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, improved Mobile experience, new tools, navigational changes, and a whole lot more.
As always - your feedback fuels our direction, please let us know what you think.
1. Revamped Activity Trends
2. New Mobile Responsive Design
3. Configurable Calls-to-Action Stage buttons
4. Campaign Specific Imagery
New Tools:
5. Annotations
6. Idea Inactivity Emails
7. Campaigns Added To Automator Builder
New Navigation:
8. New Navigation in Top Bar
9. Persistent Elements: Campaign and Idea
Other Updates:
10. Campaign Owner to Campaign Sponsor
11. Archive renamed to Reserve
12. Submit Another
13. Editing Comments in Incoming Moderation
14. Top 10 Trending Ideas 🔥
Revamped Activity Trends
We are introducing a revamped Activity Trends graph. This updated graph has a number of features we think that will make this report more useful than ever before:
-
Multi-Select Elements: Now you can choose to show both comments and votes or just a few campaigns
-
Exportable: Administrators will now be able to download the report directly as a .png, .pdf or .jpeg.
What is the value/why did we make this change?
Activity Trends helps measure engagement, one of our key focuses, and likely one of yours as well. These changes will allow for additional focus on specific campaigns or actions.
What will it look like?
What do I need to do to make this work in my community today/when it is released?
Nothing to activate, we expect to launch this feature in September.
---
New Mobile Responsive Design
We're excited to unveil our new mobile responsive design. This new design we think is far more user friendly and will provide a satisfying experience. You'll find our newest features redesigned specifically for your phone's browser.
What will it look like?
What do I need to do to make this work in my community today/when it is released?
Nothing to activate, just simply visit your community from your mobile browser. This feature is available now.
---
Configurable Calls-to-Action Stage Buttons
Since we launched Stages many years ago, clients have requested the ability to customized the Stage Buttons. We are now allowing clients to customize the Calls-To-Action buttons associated with each stage. The customized label on each button is capped at 12 characters (including spaces) and the icon will remain fixed to the stage function (i.e. Star for Assessment, Arrows for Pairwise, etc).
What is the value/why did we make this change?
We are giving more flexibility to clients that want to customize their Stages. We hope that allowing clients get more specific will help drive more action by your members.
What does it look like?
What do I need to do to make this work in my community today/when it is released?
This function is available now in your Workflow>Funnel Management: Edit Stage
---
Campaign Specific Imagery
To allow for further customization we are making a few enhancements to our campaign specific imagery. First off, the square logo at the top of the page will now be populated by the Campaign Logo when viewing a specific campaign. Secondly, the banner image at the top of each campaign page can now also be customized as the Campaign Banner. Lastly, the main campaign image (that we had been calling the Campaign Banner) will now be known as the Campaign Featured Image. Campaign related emails will include the Campaign Banner as the email header. Please note these enhancements are optional. In cases where a client has opted not customize per campaign, those slots will be filled with the Community Logo and Community Banner. When users are viewing All Ideas in multiple campaigns, which is most clients' default view, they will see the Community Banner and Logo.
What will it look like?
What do I need to do to make this work in my community today/when it is released?
To add specific Campaign imagery, go into each of your campaigns and add your images. This feature will be released later in July.
---
Annotations
We are introducing a new tool called Annotations. This function will allow idea submitters to take selected comments and mark them as Annotations. An annotated comment will then appear in the body of the Idea Detail page. Annotations then become an extension of the idea and will be included as the idea moves forward through your funnel.
We think this is going to be a powerful tool for iterating and building on ideas. Perhaps there's a great comment that only helps to enhance the idea, this is a use-case for Annotations. Annotations will be available to an Idea Submitter, but also Co-Submitters, Owners, Teams, and Moderators of the specific idea. Any member that has access to the idea will have access to read the Annotations. Any publicly facing comment can be Annotated, either new comments or existing.
What is the value/why did we make this change?
One of the core tenets of IdeaScale is to help build on and improve ideas, we hope that this feature helps our clients accomplish that.
Though the feature is open ended, you can use Annotations as you see fit, we think these are they main benefits:
-
Submitters or Moderators can Annotate this comment because it further explains or expands upon the idea.
-
Moderators may want to use Annotations to distinguish why an idea was moved to certain stage. For example, stating why an idea was moved to the Shortlist but not selected for the Implementation stage.
-
Perhaps Annotations are used as a Solution or Response to the Idea posted
What will it look like?
What do I need to do to make this work in my community today/when it is released?
This feature will be available in your Idea Detail page starting in August.
