Stakeholder engagement software features

Q: Is the public portal included?

No. Engage-360 is a separately priced module, configured to the scale, branding and integration needs of your programme.

A feature list is only useful if you can map it to what you actually have to produce. This page runs in the order a South African participation process runs, from the register of interested and affected parties through to the comments and responses report, so you can check off what your process needs rather than read a specification.

Tractivity has been built for regulated engagement since 2002, and supports 100+ clients across ten sectors, including energy and utilities, transport and government.

Build the register of interested and affected parties

Regulation 42 of the EIA Regulations 2014 requires the proponent or applicant to open and maintain a register of interested and affected parties, and to submit it to the competent authority. The register must hold the names, contact details and addresses of everyone who submitted written comments or attended meetings, everyone who asked in writing to be registered, and all organs of state with jurisdiction over the activity.

In Tractivity, that register is one database rather than a spreadsheet per project. People, organisations and organs of state are all records, and each record has a type. A ward councillor, a ratepayers' association, a traditional council and a landowner stay distinguishable and reportable, rather than becoming 800 rows all labelled 'stakeholder'. There are no record caps and no per-user feature gates, so the register never gets cut down to fit a licence.

POPIA treats juristic persons as data subjects, so a ratepayers' association, a community trust, or a non-profit company has its own access, correction, and deletion rights. That is why organisations are records in their own right here, not a text field on a person.

Tractivity API

Connect your website's registration and comment forms to Tractivity, so anyone who asks to be registered or submits a comment online lands on the register automatically, with the date and source recorded. The API is fully documented and also links Tractivity to your other business systems.

Data imports

Bring in existing I&AP lists, landowner schedules and organ of state contacts from Excel or CSV templates. Registers from earlier assessments become one shared database for your team and projects, not a folder of spreadsheets.

Email capture from Outlook

The Microsoft Outlook plug-in highlights senders who are not yet on the register and adds them in one click. Drag emails and attachments from Outlook straight onto a stakeholder's record, and connect shared project mailboxes so matches are flagged automatically. People who comment by email are captured along with their correspondence.

Map and prioritise the parties the law names

In South Africa, the list is largely set for you. Regulation 41 requires written notice to occupiers, the owner, adjacent owners and occupiers, the ward councillor, any ratepayers' organisation, the municipality and any organ of state with jurisdiction. Regulation 3A of the MPRDA Regulations, as amended on 27 March 2020, adds mine communities, landowners, traditional councils, land claimants, lawful occupiers and holders of informal rights.

So mapping here is about proving coverage first and prioritising effort second. Score influence and interest across unlimited attributes and multiple phases, chart the movement, and use it to decide depth of engagement. Never use it to justify notifying fewer people than Regulation 41 requires, because that grid will be produced in a review.

Organise the register across projects and phases

Create projects and sub-projects and run every activity across the team from one place. An environmental authorisation, an IDP and budget cycle and a social and labour plan can share a register while staying in separate workspaces, with role-based permissions deciding who sees what, down to individual records.

Where the same person appears across processes, they are one record with one history, which is what makes a response to a comment defensible three years later.

Surveys and public participation

Build a survey or an online comment form, publish it, and have every response land against the person or organisation that submitted it rather than in a separate reporting tool. That link is the point. Regulation 44 requires written comments, responses and meeting records to be attached to the reports submitted to the competent authority, and a comment you cannot attribute is a comment you cannot defend.

Responses stay open for the Regulation 40 minimum of 30 days, or whatever longer window you set, and the register updates itself as people comment, because commenting is one of the things that registers a person under Regulation 42. The same mechanism carries a municipal IDP or budget process under section 17 of the Municipal Systems Act, where the duty is to receive, process and consider representations and then report back.

Engage-360 public portal

Engage-360 is the public-facing portal, carrying your branding and sitting alongside the platform. Stakeholders can read project information, comment, take part in surveys, register for events and raise grievances. Everything they submit is captured in Tractivity against their record, so you can respond and report on it.

Engagements history

Track, save and share a complete history of every stakeholder interaction, from telephone calls and meeting notes to events and campaigns. Attach supporting documents to any record, from paper-copy surveys and photos to site visit reports, so all your evidence sits in one place. Engagements are displayed in date order and fully exportable.

Communication campaigns

Target your stakeholders with newsletter campaigns that are on brand and inform your audience about your consultations, projects and events. Choose to reach stakeholders by location or category-based filters and deliver unlimited and personalised emails with open and click tracking.

