Landscape Monitor is a digital platform that brings together a team to follow the events happening outside it. This collaboration gives the team a unique power to identify trends and opportunities before anyone else. The team combines personal experiences with external qualitative and quantitative information. Then it uses its analytical capabilities together with technology support to identify what are the most important emerging trends and opportunities. The combination of a rich and structured view of the Landscape of a team and its analytical capabilities gives an unprecedented advantage to be ahead of a rapidly changing world.
The functioning of a Landscape depends on a community of co-workers or people interested in a topic. These people share their experiences, manage the external feed coming into their Landscape, comment and vote on pieces of information called Topics, supervise the evolution of external indicators, and analyze the community’s Landscape to spot trends and opportunities. A community can be the early team of a startup, a group of people interested in a topic, or a project team in a large company.
Go to the "Hamburger" icon and click on it. You will find there the Landscapes that you are currently a member of and the option “Create a Landscape.” Click on this option and you are on your way. Just come back to this menu when you want to move around your Landscapes or create another Landscape. In creating a new Landscape you will be asked to name it and provide a description. When you create a new Landscape you become the Account Owner of the Landscape by default. The Owner of a Landscape has certain privileges that no other user has.
The Landscape menu (three vertical points) gives you the option to edit your Landscape. You can edit both the name and the description of the Landscape. Only the Owner can edit a Landscape.
The Landscape menu gives you the option to delete your Landscape. Only the Owner can delete a Landscape.
Just go to the "People" button on the top right of the screen. A pop-up screen will open up with pending invitations (people that you have invited but have not yet accepted the invitation) and Members. At the bottom of this screen, just add the email of the person or people that you are inviting and “Send Invitations.” Your invitees will receive an email to join your Landscape. Only the Owner and Admins can invite and delete users. If you are a Member, you will not be able to take any action on users.
The Landscape menu gives you the option to set the current Landscape as your default Landscape. This Landscape shows up when you open the app.
The Landscape menu gives you the option to edit your profile. Go to “Profile” and you will be able to change your username and password.
The Landscape has five views. The first one is the Map (under the Home menu). Here you can visually see how the Landscape looks like. The second view is Feeds. This view gives you access to the external feed for the actors for which you are the Admin or Manager. The third view is Topics. In Topics you get involved in scanning and analyzing the Landscape. You can join the ongoing conversation around topics and comments of your colleagues in the overall Landscape or particular actors. This is the most important part of a Landscape, the richness of the observations captured in topics, comments and votes will determine the capability to identify opportunities. The fourth view is Insights. The fifth view is Analytics that provides analysis on the activity in the Landscape and its community. You always have the left panel that mimics the map, so you do not have to go back to the Map view to navigate through the other views.
There are four types of users. The Account Owner, Admins, Managers and Members. Read the tables below to see more of what each role can do.
An actor’s map shows you the actor itself and its descendants. At the top of the map you have its name and next to it the Actor’s menu (three vertical points). Below the actor you will find the Manager(s) of the Actor, you can access its profile and see its metrics.
In the Map view, you will see a “New Actor” on the left representation of the Landscape. The actor that you create will be a sibling of the actor that you are looking at. If you are looking at the entire Landscape, you will be creating a level one actor. If you are looking at a specific actor, the new one will be its sibling. When you create an actor, you just need to name it (and the name needs to be different from existing ones). Owner, Admins and Managers can delete actors across the Landscape.
Next to the name of the actor above the map, there is a menu (three vertical points). This menu has a Delete Actor option that you use to delete the actor.
The menu next to the actor’s name (three vertical points) has an Edit Actor option that you use to edit the name of the actor. To edit the profile of the actor, view the actors profile and edit it. The profile is below the map next to the metrics of the actor.
The menu next to the actor’s name (three vertical points) has a Move Actor option that you use to move the actor. The pop up screen will allow you to move through the structure of the Map to move the actor.
At the bottom of the Map you find information about the Actor that you are looking at. You find the metrics of the actor on the right and the Manager(s) of this Actor on the left. Below the Manager’s you find the profile, next to the word profile the icon of a pen lets you go into the profile and create it or edit it.
Actor’s Manager is a user that has specific responsibilities over this particular actor. Basically it manages the actor’s feeds and manages the actor’s structure (add, remove and change actors).
To select a new manager you need to go to the user management, either from the actor or directly through the user’s management menú. Only administrators can add or remove a manager.
To change or remove an actor’s manager you must access the user management, direclty through the user’s menú or from the link on the actor’s. Once there you just have to go to the user you want to remove or change and Change it through the “Change manager scope” menu.
