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 User, Moderator, and Administrator experience. Three areas of focus in this release: end-user enhancements, Moderator Tools, a cleaned up Community Settings experience, plus, as always, a slew of new odds and ends.
As always your feedback fuels our direction, please let us know what you think.
Front End Changes:
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Kudos
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Linked Ideas
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Trending Tab
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Requested Member Profile Updates
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Implemented and Selected Badges on Ideas
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Idea Number Added to List and Grid Views
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Share Button Added to Idea Detail, List, and Grid Views
Moderation Tools:
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Search Commands for Incoming Moderation
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Analyze Text
Community Settings:
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Basic/Advanced Community Settings
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New Community Settings Sidebar
Additional Updates:
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Campaign Banner for all Campaign Related Emails
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3D Printer File Attachments
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Languages and Strings Export/Import
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GitHub as Social Login
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Broadcast Email Updates
Did You Know?
1. Moderator Saved Replies in Incoming
2. New Features Announcements
Front End Changes:
Kudos👏
We are introducing a new means for Members to recognize and appreciate their colleagues in the form of digital recognition. Members can now give idea submitters and commenters Kudos👏 for their contributions. Every day that a Member logs in, they will receive a single Kudo to bestow on another colleague. Members can also acrue and save their Kudos and award multiple Kudos at a time. The leaderboard will now track the most Kudos received over the course of the community and campaign.
A Kudo is a personal recognition, it's not a vote on an idea. By giving a Member a Kudo you are recognizing the individual for their contribution.
Please note once released Kudos will replace our current badge set.
What is the value/why did we make this change?
We've learned that our clients are primarily using personal recognition as their means of rewarding their community. We wanted to add a tool that helps aid in that effort. Countless studies have shown that peer-to-peer recognition is a strong motivator of behavior. We're also hoping this encourages Users to log in everyday!
What will it look like?
Look for the Kudos button next to the Idea Submitter's name or Commenter's name. Click the button to reward a Kudo. If you have more than one Kudo saved up, you can continue to click and reward multiple Kudos. Members will be notified who gave each Kudo in their in-app Notifications.
We will also list the most recent Kudos awarded in your community in your Sidebar.
What do I need to do to make this work in my community today/when it is released?
Nothing to turn on; Kudos is available now.
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Linked Ideas
Last year, we introduced the concept of Linking Ideas. The next evolution of the Linking feature is to allow all Members to link ideas AND to allow them to classify how the two ideas are related. Ideas can be linked as:
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Similar To
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Substantially Equivalent To
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Relates To or
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Part Of/Contains
While reading or submitting an idea, Members can (optionally) add links by clicking the Add Idea Link button. Once clicked, a Linked Ideas window will appear with a short list of similar ideas (based on our natural languages processing). Members can also search for other ideas to link from this screen as well. Once they've found a similar idea, they can select the link type. Any Member can link ideas, but Moderators have the ability to remove the links.
What is the value/why did we make this change?
This will be a mechanism to help clients to cluster and make connections between ideas. We also think this is a more nuanced approach to linking ideas. Confirming similarity will also helping us to refine our suggestion engine.
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. Linked Ideas will be available on Idea Detail and Idea Submission pages starting in June.
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Trending Tab
We are introducing a new Trending Tab. This new sorting tab will give members a list of the most viewed ideas, favoring those viewed in more recent weeks. This new tab will replace the Hot Tab.
What is the value/why did we make this change?
We've heard from Members that want to be able to gauge the interest in ideas based on the number of views on each idea. This tab will give members an idea as to which ideas are the most viewed among the community.
What do I need to do to make this work in my community today/when it is released?
Look for Trending in early May. If you are currently using the Hot Tab nothing to activate, your Trending Tab will turn on automatically. To add this Tab set up Customization>Tabs Settings
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Requested Member Profile Updates
We are introducing a new feature that will allow Administrators to ask their members to update their Member Profile Fields. Administrators can select which of their fields need to be confirmed/updated. Upon next login, the platform will ask ALL Members to confirm or update their profile fields. These updates will be optional for the Member, but we will send reminders up to three times.
What is the value/why did we make this change?
We're trying to assist communities where the workforce is transient. We are constantly hearing our client's Single Sign-On attributes are out-of-date. We want your communities to utilize the most up to date information.
What will it look like?
What do I need to do to make this work in my community today/when it is released?We expect to complete this feature in August.
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Implemented and Selected Badges on Ideas
When ideas have reached your Implemented or Selected Stages, we will display a small badge. We would like to give Moderators (not to mention Submitters) an opportunity to call attention to ideas that have been Implemented or Selected. As a reminder, you can mark any Stage you like as Implemented or Selected in your Funnel.
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 configure; this feature will be available in June. In the meantime, perhaps check to see that you have marked your appropriate stages as Implemented or Selected in the Stages setup.
