We're getting ready to release two major upgrades to The HiVE that will deliver performance improvements to your site along with five new tools. These upgrades will give customers new creative ways to express your content and engage with the community, and includes a brand new participation tool!

The upgrades are being communicated as a package, but will be technically rolled-out separately.

Version 2.4

We've updated The HiVE's underlying code base to the latest and greatest technology. We are expecting this will deliver performance improvements to our customers including a faster more responsive system, along with reduced page load times for end users.

There is no customer impact associated with this update, but it is being nominated as a major release as it represents a significant 'under the hood' change for the Platform.

The delivery of Version 2.4 has already begun, and will be progressively rolled-out to clients over the next couple of weeks.

Version 2.5

Version 2.5 will deliver a host of new and improved tools, with five new tools being introduced to The HiVE along with a major overhaul of the 'Image Gallery' tool.

Version 2.5 is scheduled to roll-out to customers on the 9 February 2018 (AEDT). Here's a rundown:

'Fund It' is a brand new participation tool that allows customers to engage using a participatory-budgeting style activity. The tool lets users define a 'bucket' of either dollars or points, and invites participants to spend this 'budget' on a list of pre-determined projects, programs, initiatives or other items, each having a 'cost' associated with it.

Each time the participant chooses to 'fund' an item, the cost is deducted from their budget meaning they will need to make choices about funding only those that are most important to them.

We're excited to see all the creative ways our customers will use Fund It in their upcoming engagements.

This tool is available to Premium customers only.

Having clear 'calls to action' that direct visitors to perform key actions is one of the best practices for digital engagement. To assist with this, the new 'Call to Action' tool will make it easier to highlight these key messages, making them visually prominent on the page.

The Call to Action tool will present a block of colour that is overlaid with a title, by-line and up to two action buttons that can be used to link to an internal page, external url or file download.

This tool can be used to add visual interest to the page, break up long blocks of content, or push visitors to survey page or key document download.

Virtual Reality (VR) has arrived in THE HiVE! The new 'VR View' tool will let customers display dynamic, panoramic images in their engagement sites.

Visitors will be able to pan around the panorama to get a full 360 degree view. On mobile devices, the image can be panned simply by moving the phone around.

But here's where the tool gets really interesting; on mobile devices, the tool can be put into Virtual Reality mode and used with compatible VR goggles (such as Google Cardboard or Daydream) to simulate a more immersive, virtual experience.

The new 'Faces' tool will help customers personalise their engagement sites by creating small 'feature vignettes' of people involved in the project. This tool will help customer's develop a more 'human connection' with their content.

There are many potential uses for this tool including:

• setting up a 'Who's listening' profile to inform visitors about who's on the other side of their questions and comments
• profiling groups of people involved in a project such as judging panels, citizen jurys or working groups
• setting up 'Vox Pop' features to profile what's being talked about by your audience and highlight their key comments.

The Faces tool has a number of customisable design options that will enable a variety of attractive ' looks' to be created.

Customer projects are often collaborative efforts delivered in association with a number of partners or sponsors. However, displaying multiple logos of various shapes and sizes has always been challenging on the web.

The 'Logo Splash' tool makes it easy to present an array of logos in an attractive way to visitors. It takes the pain away from having to resize, orient and fit a group of logos onto the page in a way that doesn't take away from the important content.

The 'Image Gallery' tool has been renamed to the simpler name of 'Gallery' to reflect some major improvements. The updated Gallery tool can now accept video embeds (from YouTube or Vimeo) along with images so customers can now present a mix of media types in a single, attractive gallery.

New controls have also been added to the 'lightbox' element where media is expanded, importantly allowing visitors to zoom in to images to see more detail.

In addition, three visual styles can now be selected to jazz up the display of the gallery, including displaying media as a 'grid', 'wall' or 'Polaroid'.

Customers now have more control over how many items they want to appear in the NewsFeed tool. This will improve its versatility by allowing the NewsFeed to be better integrated into the page without dominating other content.