Reporting proposals component for Decidim

This module creates a new component to be used in participatory spaces that allows to create proposals orientated to manage geolocated issues in a city. For instance Damages or new ideas of improving a particular street or public good.

👉 See features & screenshots

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'decidim-reporting_proposals'

Or, if you want to stay up to date with the latest changes use this line instead:

gem 'decidim-reporting_proposals', git: "https://github.com/openpoke/decidim-module-reporting_proposals"

And then execute (do also this on upgrades):

bundle
bundle exec rails decidim_reporting_proposals:install:migrations
bin/rails db:migrate

IMPORTANT:

This module makes use of the Deface gem. In conjunction with other modules (we know Term Customizer is one of them) it might cause errors when precompiling assets for production sites. But only if during this process the compiling machine does not have access to the database.

It is easy to overcome this problem. Just add the following line to your config/environments/production.rb file:

config.deface.enabled = ENV['DB_ADAPTER'].blank? || ENV['DB_ADAPTER'] == 'postgresql'

Then precompile with these ENV enabled in your CI:

DB_ADAPTER=nulldb RAILS_ENV=production rake assets:precompile

Alternatively, use any other ENV var to set up the config.deface.enabled to false during the precompilation phase.

Depending on your Decidim version, you can choose the corresponding version to ensure compatibility:

Version	Compatible Decidim versions
0.5.x	0.27.x
0.4.x	0.26.x

Usage

This module works very similarly as the Proposals module, in fact, it extends it to provide additional features and some different defaults.

It provides a new component called "Reporting Proposals" that can be added in addition or instead of the Proposals component in any participatory space.

Features

This module provides the following features:

1. Reporting Proposals Component: A new component that can be added to any participatory space. It allows to create proposals in one-step form with some optimization for mobile devices. Users can add photos using the phone's camera directly and also use the device's GPS to establish a precise a geolocated address with one click. Some of the options can be used in the normal proposal's component too (but in this case they 2 steps behavior is maintained).

2. Comparison by proximity: By default, reporting proposals are compared by proximity before publishing (as they are geolocated by default). This can be disabled in the component's settings.

3. Automatic assignation of valuators: When a proposal is created, admins usually have to assign valuators manually to it. This module allows admins to assign valuators to a category directly. This will automatically assign all valuators in that category to any proposal/reporting proposal created under it (and also existing proposals). This avoids the need of manually assign proposals to valuators. This behavior can be disabled in the component's settings.

4. Valuators empowerment: A number of features allow valuators to have more control over the proposals they are evaluating. They can assign other valuators (instead of themselves) and they can change or add photos to a proposal. All of it is configurable. Also, valuators can be assigned directly in the proposal's answering page instead of using the bulk assignation feature. Additionally, privates note can be edited and links in it are clickable.

5. Overdue proposals: This module allows to set a number of days after which a proposal is considered overdue. This is configurable and can be disabled. This feature affects the admin list of proposals, adding visual notes, color coded, to facilitate the identification of overdue proposals and preventing admins to leave unanswered proposals for a long time.

6. Improved notifications: Some notifications are added, and some existing ones are improved. For instance, valuators and admins can receive notifications after a proposal has been added and it's content includes a direct link to the proposal and its answering page.

7. Hide proposals without reporting: Administrators can hide proposals directly, without using the reporting process. Also, authors who's content has been hidden receive a notification.

8. Proposal answers templates: Administrators can create templates for the answers to proposals. This is useful to provide a standard answer to proposals that are similar. This feature requires to enable the decidim-templates official module.

Customization

Almost all the features of this module can be customized/disabled through an initializer.

