Ideas App Overview

Ideas

1. What it is

Ideas is a structured suggestion box. Employees submit ideas, everyone upvotes, and a reviewer panel prioritizes them with RICE scoring and moves them through a configurable lifecycle pipeline.

• Enablement: Ideas requires a license and is disabled by default. A Super Admin or Admin enables it from Admin → Apps → All Apps.
• What it is not: Ideas does not manage project tasks or track work after an idea is approved. Once an idea reaches an Implemented or similar stage, hand it off to a project-management tool or workspace.

2. Standing it up

1. Go to Admin → Apps → All Apps and enable Ideas. The app appears in the sidebar for all members once enabled.
2. Go to Ideas → Settings → Idea Reviewers and choose a reviewer group. Until you save a group, ideas route to the built-in All Admins group. The reviewer group controls who can score ideas and move them through lifecycle stages — membership is the only grant, with no admin bypass.
3. Confirm the default lifecycle stages work for your organization. Ideas ships with five stages: New → Reviewing → Planned → Implemented → Deferred. You can rename, recolor, reorder, add, or remove stages under Settings → Lifecycle Stages. Changes apply immediately.
4. Optionally restrict who can submit ideas. By default everyone can submit. Under Settings → Idea Submitters, pick a specific group to limit submissions.
5. Optionally, enable Campaigns (on by default) and configure who can create them under Settings → Campaigns.
6. To verify, have a test user open Ideas from the sidebar. They should see the Dashboard with an empty state and a prompt to post the first idea.

Silent-until-configured pairing: if the reviewer group you select has no members, ideas can be submitted and voted on, but nobody can score them or move them through stages. The Settings page warns you when the group is empty. When an idea is submitted with an empty panel, the system sends admins a nudge notification saying the panel needs to be configured — rather than silently notifying no one.

Mobile: the Ideas Dashboard and idea detail pages have mobile-optimized views at /m/apps/ideas. Phone-class browsers are redirected automatically; tablets stay on the desktop view. Opt out of the redirect for a session by adding ?desktop=1 to the URL.

Sample data: under Settings → Sample Data, admins can load sample ideas and campaigns to explore the app before real submissions arrive. It’s safe to run again — sample records already in the workspace are left alone, not duplicated. Use the Remove Sample Data button to take all of it back; it never touches your real records.

3. How it fits together

Lifecycle stages — the pipeline every idea travels through. Each stage has a name, a color, and a category. The category determines what the stage means to the analytics engine:

• Entry — where new ideas land (exactly one stage must be Entry; the default is “New”).
• Active — work-in-progress stages (e.g. “Reviewing”, “Planned”).
• Implemented — the idea shipped. The author receives a celebration notification.
• Declined — the idea was set aside. The system remembers which Active stage it came from.

You can have between 2 and 10 stages. Renaming a stage does not break the funnel numbers — analytics key off the category, not the name. For example, renaming “Planned” to “In Progress” changes the label everywhere without losing history.

A worked example: an employee submits “Weekend shift-swap board”. It lands in New (Entry). A reviewer scores it (Reach 500, Impact 3, Confidence 80%, Effort 2 → RICE score 600, medium priority) and moves it to Reviewing (Active). After discussion, the reviewer moves it to Planned (Active) with a note (“approved for Q3”), which posts as a comment visible to everyone. When the feature ships, they move it to Implemented. The author receives a celebration notification, and the Dashboard shows the idea in the Implemented column.

If the reviewer instead moves the idea to Deferred (Declined), the system records which Active stage it came from, so the lifecycle card shows where the idea fell out of the pipeline.

RICE scoring — reviewers prioritize ideas with four inputs: Reach (how many people it affects), Impact (how much it matters), Confidence (how sure you are, expressed as a 0–1 factor where blank defaults to 100%), and Effort (how much work it takes). The formula is Reach × Impact × Confidence ÷ Effort. A score of 700 or above shows as high priority (green pill); 300–699 is medium (amber); below 300 is low. Scoring is optional and can be turned off workspace-wide in Settings.

