5.5 PlaceIt

This tool allows participants to share their ideas by commenting directly on a map using a pin. They can also upload and pin images on the map. This is a useful tool for citizen science and crowd sourcing geo-tagged content from participants. 

Step 1: What do you want to know? Explain how you would like participants to interact with your map. Ask a question to prompt participants to share their input on the map. (Character limit 250).

Step 2: Who can participate? You can select who you will allow to pin locations on your map.

Step 3: Set up the pin that your participants will use. The default setting only allows participants to pin locations on the map.

Selecting the “Comment Box” option will provide a space for participants to add a comment to their pinned location.

Selecting the “Dropdown Box” option will allow you to pose a question using multiple answer options. You can add and remove question options as you prefer.

PlaceIt Map Polygons and Pins

On the map, you can draw or upload polygons (zipped SHP files or KML/KMZ files), name your polygons, set up the map view, add descriptive markers including images, and see a full list of the polygons. If you add multiple polygons to the map, those with the same names will be combined into a single selectable layer for the users. This means that users can browse boundary polygons and comment based on the confines of the polygon.  This function is helpful to allow users to consider different layers of content. 

Admins can also add information pins to the map and upload images and text content to explain a specific element on the map. Users will be able to select and view the pin on the public side.

You can click on the question mark icon  to open a drop-down with additional help text. 

Types of Maps

The following map types are available:

roadmap displays the default road map view. This is the default map type.
satellite displays Google Earth satellite images.
hybrid displays a mixture of normal and satellite views.
terrain displays a physical map based on terrain information.

The user experience allows for people to comment and upload images to the the map and comment anonymously. Their contributions are attributed to them in the back end data for the engagement.  If there are multiple polygons shared on the map, users will be offered a drop down menu to select the layered data sets (Layers)