December 2020 Release Notes

These product updates are a result of external client feedback and internal feedback from employees at IdeaScale. Thanks to ideas.ideascale.com, user interviews, testing, and ongoing design and development, these changes will improve the overall Member, Moderator, and Administrator experience. The areas of focus in this release: Activity Trends, Idea Portfolio and Notifications.

As always - your feedback fuels our direction, please let us know what you think.

Revamped Activity Trends
Revamped Activity Trends

Updated Idea Portfolio
Columns:
Search:
Additional Enhancements:


Curated In-App Notifications
Curated In-App Notifications


Revamped Activity Trends

We are excited to unveil our new Activity Trends. You’ll find that this new enhanced version allows for mapping of multiple elements on two different Y-Axis and a corresponding data table.

 

 

Key Features included in this release:

 

Two Y-Axes: We've added a second Y-Axis to allow for additional data points to be plotted per graph. You can select which elements you would like graphed and mapped to the Right or Left Axis.

 

Views: We have added a new graph-able element in Views. This will allow you to display the cumulative number of views your ideas have received. A single user clicking into an idea detail page is considered a view and is counted only once per day.

Logins: Likewise we’ve added another element that will show the number of daily logins your community has received. A member’s login is counted no more than once per day.

Zoom In/Out: On the left hand side of the graph you’ll see a +/-. This allows your administrators to focus on a particular portion of the graph.

Exportable: From the right hand-side-hamburger menu, we allow for exporting to PNG, JPEG, PDF, SVG for visuals plus CSV and XLS to download the raw data.

Data Table: From the same right-hand-side hamburger menu, you’ll also find the ability to display a Data Table.

Show Data/Per-Point Activity Table: When clicking on a specific data point on your graph you can click Show Data. This will expand and show you the Per-Point Activity Table. This table will appear below the main graph and display the specific monthly or weekly data points. From here, you can also Export as CSV.

 



What is the value/why did we make this change?
Activity Trends helps measure engagement, a point of emphasis for IdeaScale, and likely one of yours as well. These changes will allow for additional focus on specific campaigns or actions.

What did it look like?

What do I need to do to make this work in my community today/when it is released?
This new version is available now in your community, under Reporting and Analysis>Engagement: Activity Trends.

 



Updated Idea Portfolio

We are excited to announce a major upgrade to the Idea Portfolio. We think these changes will make this tool even more powerful.

Columns:

We've also added new columns for the following:

  • Net Votes

  • Submitters (and co-submitters)

  • Idea Owners

  • Views

  • Resizing of columns: You can now expand and shrink column sizes, to perhaps display extra long idea titles.

  • Column Configuration: We’ve also added the ability to select which columns you would like to use via Column Configuration. Click the far right column to bring up the Column Configuration options. Drag the columns UP to add to your view, and drag columns DOWN that you want to exclude. Maximum number of columns is 9 (minimum is 1). The column configuration you select will be available when you log back in and is specific for each individual Moderator.


Search:

We’ve also added a number of new search capabilities

  • Idea Title: Searches words in idea titles only.

  • Idea Description: Searches for words that appear in idea descriptions only.

  • Idea Owner: Returns idea owners.

  • Reported Abuse: Show ideas that have (and have not) been reported as abuse.

  • Reported Duplicate: Show ideas that have (and have not) been reported as duplicate.

 

  • Custom Field Search: Custom fields search will allow you to utilize both open text fields (such as single line or large text descriptions) as well as single single selects as well as multi-select fields.

 

  • Member Profile Fields: Last, and certainly not least, we’ve added the ability in Idea Portfolio to search for Member Profile Fields. This will allow Moderators to search for all ideas in a certain campaign from say department Xx. Searching for members will allow you to segment all ideas in your community or particular campaign to only those submitted by certain member demographics. Important note: Searching for member profile fields is restricted to only those multi-select or single select profile field types. Using this search will also return not just submitters but also co-submitters. This is a long-requested functionality that we are thrilled to finally deliver.

Additional enhancements to existing search commands

  • Selected and Implemented: You can now exclude Selected or Implemented ideas by using the term Selected: No or Implemented: No.