Review panels — a reviewer panel is an ordinary recipient group (managed in Admin → Groups). Panel membership is the only way to gain review authority; being an admin is not enough on its own. Each campaign can route its ideas to a different panel, or inherit the workspace default. Out of the box only Ideas admins choose a campaign’s panel; Settings → Permissions → Who can choose a campaign’s review panel? can widen that.

Campaigns — optional, time-boxed drives that group ideas around a theme (e.g. “Summer cost-saving ideas”). Each campaign has a title, a brief, optional start and close dates, and can route ideas to its own reviewer panel. A campaign’s phase is derived from its dates: future start date → Scheduled; past close date or manually closed → Closed; otherwise Open. A background sweep closes a campaign automatically once its close date has ended in the workspace’s time zone.

Voting — upvote-only. Each person can vote once per idea (enforced by a unique constraint). The author’s own vote is cast automatically on submission, so every idea starts at 1. Admins can choose the upvote icon and whether removing an upvote is allowed.

Duplicate detection — when an employee submits an idea, the system checks the title against existing ideas. If similar titles are found, the submitter sees a nudge with up to three matches and can vote on an existing idea instead of posting a duplicate. The detection also runs as the title is typed.

Threaded comments — every idea has a discussion thread. Comments support @mentions (which trigger notifications) and threaded replies. Comments are visible to all members; the audit log (stage moves, score changes, edits) is visible only to reviewers.

Audit log — every stage move, RICE score change, and idea edit is recorded with the actor, timestamp, and before/after values. Reviewers see the full trail on the idea’s detail page. The Analytics dashboard uses the audit trail to compute average time an idea spends in each stage before moving on.

Engagement integrations — submitting an idea earns XP in Levels & Badges (if that app is enabled) and creates a signal in Mango Signal. These fire automatically and do not require any configuration. Bulk-imported ideas skip both signals to avoid flooding.

4. Running it

Reviewing and scoring ideas

1. Open Ideas → My Review Queue (visible only to members of a review panel).
2. The queue is a prioritized table ranked by RICE score (by votes when scoring is switched off). Use the Awaiting first score chip to filter to ideas still waiting for a first score — an idea already moved to an Implemented or Declined stage is not waiting. Switch to the Matrix tab for a visual Impact × Effort scatter view of scored ideas.
3. Click an idea to open its detail page. Fill in the RICE inputs in the scoring panel — Reach, Impact, and Effort are all required for a score to compute; Confidence is optional and defaults to 100%. Click Save Score.
4. Move the idea to the next stage using the stage picker. Add an optional note — it posts as a comment visible to everyone in the discussion and is recorded in the audit log.

Managing campaigns

1. Go to Ideas → Campaigns and click New Campaign (available to the people Settings → Campaigns → Who can create campaigns allows — everyone by default).
2. Enter a title (required) and brief (required). Set optional start and close dates and pick an icon and color. An Ideas admin (or anyone Who can choose a campaign’s review panel? allows) can also choose the campaign’s reviewer panel; everyone else’s campaigns use the Default campaign reviewers setting.
3. When submitting an idea, employees can attach it to any open campaign via the campaign picker on the submission form.
4. The campaign’s creator or any Ideas admin can close, reopen, or delete the campaign. Deleting a campaign keeps its ideas — they are detached, not deleted, and remain in the Ideas feed.
5. Reopening a campaign that has a past close date clears that date so it does not immediately close again.

Importing ideas from a spreadsheet

1. Go to Ideas → Settings → Import & Export and click Import ideas.
2. Upload a CSV, XLSX, or XLS file (max 10 MB, max 2,000 rows). Download the import template first to see the expected columns.
3. The import runs in the background. Duplicate titles are skipped automatically. Imported ideas start with zero votes — historical vote counts from the file are not carried over.

Exporting and analytics

• Export all ideas (CSV) is available from the Settings page and from the Ideas feed to the people Settings → Permissions → Who can export the ideas CSV? allows (Ideas admins by default). The export from the feed reflects the current feed filters and sort order.
• Analytics (at Ideas → Analytics, for the people Settings → Permissions → Who can see Ideas analytics? allows — Ideas admins by default) shows total ideas, votes cast, participation rate, implementation rate, a stage funnel with average time in each stage, a 6-month submission trend, campaign performance, and the top 15 contributors. The entire dashboard can be exported to CSV.