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Idea Number Added to List and Grid Views
We are adding the Idea Number, to the More "..." Button for added convenience. Idea Number will be available in Idea List and Idea Grid View. The Idea Number will remain as-is on the Idea Detail page.
Share Button Added to Idea Detail, List, and Grid Views
Minor update to the user interface in that we are removing the social and email sharing options from the More "..." Button and adding a dedicated Share Button to the Idea Detail, List, and Grid Views. This will only show the options that you have opted to include in your community.
Moderation Tools:
Search Commands for Incoming Moderation
We've added new search capabilities for our Moderators that want to be able to search their Pending and Unseen Ideas. We have introduced a set of new search commands for the Incoming Moderation panel:
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Campaign
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Submitted By
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Date Submitted
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Idea Number
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Group
To utilize these filters simply start typing in the search box of the Incoming Moderation panel. You can use these commands to search Seen and Unseen Ideas. Use one or more commands to drill down to further segment your ideas.
What is the value/why did we make this change?
We've heard from Campaign Moderators who want to segment and only look at specific campaigns and not have to wade through all ideas from all campaigns.
What does it look like?
In this example we are searching for a single Submitter's contributions. We could also search for multiple Submitters or Submitters AND Campaigns AND Dates, etc.
What do I need to do to make this work in my community today/when it is released?
Nothing to activate, this feature is available now in your Incoming Moderation panel.
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Analyze Text
Moderators can now extract keywords from their community using the new Analyze Text feature. Once you've queried your ideas in the Idea Portfolio, select the Analyze Text function under Action. A panel will appear showing your most frequently used words and user tags. Click any keyword and a new Portfolio panel will appear in a new tab; from there you can link or tag or any other Moderator action.
What is the value/why did we make this change?
We added this feature to help Moderators understand the themes and topics that are being discussed within the community (or campaigns).
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 is avaialble now.
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Community Settings:
Basic/Advanced Community Settings
We are introducing a new configuration of our Community Settings pages. We are breaking up our administrative panels into to sections: Basic and Advanced. By default a user will see a shorter, more compact view of their Community Settings (Basic). Basic settings contain the most-used configuration features. The Advanced contains the full list of all features available in a given panel. To switch simply toggle the Basic and Advanced slider in the top right-hand corner. When returning to this panel, the system will show the last version of the panel that you viewed.
What is the value/why did we make this change?
We recognize that some our Administrative panels can be overwhelming with the number of options. We're hoping that showing the Basic section by default will alleviate some of that unease.
What did it look like?
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 set up or configure. This feature is available now.
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New Community Settings Sidebar
To complement the Basic/Advanced settings, we are also cleaning up the Community Settings Sidebar. You'll find a new consistent left-hand navigation no matter what Administrative panel you are utilizing. Expand the menu by clicking any of the icons, and collapse with the arrow at the bottom. Along with this change we are also making the Community Settings Top Bar white, to match the front end's Top Bar.
What did it look like?
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, this feature is available now.
Additional Updates:
Campaign Banner for all Campaign Related Emails
Now when sending a Campaign related email, we will use the same Campaign Banner used for the Campaign. This includes the following emails:
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Thank You Email for idea submission
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Idea Update (when following idea)
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Receive new Comment email for own idea
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Receive new @mention in a comment
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New idea and New Comment emails when a member is Subscribed to a specific campaign
Nothing to activate; this feature is available now.
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3D Printer File Attachments
We are now supporting three of the most common 3D Printer file formats: OBJ, STL and STP. This will allow Members to upload (and download) 3D Printer Files directly into ideas in their community. Attachment upload limits will still apply. This is available now.
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Languages and Strings Export/Import
We have added a new feature to allow Administrators to Export and Import their Languages & Strings to Excel. This will allow translation to occur offline, and then uploaded at a later time. Whether you changing one term or many terms we think this will be a most welcome convenience. Administrations can search for certain term, Export the pertinent strings, translate in Excel, and re-Import once complete. This feature is available now.
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GitHub as Social Login
Introducing a new social login for the popular developer community tool, Git Hub. This option is available now in the Social Login Settings section.
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Broadcast Email Updates
We've added a few new features to the Broadcast Email tool. These updates are available now.
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Now we've made it easier to compose a message where you can now select and "Send to" multiple groups within your community.
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We've also just added a Copy function on the Sent Broadcast Email section so you can copy and reuse sent email content.
Copy Existing Email from the Log to Copy.
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Did You Know?
Moderator Saved Replies in Incoming
Did you know when a Moderator is responding to ideas in the Incoming Moderation section, they can save their comments? Utilize Saved Replies so you can use and re-use your common responses as necessary.
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New Features Announcements
A periodic update... that you can see announcements of brand new features as they come out in this New Features page. When the cake is blue, there are new features for you! Is there another method you want to hear about new features? Let us know.