Surveys and forms

Build surveys and forms with a range of question types and logic, from comment forms to event registrations and newsletter sign-ups. Email them to a panel of stakeholders, target people by location, publish them on your engagement portal for the whole community, or embed them on your own website and social media without IT involvement. Every response is captured against the person or organisation who submitted it, with pre-built reports ready to use.

Events

Set up public meetings and events, invite stakeholders and promote them through the Engage-360 portal, your website or social media. Registrations and attendance are recorded against each person, which matters because attending a meeting is one of the things that puts someone on the register under Regulation 42. Fully integrated with Microsoft Teams.

Commitment tracking

Keep every commitment made to stakeholders in one place. Log promises from any meeting, letter or response, assign an owner and a deadline, link them to the people and locations affected, and track status and risk. Every commitment is visible and auditable, from the day it was made to the day it was closed.

Feedback and issues

Capture feedback from every channel, analyse sentiment and tag the issues it raises, so you can see which concerns are growing, where and among whom. Report on the issues affecting each group of stakeholders and show how they shaped your response.

Land parcels with Google Maps

Draw custom locations in Google Maps or add postal codes, then segment your communications and analyse survey responses, issues and sentiment by area.

POPIA and consent management

Record each stakeholder's consent and subscription preferences, with opt-in capture and unsubscribe tracking. Statutory notices and marketing emails are kept separate, so people who opt out of newsletters still receive the notices the law requires.

Feedback and grievance management

For lender-financed projects, a grievance mechanism is a requirement, not a courtesy. IFC Performance Standard 1 requires a grievance mechanism for affected communities that is readily accessible, at no cost and without retribution. Equator Principle 6 requires a grievance mechanism, and Principle 8 makes compliance a loan covenant. Absa, FirstRand, Nedbank and Standard Bank are all Equator Principles signatories. GRI 2-25 and 2-26 make remediation and grievance mechanisms reporting disclosures, and core metric G3.1c of the JSE Sustainability Disclosure Guidance asks listed companies to describe their grievance mechanisms and how much they have been used. The South African Human Rights Commission, in its national hearing report on mining-affected communities, found an immediate need for effective complaints mechanisms by mining companies, the Department of Mineral Resources and local government.

In Tractivity, a grievance is a tracked item with an owner, a status, a due date and a full history, recorded against the person or organisation that raised it. The enquiries module handles grievances, complaints, project feedback and PAIA requests together, date-stamped and categorised by project phase, issue, source and sentiment. All of it can be counted, aged and reported by type, which is what these disclosures ask for.

Reporting and dashboards

More than 150 pre-built reports, plus configurable dashboards. The report that matters most in South Africa is the comments and responses report. The Regulations do not name it, but it is standard practice, and it is the document a PAJA review is most likely to turn on.

Reports run at project level or across every project, and export to Excel, CSV or PDF. Sentiment analysis and summarisation run in Microsoft Azure in the United Kingdom region, and no customer data is used to train models. Every AI feature is switched off by default and only turned on with your consent.

Custom reports and AI survey analysis

Filter and customise the pre-built data tables, matrix reports and charts, or create, save and export your own from any module. Our team can also build bespoke reports on request. For surveys, Tractivity summarises and categorises open-text responses, so the main themes are clear before you start drafting responses.

Dashboards and Power BI

Interactive dashboards show key metrics, project progress and trends over time, from engagement levels to the number of comments still awaiting a response. Microsoft Power BI can be used today through scheduled CSV exports to a location you choose.

Comments and responses report

Every comment is linked to the person who made it, the date and channel it arrived through, and the response you gave. The comments and responses report pulls that together by issue or by stakeholder, ready to attach to the reports you submit to the competent authority.

Data security and POPIA

Tractivity is certified to ISO 27001:2022 and Cyber Essentials Plus, the UK government-backed security certification, and runs on Microsoft Azure. The platform has 24/7/365 monitoring, a web application firewall, intrusion detection, regular vulnerability scanning, and file and patch integrity monitoring. Encrypted backups run daily, are kept for 30 days and are tested weekly, and we commit to 99.95% uptime.