--
Idea Inactivity Emails
Idea Inactivity Emails are a revamp of our Lookback Email. In this expanded version Administrators can set up inactivity triggers that allow for more specific targets. Admins can determine after a variable number of days of inactivity to notify the Submitter, Owner, Moderator, Team, Reviewers or specific groups. Emails can be customized per campaign so campaign specific verbiage can be sent. Provided the idea has not received moderator comments, tags, or changed stages, the Idea Inactivity Email will be triggered. (Votes and comments from members are not included.)
What is the value/why did we make this change?
We want to avoid idea inertia in your community. We hear from many clients that want to be able to resurface ideas or stop ideas from getting stuck in particular stages.
What do I need to do to make this work in my community today/when it is released?
This feature will be available in August
---
Campaigns added to Automator Builder
Similarly with our Automator Builder we are now allowing for specific Automator Rules per campaign. Administrators can now select one campaign, a few campaigns, or all campaigns when setting up their rules.
Example rules that you may want to employ:
-
'When an idea in the Process Improvement Campaign is modified notify the Process Improvement Group.'
-
'When an idea in the Employee Experience Campaign reaches 100 votes notify the Executive Team in Slack.'
What is the value/why did we make this change?
We wanted to give more flexibility to our Automator Rules that will allow for more specified action, we also recognize Campaigns usage can vary quite a bit within a single Community.
What will it look like?
What do I need to do to make this work in my community today/when will it be released?
Nothing to activate on your end. Simply log into your Automator Builder to adjust your current Rules or set up new Rules. Please note: all current Rules will be automatically set to All Campaigns. This feature will be available in late July.
---
Navigational Changes:
New Navigation in Top Bar
We are making some changes to our Top Bar Navigation to help further declutter our navigational options. The two major changes are moving all of our reporting and exporting options under Reporting and Analysis and adding a dedicated Member Management option right from the dropdown. Reporting and Analysis will include Engagement Dashboard, Outcomes Dashboard, Community Infographic, Member Exports, and more.
What is the value/why did we make this change?
You may have noticed over the last year we've made a number of changes to our organization and navigational options for Administrators and Moderators. We will continue to tweak these options until we've got it just exactly perfect.
What will it look like? (Moderator/Administrator View)
What do I need to do to make this work in my community today/when it is released?
Nothing to adjust on your end, we're expecting to have this change ready for you in early August.
---
Persistent Elements: Campaign and Idea
We're adding a few small details that we hope will help your members better navigate the front end of the site.
When browsing a campaign we've added:
1. an About tab that will take you to the full Campaign Details page.
2. A Campaign label to the top bar that will persist while the members browse the campaign. This label also features a Star to subscribe to the campaign
When browsing on an idea we've added:
3. the idea title and other crucial details like author(s), submission date and Call-To-Action button will persist as the user scrolls down the page.
Neither of these changes will affect the home page viewing only Campaign pages or within a single idea.
What is the value/why did we make this change?
We think these small tweaks will help users better navigate the site and allow them to easily answer the question: "Where am I? And what is this list of ideas I'm looking at?"
What will it look like?
What do I need to do to make this work in my community today/when it is released?
These changes are available now on your desktop and mobile.
---
Other Updates:
Campaign Owner to Campaign Sponsor
We're heard your request and we are changing the term Campaign Owner to Campaign Sponsor. Likewise we allowing an additional second sponsor to be added as well. No other changes to the functionality. This feature will be released later in July.
---
Submit Another
We're adding a Submit Another checkbox to the Idea Submission page, that will allow members that want to submit multiple ideas to be able to automatically set up a new Idea Submission form after hitting Submit New Idea. This feature will be released in early August.
---
Archive renamed to Reserve
We have now changed our Archive Stage to the Reserve Stage. Quite frankly, we had too many features called 'archive' so we hope that this help keep things clear. This change has been made and you should see all of your Archive stages now called Reserve stages. Likewise we added a new call-out sticker called "In Reserve" that you can optionally add to ideas in the Reserve Stage. This feature is available now.
---
Editing Comments in Incoming Moderation
Now when a Moderator is commenting on an idea in the Incoming Moderation section they can edit their own previously posted comments. This matches the front-end functionality. This feature is available now.
---
Top 10 Trending Ideas
When an idea is among the Top 10 trending ideas across the community the idea will be marked with a Fire Emoji. As the Trending Score changes weekly, look for new ideas to enter the Top 10. This feature will be launched in July. We will also be adding a notification to match later in the year.
