June 2021 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.

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

Compact View

Last month, we introduced a brand new condensed list of ideas called Compact View. Compact View joins List and Grid as viewing options for members. This view of ideas will show a streamlined version of ideas, with only the most crucial details included (namely title, campaign, submitter(s), and submission date). Compact View can be used on the Home Page as well as on the campaign pages as well. Compact View also allows more ideas to be displayed per page. Administrators can also set this as the default view for their community in Customized Site Behavior.

What does it look like?

What do I need to do to make this work in my community today/when it is released?
This feature is available now in your community, simply hit this button to change your view:


Sections + Dynamic Sections

We have introduced a new method for partitioning Custom Fields on the Idea Submission page in the form of Sections. Sections allow the Administrator to cluster custom fields on the Idea Submission page into a box, called a Section. Sections can also be titled.

Additionally, we have introduced a means to conditionally display sections, via Dynamic Sections. Dynamic Sections look the same as a Section; however, a Dynamic Section is only displayed once a specific single-choice or multi-select custom field has been selected. This will allow the Idea Submission forms to get more granular.

Why is this important?
Dynamic Sections will allow your Administrators to begin collecting more pointed information and will allow more relevant answers from your members.

 

How does it work?
In your Campaign's Idea Submission Tool, start a new Section by dragging a Section from the Elements (top right) or hitting the Add Section at the bottom of the page. Drag any new or existing custom fields into your Section.

To make this Section Dynamic you'll need a single-select or multi-select custom field to determine which response(s) are linked with this individual Section.


What does a Dynamic Section look like?

 

What do I need to do to make this work in my community today/when it is released?
Sections and Dynamic Sections are available now in your community.


 

Labels added to Automation Builder

The Automation Builder is a great workflow tool to help automate activities within your community. We think the addition of Labels will make both Labels and the Automation Builder much more powerful. It's important to note that this feature was built for both System Labels (such as Private, Implemented, Edited, etc.) and Custom Labels (Actionable, plus any other label you have created).

There are many ways to utilize Labels within the builder.

  • As an Action: An Administrator can automatically apply a Label to an idea after a Condition has been met. One such example: after an idea reaches 100 votes, label the idea with "100x".

  • As a Condition: Labeling can also trigger Actions. Such as, once the label "100x" has been applied notify Slack Channel: Leadership Team. Another example, any idea that has been labeled as "Edited" notify the following groups: Assessors and Reviewers. This will only notify the pertinent Assessors and Reviewers associated with this idea.

Why is this important?
Automatically applying labels will help Moderators streamline communication within the community. Leveraging Labels as an Action will also help utilization of more automation tools within IdeaScale. An example that might be useful: if any idea is labeled with "Contains IP," move the idea from the Ideate stage to Pending and notify: Moderators.

How does it work?
Set up your rule in Workflow>Automation Builder. A rule can utilize any condition such as Vote Threshold, Comment count, Owner assigned, Idea Modified, Reaches Stage Named, etc. As an action, applying a label can also change the status of ideas, notify groups, or execute a webhook.

What is the value/why did we make this change?
The value here is to automatically apply labels based on any number of conditions, or actions, and not just have ideas applied on a single idea basis.

What does it look like?


What do I need to do to make this work in my community today/when it is released?
This feature is available now in your community. For more about applying labels in Automation Builder: http://support.ideascale.com/en/articles/5326089-labels-in-automation-builder

 


Remind All Unassessed Members

In the Assessment Stage we have added the ability to remind all members that have been assigned but not yet assessed all of their ideas. Clicking this button will send a single email that will include a list of all of the ideas that are not assessed, and a link back to each of the ideas. Previously you would need to click into each idea to remind each and every member. You can find this feature in the Assessment Stage set up under Statistics.


Custom Field Types: Currency and Integer

We've added two new Custom Field types, Currency and Integer. These two fields will allow you to collect numeric values in your Idea Submission form and Refine stages. Currency includes the following types: USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, AUD, CAD, HKD, CHF, WD (wooden Dollars), or hours (time unit).