![ideascale-icon.png]](https://help.ideascale.com/hs-fs/hubfs/ideascale-icon.png?width=40&height=40&name=ideascale-icon.png){kind=icon}
Path: Campaign Management >> Workflow
Stages are configurable workflow phases that guide how ideas progress from initial submission to implementation. Community administrators define these stages in the settings, and moderators advance ideas through them based on evaluation and readiness.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Ideate Stage
Build Team Stage
Refine Stage
Estimate Stage
ReviewScale Stage
Fund Stage
Assessment Stage
Reserve Stage
IdeaScale offers a total of seven Stage functions, that can be customized in a way that a specific group or all community members can be permitted to participate or view.
Ideate Stage
In this stage, community members browse ideas, add comments, and vote for their favourite ideas. The most popular ideas will rise to the top.
Build Team Stage
In this stage, participants assemble teams of experts, implementers, and champions around the most promising ideas. Browse ideas, check for open positions, and join idea teams.
Help article on Build Team Stage
Refine Stage
In this stage, idea teams are called on to provide additional details about their ideas. Answer questions and help flush out the ideas, refining them into proposals for implementation.
Estimate Stage
In this stage, participants are called on to estimate the value and cost of ideas. Submitted estimates are averaged to determine each idea's overall estimated return on investment.
Help article on Estimate Stage
Reviewscale Stage
In this stage, ideas are reviewed by experts from the community. Reviewers rate ideas based on a specified set of criteria to help uncover the ideas with the most potential.
Help article on ReviewScale Stage
Fund Stage
In this stage, participants pledge funds to ideas. Funders distribute resources among the best ideas, to make them ready for implementation.
Assessment Stage
In this stage, the ideas can be assessed through custom questions answered by a set of reviewers team assigned by the administrator of the community.
Help article on Assessment Stage
Reserve Stage
This is a place to store ideas that are not currently active in the innovation workflow.
Selected Group Details
The community administrator can review which group has been assigned to each stage in the Workflow by selecting the Selected Groups link. The chosen group for that stage will then be displayed either in the Workspace side panel or on the Workspace edit page.
Stage End Date
Community administrators can also define an end date for stages within specific campaigns in the Campaign Settings. After this end date passes, community members will no longer be able to participate in those stages—for example, they will not be able to vote on or comment on ideas in that stage.