When you go into the Topics’ view you get direct access to the discussion around a particular actor and its siblings. Scrolling up and down you see the entire conversation going on. The top right menu lets you use different criteria to explore the conversation. Each topic has the author, title and a few lines on the content. It also has information on the reactions as well as number of comments and the actor where the comment was posted.
You contribute to the conversation by adding topics. Navigate to the actor where you want to add your contribution and go to “Add Topic.” The pop up window will ask for the title of the Topic and the text that explains your topic, together with any links that you found relevant. You can also add a picture if you want to give piece of visual information. Below the picture, you can add tags. These are important to be able to look at alternative data structures. At the bottom, you can mark the topic as priority. Use this option for topics that are you believe are time-sensitive. When done, just “Create” and the topic will show up in the actor’s conversation. You will have contributed to a better understanding of your organization’s Landscape.
To edit a topic just open the Topic you want to edit in the pop up window where you can see the entire topic. Next to the voting arrows you will find the option to “Edit the Topic.” Just go into this option and edit the Topic. Only Landscape Managers can edit a Topic.
To delete a topic just open the Topic you want to delete in the pop up window where you can see the entire topic. Next to the voting arrows you will find the option to “Delete the Topic.” Just go into this option and delete the Topic. You will be asked to confirm the deletion. Only Landscape Managers can edit a Topic.
Topics can be moved from one actor to another. Much like you do when moving an actor, you choose “move” from the Topic menu and a list of actors will show up. Just select the actor where you want the topic moved. Only Managers can move topics. Not yet available
Information from external sources is critical to the Landscape. You can get quantitative feed (not yet implemented) and qualitative feed. Qualitative feed comes through the Feeds view. To get external qualitative feed you can choose an external source of information and link your Landscape to it. There are multiple external sources, free and paid. So far the Landscape can be linked to RSS feed. In the future, you will be able to get information from other free sources as well as subscribe to paid feed. To hook to an external RSS feed, just go to external feed and select Add Subscription. Then copy the URL of the page where you will get the RSS feed and copy it into the RSS Feed URL. You can also add tags to it. If the URL has no RSS feed a message will show up telling you there is no RSS feed from that page. If the page has RSS feed, you will start getting its feed.
Admins and Managers can access the feeds of an actor. Feeds are messages from selected external sources that appear in the Feeds of an actor. Admins and Managers can act on this feed by creating a topic out of a particular feed or discarding it.
Admins and Managers can decide to transform a feed into a topic. By clicking on a particular feed they can choose to Create a new topic. They can edit the topic before posting it. Once a feed is posted it is crossed in the list so other owners know it has been posted. A feed can also be discarded, the discarded feed shows up in a lighter color for other owners to know another owner decided to discard it.
The Activity view in Analytics provides information about the activity in the Landscape. This view has two main parts: the analytical and the filters. The Analytical provides a visual representation of the activity in the Landscape. At the top you can choose the timeframe to analyze, you can choose a fixed amount of time such as one week or you can customize the time period selecting the specific time in the time graph at the top. The second graph depicts the activity in the Landscape in the time period selected. The measure of activity is a combination of topics, comments, votes weighted optimally to highlight the themes that generate more activity. At the bottom of the Analytical view there is the map but the intensity of the color of the various actors indicate the level of activity in each of the actors. More intense color means more activity. The map, whether you use the map or the tree representation on the left gives you the option to analyze the information within actors. The Filters on the right of the screen provides you information about the number of topics, comments, and votes as well as the list of most active users, and the more popular tags. In addition to being able to filter by actor, you can also filter to have the activity show only topics, comments and / or votes, show only the activity of certain users, and /or show the activity around certain tags.
The Users’ view is designed to analyze the interaction of users. For instance, you can see who talks to who across the entire Landscape or within a region of the Landscape. You can navigate the Landscape using the tree on the left for analyzing specific regions. The relationship map gives you the contribution of each of the top users as well as how much they have talked to each other. Navigating each user in the graph lets you know who this person talks to and how much. The Users’ view lets you see who participates more in each of the regions of the Landscape as well as the social network that has emerged.
