Powerful conversations in �鶹��: Comments, Public Feedback, and Grouping

Mapping deserves to be a team sport. That's why we are launching comments, public feedback, and grouping.

Working together on a map is a natural inclination for many cartographers, professionals, and hobbyists who love to collaborate on projects and ideas. Like any living document, much of what is mapped gets better with feedback from stakeholders, clients, and teammates.

Though commenting is a key feature in our teams’ docs, spreadsheets, presentations, and PDFs, it's rare to comment directly on a colleague's map. Instead, comments and feedback are typically collected in roundabout ways, such as email exchanges, live meetings, verbal inputs, surveys, forms, and other lengthy, complex processes, taking extra time to reconcile and make sense of.

What if you could bring all this engagement right onto your map?

Now in �鶹��, you can collaborate and collect feedback seamlessly in one place — on your map! — with �鶹�� comments. Anyone can leave their thoughts on your map (no �鶹�� account required), and you get to collect this input in context, in real-time, and all online.

With comments, we are also launching the top-requested storytelling feature — groups! Group elements together in the legend to better control the organization and viewing experience of your map.

A modern way to engage in conversation

With �鶹��, we aspire to build the best way to make maps on the internet. We believe this extends to the way that we all work together online and in our maps.

That’s why we’ve built commenting with intuitive, modern features that make conversation easy.

How it works:

From any map you’ve made, invite others to view the map and share their comments.
They can add a comment by selecting the comment icon and clicking on the map.
All comments will show up in the map editor’s comment window.
The comments can thread together so you can have conversations right on the map.
Tag a teammate by name to ensure they receive a notification.
Resolve comments when the conversation is complete.
Emoji-react to share love for some input or feedback.
As the map owner, receive notifications via email when any unread comments have appeared on your map.
People can comment on maps from any desktop or mobile device.

Here is commenting in action:

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This modernized approach to commenting makes �鶹�� an ideal way to work together on maps, whether you’re working with your team, with a customer, with a client, or with the public (see the next section for an exciting use case about public feedback).

And we believe this helps set �鶹�� apart. Entirely web-based, �鶹�� is perfectly designed for instant and smooth communication across teams and clients—finally bringing maps a best-in-class commenting experience.

By commenting directly on the map, you’re able to get real-time feedback on your work so that you can move faster, save multiple steps and cycles, and deliver the highest-quality, most-valuable work. today!

Unlock public feedback with comments that are open to all

Maps are an essential part of helping the public understand major projects that will impact everyday life. For this reason, �鶹�� maps enable public comments. Viewers can add comments whether or not they have a �鶹�� account, named or anonymously, right from their phones.

To elicit public comment with a �鶹�� map, simply share your map with others, and set your preferences to “view & comment” from the menu at the top right.

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By removing the friction to leave comments on a map, we’re hoping this encourages even more collaboration — be it with your internal team or with external partners, clients, customers, or viewers. Particularly for those creating maps intended for public consumption and feedback, ease-of-use is paramount. The less complex the instructions, the better. By allowing comments that are open to all, you’re able to simply share a map and ask people to comment directly — no additional survey forms, no �鶹�� signup necessary (but they’re welcome to sign up if they want to).

In addition, all comments are exportable as a CSV file, which allows you to take all your feedback and enter it into any spreadsheet or tool you choose.

The public feedback feature is already making a difference for the advocacy work of Kuan Butts at the Oakland non-profit organization Traffic Violence Rapid Response:

“People have opinions about their community and showing the place they are talking about can be challenging and act as a barrier to effective feedback. Reducing the friction when talking about location is super important to getting more and more specific feedback from a broader audience.”

"Reducing the friction when talking about location is super important to getting more and more specific feedback from a broader audience."

Easier than ever to organize all your map data

With all this new engagement from comments, plus all the data and layers and elements you add to create your maps, we want to enable you to even better organize your workflows by grouping map elements together.

Within any map, you can create a new group of elements by:

Selecting multiple elements;
Hold Command (Mac) or Control (PC) while clicking on elements to select multiple;
Click and drag over a number of elements to select all;
Going to the menu in the top right and selecting Group;
OR (shortcut) you can press Command+G or Control+G to create a group.

To ungroup elements, select any group on your map and go the top-right menu and choose “ungroup.”

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The groups feature allows you to manipulate and display your map in a number of ways, saving you time and creating a clearer experience for your map viewers. You can bulk-edit elements, such as editing the attribute table or icons, by selecting the group contents together and making the change in the sidebar. All groups appear in the legend alongside your data layers so that you and your map viewers can toggle them on and off with a click of a button.

Calgary Public Library Service Designer, Mike Atkinson is already seeing productivity gains from grouping:

“Being able to change color, style, lock/unlock a bunch of items all at the same time is a massive production speed boost, allowing me to focus on getting the information onto the map and worry about formatting it all later."

Groups was the number one most requested feature of �鶹�� because it is a critical part of telling stories with maps. Whether introducing different scenarios one by one or grouping together places of interest by type, groups help keep the message organized and clear. As Alta Planning + Design Transportation Planner Philip Longenecker put it:

"As a transportation planner, it's nice to group elements into scenarios that I can toggle on and off when presenting ideas to clients, and the comment function is spot on for gathering feedback."

Start a conversation on any map, today!

Getting started with comments is as simple as sharing any map. You can grab the map URL or share from the �鶹�� menu in minutes.

And you can collect feedback and drive engagement just as quickly.

for any collaborative project with your team, your clients, and your customers, and see how easy it is to drive real-time, contextual feedback to make your maps as actionable as possible. Or share with the public — no �鶹�� account needed — to start the conversation.

As the feedback rolls in, organize all your elements, layers, and new insights by grouping on your map for an even more customizable and controllable mapping experience.

Join the �鶹�� community to learn and grow

We love hearing feedback from the �鶹�� community on what we should build next. This is how enhancements like comments and grouping come to be! Join our community (for free) to and help make �鶹�� even better.

"As a transportation planner, it's nice to group elements into scenarios that I can toggle on and off when presenting ideas to clients, and the comment function is spot on for gathering feedback."

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