Content Collection Explained

In this article:

• Types of information that can be collected
• How to set up Content Collection
• What will my Owners see?
• What happens after the owner completes the form?

The Content Collection feature of Touch Stay is an advanced feature to support property managers obtain information about the homes they manage, directly from the property owners. If you would like to use this feature in your account, then please reach out to support, who will activate it for you (free of charge).

This feature allows you to assign sections of your guide, in the form of custom fields or topics, to be completed by your property owners, and then send them a form to complete this information online. Once submitted by the property owner, the information provided can update the guide, either immediately, or after your review.

Types of information that can be collected

The information you can ask your owners to provide can be in the form of text, photos and videos. Specifically, you will ask for custom fields or topics to be completed. Any information already in the guide will be shown to the owner on the form, so they only need to confirm, or adjust any existing content. This allows you to prefill information as much as possible and reduce the burden on your owners, whilst still giving them the opportunity to include as much information as they see fit. Your owners will also be able to update their information at any time, such as if their Wi-Fi password is changed, or they replace an appliance.

Custom fields

Custom fields are perfect for small and essential pieces of information, such as Wi-Fi passwords, gate codes or rubbish/trash collection days. There's more detail about using custom fields in this article. If you want to ask your owners to complete the information for custom fields, then these should be created and placed in the relevant places in your guide content first.

Topic content 

If you will be requiring answers to optional sections, that may run into several paragraphs or need photos and videos to be included, then topics are the best choice. Topics are most suitable for information about appliances and amenities around the home. When the owner completes the information for a topic, it will create or update a customisation for that topic. If you plan to collect topic information from your owners, then you should create the topics in Content Hub first. Any content that you add to the topic in Content Hub will become the starting content for the owner. This allows you to prefill content in a suggested style or structure, and your owner only then needs to complete the relevant parts. For example, you could have a topic about what to do if the power goes out, with a simple placeholder for the location of the fusebox/rcd panel.

How to set up Content Collection

The Content Collection feature consists of 2 essential components (templates & forms) and 1 optional component (email prompts). Ultimately, you will be creating an online form for your owners to complete with the information you need from them. You can then send this form to your owners, either via an email from Touch Stay, or you can download the form links to send through your own CRM (or similar system).

Templates

Templates are how you define the layout and content of the form that your owners will complete. When creating the template, you will choose the custom fields or topics that you require to be completed by your owners. You can set whether each section is mandatory or optional, and update the questions and instructions for each section. There's a full explanation about creating Content Collection templates in this article.

Forms

A form is created when a template is applied to a guide to create an online form. The answers to each section on the form will then update the information for the chosen guide. You can create forms individually, or in bulk. Each guide can have multiple forms by creating different templates, but you can only have one form for each guide per template. There's a full explanation about creating Content Collection forms in this article.

Email prompts (optional)

Email prompts are essentially email templates that you can use to share your forms with your owners. These are optional, as you may have a CRM, or similar tool, that you already use to communicate with your owners and prefer to use that instead. There's a full explanation about creating and using email prompts in this article.

What will my Owners see?

When your owners open the form link, they will initially see the introduction to your form and a list of the sections they need to complete, as in this example screenshot:

The owner can then use the "Start form" button to work through each section.

Custom fields have simple text entry boxes:

Whilst topics allow the owner to format the text and include photos or videos within it. Topics also provide a preview to indicate how the content they have added will look on a mobile device within their guide. Progress is indicated across the top as they move through the sections.

Once all sections have been completed, the owner will return to the initial screen, with each section now showing as completed and a "Finish form" button available to submit all the answers.

What happens after the owner completes the form?

Once the form is completed, then the answers will be submitted and, depending on the template settings, will either update the guide immediately or be held for your review and final approval, at which point the content will be updated in the guide.

As soon as the form is approved, either automatically or after your review, then a new version of the form will be generated and available for the owner to complete and submit once again. The new form will show the current version of any answers as the starting content, meaning your owners will only ever need to edit their previous content and not start from scratch each time.

You can view the current status of any form and see the history of any previous versions from the forms table on the "Forms" tab.

Optional sections and topic visibility

For optional sections, the answer your owners give to the qualifying question can have an effect on the visibility of that topic on the guide the form is for. This allows you to ensure that topics that would not be relevant for a particular property do not show on guides when there is no content to show. For example, you may have a topic for "Hot tub" but not all of your owners have one at their property. In your template, you would want to make this section optional and with a qualifying question such as "Does your place have a hot tub?". If an owner answers "Yes", then when this form is approved, this will change the visibility setting on the "Hot tub" topic for this guide to "Always Show". If an owner answers "No", then this will change the visibility setting to "Follow the Tag". If you have given the "Hot tub" topic in Content Hub no active tags, then this topic will not show on guides where the owner answers "No" to the qualifying question.