| Account Owner | Admin | Manager | Member | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Landscape | ||||
| Create a Landscape | x | |||
| Edit a Landscape | x | |||
| Delete a Landscape | x | |||
| Users | ||||
| Invite Users | x | x | ||
| Eliminate a User | x | x | ||
| Change Role | x | x | ||
| Map / Actors | ||||
| Navigate Map | x | x | x | x |
| Create an Actor | x | x | x | |
| Delete an Actor | x | x | x | |
| Edit an Actor | x | x | x | |
| Move an Actor | x | x | x | |
| Set and Edit an Actor's Profile | x | x | x | |
| Feeds | ||||
| Navigate Feeds | x | x | x | |
| Read an Actor's Feeds | x | x | x | |
| Choose a new source of Feeds | x | x | x | |
| Add Topic from Feeds | x | x | x | |
| Discard Topic from Feeds | x | x | x | |
| Topics | ||||
| Navigate Topics | x | x | x | x |
| Post a New Topic | x | x | x | x |
| Edit a topic | x | x | x | x1 |
| Delete a topic | x | x | x | x1 |
| Edit Comments | x | x | x | x1 |
| Delete Comments | x | x | x | x1 |
| Vote on an Existing Topic | x | x | x | x |
| Comment on an Existing Topic | x | x | x | x |
| Insights | ||||
| Navigate Insights | x | x | x | x |
| Post a New Insight | x | x | x | x |
| Edit a Insight | x | x | x | x1 |
| Delete a Insight | x | x | x | x1 |
| Analytics | ||||
| Navigate Analytics | x | x | x | x |
(1) User has a 15 minutes window to perform the action after posting.
Any person in your Landscapes with a unique email address, regardless of whether the user is in one Landscape or more than one.
If you know the number of users you are planning to invite to your Landscapes, you can book a fixed number of slots (seats) in advance. This way, the total billing of your invoice will not vary at the end of the month due to the prorated charges that happen when inviting users one by one.
In a yearly plan, the number of slots cannot be reduced after signing up.
In a monthly plan, we will automatically adjust the number of slots to the active unique users in your landscapes at the end of the billing period, so you don’t have to worry about unused slots carrying over and having extra costs.
Of course, you can always invite more users to your landscapes at any given time.
Only the Account Owner and the Admins can invite new users to a Landscape. Those invitations will only become users (and therefore count towards your billing) if/when the destinatary of the invitation accepts it. This means that the Admins of your landscapes have the power to send invitations to new people that potentially can push the number of unique users in your account over your User slots, thus incurring in new billings.
When you create an account a 14 days trial of the Premium version starts. During this time you can create up to 10 Landscapes and invite as many users as you want to test all the functionalities.
If your free trial period runs out and you haven’t picked a plan during these 14-days:
If you’re on a paid plan and invite new users partway through the billing period, we’ll only charge for the time used, counting only from the time when the user accepts the invitation and joins one of your landscapes. We’ll keep track of this for you, and bill you accordingly:
If you are on a monthly plan, we'll automatically add the prorated balance to your Landscape Monitor account. This balance will be applied towards future payments, such as new users being added to your landscapes, or your next monthly renewal date.If you are on a yearly plan, the slot that user was using up is immediately freed, but no proration is applied.
You'll see the first credit card charge from Landscape Monitor on the day you purchase a premium plan. Here are the only other times you'll see charges from us:
You can cancel a subscription to a Premium Plan at any time. If you are on a monthly subscription, you will be downgraded to a Free Plan immediately. We recommend waiting until the end of your subscription cycle to cancel the plan, for maximum value.
If you are on a yearly subscription, cancel your plan by canceling Automatic Renewal. Your subscription will remain active through the end of the billing period that you’ve already paid for, and once this period expires your account will be downgraded to a Free Plan.
You can add your billing details and your VAT number (only for European countries) through the Billing Address form.
We cannot amend invoices already issued. Therefore, you need to make sure to add all your billing details correctly before paying for a Premium Plan subscription.
For Premium plans, just after each payment we will send an email to the Account Owner with the PDF invoice attached. If you would like to have these invoices sent to additional addresses, it is also possible to add more email for the billing using the Billing Address form. Also, all your invoices will be available to download in the Portal section.
V. Comments
Commenting on Topics
You can comment on any topic in the Landscape. Comments are an important part of first line of analysis of the information in the Landscape. You, as part of the community, add information related to a topic. You can give your opinion or offer an alternative piece of information. Comments make a topic a lot richer. To comment on a topic, you go to the Topics’s view and select the Topic you want to comment on. The pop-up window will show the topic itself, the comments so far, and at the bottom you will find a window to “Add a comment” where you can add a comment.
Editing Comments
You can edit comments the same way that you edit topics and tags. Select the topic that you want to edit and move to the comment that you want to edit and select “Edit Comment.” This option is only available to Landscape Managers.
Deleting Comments
You can delete comments the same way that you delete topics and tags. Select the topic that you want to delete and move to the comment that you want to delete and select “Delete Comment.” This option is only available to Landscape Managers.
Votes
The same way that you can comment on a particular topic, you can also vote on topics. You open the topic that you want to vote and you give it either a positive or a negative vote. Votes cannot be edited or deleted.