New IdeaScale Customer? New Administrator?
This guide is divided into seven sections that are curated as the most important sections of IdeaScale to learn to configure your innovation Workspace and communities for a quick and easy launch.
First, you will need to log into your dedicated Workspace URL, for example: 'companyworkspace.ideascaleapp.com' with your email and password. If you do not have this information yet, please contact support@ideascale.com or your sales representative.
You will need to have Workspace Administrator and/or Community Administrator access to configure the settings described below. If you are not a Workspace or Community Administrator, please contact your IdeaScale Site Owner or Administrator.
Finally, if you have any questions during your initial platform setup, please contact our Professional Services team at ps@ideascale.com. Let's get started!
Please note: This self-serve Quick Setup Guide is a new tool designed for new Administrators to quickly configure basic settings to launch their IdeaScale Community.
We encourage you to take 30 seconds and provide feedback here on this setup guide to assist us in making it the best possible resource available.
Table of Contents
1. Exploring Your Workspace
- Navigating the Workspace
- Profile Page
- Workspace Settings
2. Roles, Access, and Security
- Adding and Managing Members, Administrators, and Moderators
- Adding and Managing Member Groups
- Setting Up and Configuring Single Sign-On (SSO)
- Access Restrictions
3. Customize Your Workspace and Communities
- Landing Page
- Adding Images and Colors
- Emails & Notifications
4. Campaign Design
- Campaign Images
- Campaign Behavior & Permissions and Privacy & Access
- Idea Submission Tool
- Campaign Moderation and Sponsor
- Campaign Funnel
- Campaign Email Invitation
- Campaign Schedule
5. Funnels, Workflows, and Stages
- Stage Types
- Building a Funnel (Stage Settings)
6. Pre-launch Checklist and Soft Launch
7. Bonus Content
- Customer Success Stories
- Innovation Tools
- IdeaScale Blog
1. Exploring Your Workspace
Your IdeaScale Workspace provides a centralized hub for managing multiple communities, offering new features and settings to enhance collaboration and streamline administration across your innovation ecosystem. The following sections detail these Workspace-specific capabilities and how to leverage them effectively.
Navigating your Workspace
The Workspace Homepage displays all communities a user can access, including those they're currently participating in, can join, or have been invited to.
The universal Workspace Topbar allows users to navigate between Communities and Campaigns within the Workspace via the Communities Dropdown (3 dots, along with the scroller).
Moreover, Workspace Administrators have access to the Apps Menu, which allows you to navigate to Manage Workspace settings, Reporting and Analysis Dashboard, as well as Member Management.
Help Articles:
Workspace Homepage
Workspace Topbar
Profile Page
The redesigned profile interface for easier access to action items and personal preferences. Users in workspaces with multiple authentication methods can easily see the source of their profile information.
Help Articles:
Profile Page
Workspace Settings
Workspace settings are inherited by all communities, simplifying initial setup and management. Some settings are unique to the Workspace level.
Help Articles:
Manage Workspace
Workspace General Settings
2. Roles, Access, and Security
When using IdeaScale you can assign different roles to Users based on the level of access you wish them to have and the activities you want them to perform.
Adding and Managing Members, Administrators, and Moderators
This video describes the three main User Roles: Administrators, Moderators, and Members, and the tasks related to User management in the IdeaScale platform.
Video Overview:
Help Articles:
User Roles
Workspace Member Management Dashboard
Custom Admin
Bulk Import Members
Community Invitations, Verifications, and Passwords
Adding and Managing Member Groups
Groups can help you organize Users based on different characteristics or roles within your Workspace and communities. You can use groups to assign idea submission, evaluator team, and idea ownership privileges, or for idea moderation.
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Member Groups
How to Map Attributes & Create/Manage Groups using SSO
Setting Up and Configuring Single Sign-On (SSO)
Enabling Single Sign-On (SSO) allows your crowd to seamlessly and easily access your IdeaScale platform in accordance with organization-specific security protocols.
Please note: Enabling SSO will also allow you to create and manage Member Groups within IdeaScale if desired.
Video Overview:
Help Articles:
Single Sign-On (SSO)
Common SSO Questions
IdeaScale Azure Active Directory Integration
How to Map Attributes & Create/Manage Groups using SSO
SAML SSO with Active Directory and ADFS 2.0 / 3.0
Access Restrictions
Some organizations have strict security protocols in place to limit who can access information and how that information is accessed. Access Restrictions settings allow Workspace Administrators of the community to set various types of access restrictions including auto-approvals, curse filtering, SSL security and other compliance settings.
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Access Restrictions
New Member Approvals
Curse Word Filtering
3. Customize Your Workspace and Communities
The IdeaScale platform allows you to customize platform look & feel and behavior settings while also allowing certain branding, colors, text, and images to be added in order to align your User experience with your organization's brand.
