, documents, images, and timeline. Integrate activities like engagement surveys for residents to share feedback directly. For ease of use, we suggest using the Automated Setup tool to quickly create your Project hub and activities.

Phase: Project Implementation

Purpose: Use Zencity tools to drive insights from community input to inform project design, evolution, and execution.

Zencity tools:

• • Organic: Monitor your Organic project through your Subscriptions digest and through the project dashboard. Create a recurring report in the Organic dashboard or in Reports (main navigation menu) to share and analyze results internally as they evolve. Consult feedback and sentiment to identify concerts or specific pain points.
  • Engage: Once an engagement survey has closed in your Project, review your results in the Results & Analysis page in Zencity. Use the “Share Results” tool to export and publish findings and distribute results internally. Adjust your Engage Project messaging and design accordingly, and share relevant updates to residents through Project Updates and Online Summary Reports.
  • Pulse Survey: About five to eight weeks after the survey start date your representative data will be live in the Zencity dashboard and you will receive an executive report from Zencity. These results and actionable analysis can be used to drive your project forward.

Phase: Project Completion

Purpose: Evaluate the feedback, pinpoint takeaways, and submit relevant findings to council, department heads, and elected officials.

Zencity tools:

• • Organic: As your initiative wraps up, evaluate success and feedback through your project dashboard. Use Organic Publishing to share key milestones and achievements about the project with the community. Share internally on project results through creating a report in the dashboard or via Reports.
  • Engage: Create an additional engagement survey within your Engage Project to get targeted feedback on resident experience with your Project hub. Share engagement results internally through creating a report in Engage Results & Analysis or via Reports.

Project Engagement Examples

This workflow is focused on engaging residents on specific projects, events, and initiatives. Some practical examples for Project Engagement include:

• Downtown Redevelopment
• Public Transportation Plan
• Climate Resiliency Program
• Affordable Housing Project
• Homelessness Initiative
• Parks and Recreation Master Plan
• State of the City Event

If you aren't sure what project to select, read this helpful article about choosing what initiative will benefit most from community engagement.

Project Engagement Checklist and Resource Links

A checklist to guide you through the Project Engagement workflow can be found within your Customer Hub. Use this resource within the Zencity platform for working through the steps of this workflow.

To access a checklist offline, click below to download a PDF version that your organization can utilize. 

There are many additional articles and videos available to you in this Help Center that are relevant to implementing the Project Engagement steps. Listed below are some key resources to support you in using workflow-related Zencity tools:

• Project Engagement Checklist.pdf80 KB