For instance, you can create an initializer an change some of the available options as follows (This is optional, you don't need to do this, by default all options are enabled):

# config/initializers/reporting_proposals.rb

Decidim::ReportingProposals.configure do |config|
  # Public Setting that defines after how many days a not-answered proposal is overdue
  # Set it to 0 (zero) if you don't want to use this feature
  config.unanswered_proposals_overdue = 7

  # Public Setting that defines after how many days an evaluating-state proposal is overdue
  # Set it to 0 (zero) if you don't want to use this feature
  config.evaluating_proposals_overdue = 3

  # Public Setting that defines whether the administrator is allowed to hide the proposals.
  # Set to false if you do not want to use this feature
  config.allow_admins_to_hide_proposals =true

  # Public Setting that allows to configure which component will have "Use my location" button
  # in a geocoded address field. Accepts an array of component manifest names
  config.show_my_location_button = [:proposals, :meetings, :reporting_proposals]

  # Public Setting that adds a button next to the "add image" input[type=file] to open the camera directly
  config.use_camera_button = [:proposals, :reporting_proposals]

  # Public setting to prevent valuators or admins to modify the photos attached to a proposal
  # otherwise can be configured at the component level
  config.allow_proposal_photo_editing = true

  # Public setting to allow to assign other valuators
  config.valuators_assign_other_valuators = true
end

Find all the available options in the config.rb file.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/openpoke/decidim-module-reporting_proposals.

Developing

To start contributing to this project, first:

• Install the basic dependencies (such as Ruby and PostgreSQL)
• Clone this repository

Decidim's main repository also provides a Docker configuration file if you prefer to use Docker instead of installing the dependencies locally on your machine.

You can create the development app by running the following commands after cloning this project:

bundle
DATABASE_USERNAME=<username> DATABASE_PASSWORD=<password> bundle exec rake development_app

Note that the database user has to have rights to create and drop a database in order to create the dummy test app database.

Then to test how the module works in Decidim, start the development server:

DATABASE_USERNAME=<username> DATABASE_PASSWORD=<password> bin/rails s

Note that bin/rails is a convenient wrapper around the command cd development_app; bundle exec rails.

In case you are using rbenv and have the rbenv-vars plugin installed for it, you can add the environment variables to the root directory of the project in a file named .rbenv-vars. If these are defined for the environment, you can omit defining these in the commands shown above.

Webpacker notes

As latests versions of Decidim, this repository uses Webpacker for Rails. This means that compilation of assets is required everytime a Javascript or CSS file is modified. Usually, this happens automatically, but in some cases (specially when actively changes that type of files) you want to speed up the process.

To do that, start in a separate terminal than the one with bin/rails s, and BEFORE it, the following command:

bin/webpack-dev-server

Code Styling

Please follow the code styling defined by the different linters that ensure we are all talking with the same language collaborating on the same project. This project is set to follow the same rules that Decidim itself follows.

Rubocop linter is used for the Ruby language.

You can run the code styling checks by running the following commands from the console:

bundle exec rubocop

To ease up following the style guide, you should install the plugin to your favorite editor, such as:

• Sublime Text - Sublime RuboCop
• Visual Studio Code - Rubocop for Visual Studio Code

Non-Ruby Code Styling

There are other linters for Javascript and CSS. These run using NPM packages. You can run the following commands:

1. npm run lint: Runs the linter for Javascript files.
2. npm run lint-fix: Automatically fix issues for Javascript files (if possible).
3. npm run stylelint: Runs the linter for SCSS files.
4. npm run stylelint-fix: Automatically fix issues for SCSS files (if possible).

Testing

To run the tests run the following in the gem development path:

bundle
DATABASE_USERNAME=<username> DATABASE_PASSWORD=<password> bundle exec rake test_app
DATABASE_USERNAME=<username> DATABASE_PASSWORD=<password> bundle exec rspec

Note that the database user has to have rights to create and drop a database in order to create the dummy test app database.

In case you are using rbenv and have the rbenv-vars plugin installed for it, you can add these environment variables to the root directory of the project in a file named .rbenv-vars. In this case, you can omit defining these in the commands shown above.

Test code coverage

Running tests automatically generates a code coverage report. To generate the complete report run all the tests using this command:

bundle exec rspec

This will generate a folder named coverage in the project root which contains the code coverage report.

Localization

If you would like to see this module in your own language, you can help with its translation at Crowdin:

https://crowdin.com/project/decidim-reporting_proposals

License

See LICENSE-AGPLv3.txt.