Landing Page
Within your communities, Landing Pages allow you to welcome members while also showing them previews of the latest ideas and campaigns in a simple, streamlined, and centralized page. Landing pages become more valuable as more and more campaigns, challenges, and ideas are added within your community.
Video Overview:
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Landing Page
Landing Page FAQ
Adding Images and Colors
IdeaScale allows you to add images and some highlight colors throughout your Workspace and communities. Users are more likely to participate in your community if they can relate to it. Adding images and colors that are specific to your organization or your mission will help Users align around your desired call-to-action.
Video Overview:
Help Articles:
Video & Image FAQ's
Quick Image Size Reference
Workspace Logo
Workspace Look & Feel
Customize the Community Banner
Community Colors
Emails & Notifications
As more users and ideas are added, communicating with your audience can become difficult and take valuable time. IdeaScale helps automate communications and notifications to your community based on specific user groups and actions in your Workspace and its communities.
Video Overview:
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Default Notification Preferences
Email & Notifications
Digest Emails Settings
Notifications received by Users
Notifications received by Administrators
Notifications received by Moderators
4. Campaign Design
Campaigns allow you to organize idea submissions around similar topics or call-to-actions and allow you to engage certain groups of Users based on privacy and access settings.
Challenge Statement and Campaign Groups
The challenge statement is your call-to-action or problem/opportunity statement presented to the crowd. This is usually in the form of a question such as, "how might we reduce costs across our manufacturing process?". Clean and concise challenge statements guide your crowd to submit quality ideas that contribute to your campaigns' goals.
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Campaign Settings: Basic Settings
Campaign Images
IdeaScale allows you to customize campaigns with several images such as a campaign banner, logo, and featured image. These images can help engage your crowd and can help clarify information for your crowd.
Please note: Adding campaign images is also covered in the above section video, "2. Customizing Your Community -> Adding Images and Color"
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Campaign Settings: Basic Settings
Campaign Behavior & Permissions and Privacy & Access
Behaviors and Permissions settings allow you to control how your crowd interacts with ideas and campaigns. The crowd can be prevented from voting on ideas or editing their ideas after submission, for example. Campaign privacy settings ensure user groups without the desired access will not be able to see ideas or participate in specific campaigns.
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Campaign Settings
Idea Submission Tool
The idea submission tool allows you to create a customized form to collect the information you need when a user submits an idea. Taking time to refine and customize your idea submission form will ensure idea submitters can provide the best details to support their idea.
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Campaign Settings: Idea Submission Tool
Campaign Moderator and Sponsor
Adding a Campaign Sponsor to your campaign communicates to the crowd who is overseeing or sponsoring the campaign. Adding a Campaign Moderator role assigns specific users to moderate a campaign's ideas.
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Campaign Settings: Moderation
Community User Roles
Selecting Your Campaign Funnel
Beyond idea-collection, refining and evaluating ideas is paramount to developing and identifying quality ideas. A campaign funnel allows you to do just that.
Note: Please also refer to the below section, "4. Funnels, Workflows, and Stages" for help building a funnel workflow and individual stages.
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Campaign Email Invitation
The campaign email invitation is a communication tool to help notify users of new campaigns that are launched on the platform.
Please note: Emails will only be sent to users who have previously logged into an IdeaScale community.
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Campaign Settings: Email Invitations
Campaign Schedule
You can set a specific time to automatically launch your campaign and you can schedule end dates for each stage to help automate idea management.
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5. Funnels, Workflows, and Stages
Refining ideas by turning idea fragments into robust idea concepts will allow you to better identify the value of each idea within your larger idea portfolio of ideas. Funnels, workflows, and stages allow you to build decision-making processes around your ideas.
Stage Types
IdeaScale offers eight (8) stage types to vote, refine, evaluate, fund, and estimate the value of ideas.
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Help Articles:
All about Stages
Configuring Funnels
Building a Funnel (Stage Settings)
Each IdeaScale stage allows you to set the permissions and access to the activities of each stage. Community Administrators can decide the level of transparency and actions required of the crowd for each stage, in addition to setting specific configurations and automation features.
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Help Articles:
Configuring Funnels
6. Pre-launch Checklist and Soft Launch
The pre-launch checklist is a step-by-step list of the most important settings and configurations that impact how users engage with the platform and what content is visible.
Tip: During initial setup and configuration, it is important to test your platform to ensure all campaigns, workflows, and ideas have the correct behaviors in place and members have the correct permissions to access the correct content (and not access the wrong content).
Video Overview:
7. IdeaScale Resources
Customer Success Stories
Innovation Tools
IdeaScale Blog
Note: This self-serve setup guide is a new tool designed for Administrators to quickly and easily configure basic settings and launch their IdeaScale Community.
We encourage you to take 30 seconds and provide feedback here on this setup guide to assist us in making it the best possible resource available.
Check back here, periodically, for new onboarding and training videos on
advanced settings, configuration, and innovation management platform strategy.