  • Submitted: Now includes co-submitters in addition to Submitters.

Additional Enhancements:

  • Profile Fields Popover: Once you have expanded an idea in Idea Portfolio, you can click on a Submitter or Co-Submitter's Name and the user's profile details will display.

 

  • Idea History: When an idea is expanded, click the Idea History to get the time-stamped details of the idea.

 

  • Social Shares: Each idea will display the number of times the idea has been shared via Email, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook.

 

  • Revision History: When an idea has been revised, you can now click the Revision History link to show the changes that have been made to it.

 

  • Expanded Exports: Now when exporting data from Idea Portfolio, we are including all relevant fields.

  • Off Topic Icon: When an idea has been marked as Off Topic, the Off Topic icon will appear next to the title.

  • Follow All/Unfollow All: When displaying a list of ideas, you can Follow All (or Unfollow All) ideas, via the Actions dropdown.

  • Change Stage: In an effort to clean up the Moderator's Dropdown (Gavel), we have consolidated all stage changes under Change Stage. Once selecting Change Stage, the stage options will side load. Please note: if you would like to move multiple ideas use the Move Selected option. Move Selected works whether the ideas are in the same campaign/funnel or different.

 

  • Shortcut IP: We've added a suffix shortcut "/ip" to access the Idea Portfolio, youcommunity.ideascale.com/ip. Please note the Incoming Moderation dashboard also has its own shortcut available at youcommunity.ideascale.com/m.

What do I need to do to make this work in my community today/when it is released?
New Columns are available now, but the rest of the Idea Portfolio features will be fully available mid-December. Nothing to activate; check the New Features item under your name in the right-hand-side of the top bar for updates.


Curated In-App Notifications

We’ve made some changes to the Notifications Dropdown (found on the top bar) that will help users feel more connected to actions in their communities. IdeaScale will no longer inundate members with notifications, instead the Notifications Dropdown will be used to follow your favorite ideas, campaigns, members, and tags. To follow any one of these objects simply click the star icon to follow (or unstar to unfollow). With this new model, we do not consider who submitted an idea, only that they are following the idea. (Submitters are by default following their own idea.) Likewise we won’t force notifications on a Moderator unless they have explicitly starred or followed the campaign. The blue dot along the right hand side, indicates whether you have seen the notification or not. By virtue of opening up the Bell, you have cleared the notification.

An example of the various notification types:

 

Ideas:
Following an idea will notify you when:

  • The Idea was edited

  • An Annotation was added to the Idea

  • The Idea changes stages

  • Any stage action occurs (Team Member Added, Refine Question answered, etc.)

  • The Idea reaches vote milestones (5 votes, 10, 20, 40, 80, etc.)

Members:
When following a member you will be notified when:

  • A Member posts a new idea

  • An idea from the Member moves to Selected or Implemented.

  • The Member votes on an idea

  • The Member comments on an Idea

Campaigns:
When following a campaign you will be notified when:

  • A new idea is added to the Campaign

  • An idea in the Campaign is moved to Implemented or Selected

Tags:
When following a tag you will be notified when:

  • A new idea gets posted with the Tag

  • The Tag gets added to an existing idea.

Additional Notifications:


Trending: When your idea is Top 10 Trending for the week, you will receive a notification when the idea firsts hits Top 10 trending in the community. Trending rankings update weekly.

 

Inactive Ideas: In concert with the Idea Inactivity email, we are notifying the same selected users if their ideas are inactive via in-app notifications.

 

View All Notifications: The bottom left hand button to View All Notifications takes the member to the Notifications section of their profile.

Subscription Section: From the Notifications Dropdown you can manage all of the items you are following via the Subscription Section. You can also find this in your public profile page. Unstaring the item will remove it from your following items. Please note your own Subscriptions are only available to end users, these subscriptions details are not publicly facing.

 

 


What is the value/why did we make this change?
We want to give members more control over their notifications. This is just the first step in doing so.

What do I need to do to make this work in my community today/when it is released?
We are expecting the new in-app notification system to be fully available in your community by the end of December.