Release 1.24

Release 1.24 introduces powerful new capabilities for community engagement, including our new participatory budgeting tool, enhanced user reporting dashboards, and AI-assisted features for submission analysis. These additions provide organisations with more flexible ways to engage communities and gain deeper insights into participation patterns.

Introducing Civio: Our New Brand Identity 🎉

We're excited to announce that District has evolved to become Civio! This rebrand reflects our strengthened commitment to civic engagement and community empowerment across Australia and beyond.

What's Changing

• District Engage is now Civio Engage

• Our company name transitions from District to Civio

• Fresh new colour scheme: We've updated our platform's visual appearance with a modern, accessible colour palette that enhances readability and user experience

• New visual identity and branding across all touchpoints

• Updated domain and email addresses (with automatic forwarding from old addresses)

What Stays the Same

• Same trusted team supporting your engagement initiatives

• All existing functionality and features remain unchanged

• Your contracts and agreements continue without interruption

• Same commitment to excellence in community engagement technology

• Continuous platform improvements and dedicated support

The Civio name better represents our mission to strengthen civic participation and democratic processes. It embodies our vision for more connected, engaged communities where every voice matters.

The refreshed colour scheme brings a more contemporary look to the platform whilst maintaining excellent accessibility standards. You'll notice these visual updates throughout the interface, designed to create a more engaging and professional experience for both administrators and community members.

Major Features ⭐️

Introducing Budgets!

We're excited to launch our new Budgeting participation tool, designed specifically for participatory budgeting exercises. This powerful feature allows communities to meaningfully engage with budget allocation decisions in a transparent and user friendly way.

Key Features

• Flexible budget types: points, money ($), or custom units to suit your engagement needs

• Create and manage budget proposals with rich descriptions and imagery

• Budget allocation reporting to understand community preferences and make well informed priority decisions

Whether you're running a traditional participatory budgeting program, allocating community grants, or seeking input on priorities, the Budgets tool provides an intuitive way for community members to make their voices heard.

Enhanced User Reporting Dashboards

We've significantly expanded user reporting capabilities, giving engagement officers comprehensive insights into individual participant activity across your platform.

New User Report Dashboard

Access detailed reporting for any registered user through a dedicated dashboard that includes:

• Submissions made across all participation tools

• Events they've registered for

• Projects they follow

• Email communications sent to them

To access a user's report dashboard, navigate to Users > Public Members, then click on any user's name. User dashboards also support the same flexible widget system as project and site dashboards. You can:

• Add, remove, and rearrange widgets to focus on the metrics that matter

• Configure widgets to show specific timeframes or content types

• Export data for further analysis

AI-Assisted Analysis Tools

Release 1.24 includes AI-powered features designed to streamline submission analysis and help engagement teams work more efficiently with community feedback. These experimental tools offer new ways to surface insights from community input.

Natural Language Submission Search

Filter and find submissions using natural language queries instead of manual filter building:

• Ask questions in plain English like “people who support the new park“ or “submissions from residents aged 25-40“

• AI interprets your query and applies relevant filters automatically

• Refine results by adjusting filters as needed

• Works across all survey question types

This feature helps engagement teams quickly locate relevant feedback without navigating complex filter interfaces.

Automated Submission Tagging

AI can automatically categorise open-ended text responses, making it easier to identify themes and sentiment:

• Define custom tags relevant to your engagement topics

• AI automatically tags long-text responses based on content

• View sentiment analysis (positive, negative, neutral) for responses

• Manually adjust tags and sentiment as needed

• Bulk review and tag responses through the Questions view

Automated tagging helps surface key themes from large volumes of community feedback, whilst still maintaining human oversight and control.

Interested in AI Tools?

These features are available for Civio Engage customers. To learn more about AI-assisted analysis tools and how they might benefit your engagement projects, please reach out to the Civio Engage team.

General Improvements

We've made various improvements to platform stability, performance, and user experience based on customer feedback and ongoing optimisation efforts.

Looking Ahead

We're committed to continuously improving Civio Engage based on your feedback and evolving community engagement needs. The Budget tool and enhanced reporting capabilities in this release reflect features requested by our customers, and we're excited to see how organisations use them to deepen community participation.