Editing lifecycle stages

1. Go to Ideas → Settings → Lifecycle Stages.
2. Click a stage (its name, color dot or pencil) to open its Name, Color and Category fields, change what you need, and click Save. The category sets the stage’s role (Entry, Active, Implemented, Declined).
3. Drag the handle or use the arrow buttons to reorder stages. Add a new stage with the + Add stage button.
4. Each stage shows how many ideas stand on it. To delete a stage, its ideas must first be moved to another stage — by a review-panel member, since stage moves are a reviewer action and admins get no bypass. The Entry stage cannot be deleted — to change which stage is Entry, promote a different one.

Changes in this editor apply immediately without clicking Save.

5. Settings

All settings are at Ideas → Settings. Changes under the Lifecycle Stages editor apply immediately; everything else applies when you click Save settings.

Setting	Section	Default	What it changes
Enable Ideas AI Agent	Ideas AI Agent	On	Lets people look up, submit, vote, comment, score, and move ideas from the Ask AI sidebar.
Who can submit ideas	Idea Submitters	All Employees	Restricts idea submission to a specific group.
Reviewer group	Idea Reviewers	All Admins (built-in fallback)	The group whose members can score ideas and move them through stages.
Enable idea scoring (RICE)	Idea Reviewers	On	Turns RICE scoring on or off workspace-wide. When off, the score column, matrix, and score sort are hidden.
Show reviewer names	Idea Reviewers	On	When off, reviewer avatars and names are hidden — only the panel’s group name is shown.
Upvote icon	Voting	Caret	The icon on the vote button. Choices: Caret, Chevron, Arrow, Circle, Thumbs up.
Allow removing an upvote	Voting	On	When off, an upvote is final once given.
Allow ideas to have a voting close date	Voting	Off	When on, submitters can set a date after which voting locks.
Accent color	Display	Blue	Tints buttons, icons, and highlights across the app. Choices: Blue, Forest, Purple, Sunset.
Default feed layout	Display	Grid	The layout people see first. Choices: Grid, List, Board. Anyone can switch, and their choice is remembered.
Feed density	Display	Comfortable	Compact fits more ideas on screen. Choices: Comfortable, Compact.
Allow file attachments	Submissions	On	Lets submitters attach files (images, PDFs, Office documents, plain text; max 25 MB per file).
AI writing assistance	Submissions	On	Helps employees draft idea and campaign descriptions with AI.
Enable idea campaigns	Campaigns	On	Adds the Campaigns section and the campaign picker when posting an idea. Turning campaigns off hides them; ideas already in a campaign stay with that campaign’s review panel.
Who can create campaigns	Campaigns	All Employees	Restricts campaign creation to a specific group.
Default campaign reviewers	Campaigns	Same as the Idea Reviewers group	The panel a new campaign’s ideas go to. Out of the box only Ideas admins can pick a different panel on a campaign — everyone else’s campaigns use this one.
Notify authors when their idea changes stage	Notifications	On	Email, in-app and push notification to the author on every stage move, including the reviewer’s note.
Notify reviewers when an idea is routed to their panel	Notifications	On	Email, in-app and push notification to panel members when a new idea arrives. Turning it off does not stop the review summary (at most every 3 days per reviewer) of ideas waiting more than 3 days for a first score.
Notify authors of replies	Notifications	On	Email, in-app and push notification when someone comments on the author’s idea.
Notify people who are @mentioned	Notifications	On	Email, in-app and push notification when a person is tagged in an idea’s discussion.
Who can choose a campaign’s review panel?	Permissions	App admins only	Who else can point a campaign at its own review panel. The chosen panel reviews and moves every idea in that campaign.
Who can see Ideas analytics?	Permissions	App admins only	Who else can open Analytics and its CSV. Choices: App admins only, specific groups, everyone.
Who can export the ideas CSV?	Permissions	App admins only	Who else can export ideas, with each author’s name and email. Choices: App admins only, specific groups.

6. More help

• Ideas FAQ — specific setup and operating questions, limits, and troubleshooting.
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Ideas from these articles.