Data is hosted in the United Kingdom by default, and other regions are available. POPIA does not require data to be hosted in South Africa, but the National Policy on Data and Cloud encourages it, and many public sector and state-owned enterprise tenders now ask for it. If yours does, raise it early. For transfers outside South Africa, section 72 allows data to go to a country with no adequacy decision if it is protected by a binding agreement. That agreement must give substantially similar protection to POPIA, including rules on onward transfer, and we agree it with each client.

Where we hold your stakeholder data, we are the operator and you remain the responsible party. Sections 20 and 21 require that relationship to be set out in a written contract, including a duty to notify you immediately if we suspect a breach. Our full position is on the security and compliance page.

Accessibility

The Tractivity interface is designed with accessibility in mind, meeting WCAG 2.2 Level A accessibility standards, and is fully mobile-responsive, ensuring users can access and update information from any device with an internet connection. This supports field teams, remote workers, and on-the-go engagement activity without compromising usability or security. We are working towards WCAG 2.2 Level AA compliance.

Customisation and scalability

Tractivity offers extensive configuration capabilities, allowing organisations to tailor the platform to their exact needs. This includes selecting which data fields to use, creating custom fields across multiple modules, defining bespoke categorisations, and setting up themed issues. No record caps, so the platform grows with your register.

Language support

Tractivity's interface is in English. South African legislation focuses on multilingual outputs rather than a multilingual interface: section 18 of the Municipal Systems Act requires communication in the official languages a council determines, and section 4 of the Use of Official Languages Act requires national departments, public entities and public enterprises to adopt a language policy naming at least three official languages. Tractivity supports this today, letting you publish documents, notices, surveys and comment forms in more than one language without needing a translated platform interface.

Tractivity integrations

Tractivity connects with the tools your team already uses:

Microsoft Teams. Create and manage Teams meetings
Microsoft Outlook. Transfer emails and meetings
Google Maps. Display stakeholders on maps
Google Address Lookup. Search for stakeholder addresses
Email servers (including Office 365). For emails or connecting to a mailbox
Calendar applications. Add event invitations to your calendar
Word / Excel / PDF. Generate reports
API. Create custom integrations with other systems

Customer support and success

Onboarding and configuration run online with a named Client Success Manager who stays with the account. We walk you through setup, help import the register and schedule regular reviews. Support is unlimited: the number of questions you ask is not a commercial matter, and neither is the number of people asking.

Support runs on United Kingdom working hours. South Africa is one hour ahead between late March and late October and two hours ahead for the rest of the year, so support opens mid-morning South African time and runs into the early evening. Implementation runs four to six weeks on average from contract to launch.

Every user gets every feature, with no record caps. The base licence is £9,495 a year plus £500 per additional user, and covers everything described on this page except the Engage-360 public portal. Engage-360 is priced separately, based on the scale, branding and integration needs of your engagement programme.

Tractivity is updated regularly, based on customer feedback and our own development work. Larger feature releases arrive every three to four months, with smaller bug-fix updates in between. Releases are done outside working hours, usually after 7pm UK time (8pm or 9pm in South Africa), and you are told in advance when the system will be unavailable.

Frequently asked questions

Does Tractivity send SMS? No. Email, mailshots, surveys, events, document attachments and in-platform notifications. If SMS is a hard requirement for your community engagement, say so early.

How many reports are there? More than 150 pre-built, plus configurable dashboards and bespoke reports on request.

Can the system produce a comments and responses report? Yes. Comments are held against the person or organisation that made them and against the project, which is what makes the report defensible rather than merely producible.

Does it handle the register under Regulation 42? Yes, including organs of state and organisations as records in their own right, which matters because POPIA treats juristic persons as data subjects.

Is the public portal included?

Engage-360, the public-facing portal, is priced separately from the base licence, based on the scale, branding and integration needs of your programme. Everything else on this page is included in the base licence.

Can data be hosted in South Africa?

Tractivity runs on Microsoft Azure and is hosted in the United Kingdom by default, with European, US and other regions available. POPIA does not require local hosting, but if your organisation or tender does, raise it at the start and we will confirm what is possible for your contract.

What currency is pricing in?

Published prices are in pounds sterling (GBP): £9,495 a year, plus £500 per additional user. Engage-360 is priced separately. There is no rand price list today, so if pricing in rand matters for your procurement, say so when you get in touch and we will tell you what is possible.

How long does implementation take? Four to six weeks on average from contract to launch, covering data migration, configuration and training. The biggest variable is how quickly the existing register can be handed over.