Ideas FAQ
Answers to common setup and operating questions about Ideas.
For what the app is and how to set it up from scratch, see the
Ideas Overview.
Setup
Do I need to configure anything before employees can start using Ideas?
No. Once Ideas is enabled, the app seeds five default lifecycle stages (New, Reviewing, Planned, Implemented, Deferred) and sets the “All Admins” group as the default reviewer panel. Employees can submit, vote, and comment immediately. You can customize stages, reviewer panels, and other settings later from Settings without interrupting anything already in progress.
Who can submit ideas and who can vote?
By default every employee can submit ideas, vote, and comment. You can restrict submission to a specific group in Settings > Who can submit ideas. Campaign creation has its own audience gate in Settings > Who can create campaigns. Voting and commenting are always open to all employees. Admins and reviewers are not exempt from the audience gate — if you restrict submission to a group, an admin outside that group cannot submit either.
How do I set up a reviewer panel?
Go to Settings > Idea Reviewers and pick a group under Reviewer group. Every idea routes to this panel unless its campaign has a panel of its own (out of the box only Ideas admins choose a campaign’s panel — see Settings > Permissions > Who can choose a campaign’s review panel?). If no group is chosen, the “All Admins” group is used as a fallback. A reviewer is anyone who belongs to the assigned panel — there is no separate “reviewer” role, and admins do not get review access automatically.
Permissions and access
Why can’t someone see the My Review Queue tab?
The tab only appears for users who belong to at least one reviewer panel — either the workspace default panel or a campaign’s dedicated panel. Being an admin is not enough; panel membership is the only grant. Add the user to the relevant group and the tab appears on their next page load.
Who can access Analytics and Settings?
Settings (including the lifecycle editor and Import) is for Ideas admins: App Admins of Ideas, Admins, and Super Admins. Analytics and the ideas CSV export go to Ideas admins by default, and you can open them to more people under Settings > Permissions: Who can see Ideas analytics? (specific groups, or everyone) and Who can export the ideas CSV? (specific groups). Ideas admins can always see both. Each section is hidden from the sidebar and route-guarded for everyone it doesn’t include.
Day-to-day
How does RICE scoring work?
Reviewers score ideas using the RICE model: Reach x Impact x Confidence / Effort. Reach is a whole number, Impact and Effort accept up to two decimal places, and Confidence is a 0–1 factor (0.5 means 50%, 0.8 means 80%). A blank Confidence counts as 1.0. The minimum Effort used in the calculation is 0.25, so the formula never divides by zero. All three of Reach, Impact, and Effort must be filled in for a RICE score to compute — leaving any of them blank saves the inputs but produces no score. The score pill on each idea shows green (700+), amber (300–699), or grey (below 300). RICE scoring can be turned off entirely in Settings > Enable idea scoring (RICE).
Can I customize the lifecycle stages an idea moves through?
Yes. Go to Settings and scroll to the lifecycle editor. You can rename, reorder, and recolor stages, and assign each one a category: Entry, Active, Implemented, or Declined. There must always be exactly one Entry stage (it receives new submissions), and you must keep at least 2 stages. The maximum is 10. Renaming a stage does not break existing reporting — metrics key off the category, not the label. A stage that still has ideas assigned to it cannot be deleted: the editor shows how many ideas each stage holds, and those ideas have to be moved to another stage first — by a review-panel member, since moving ideas between stages is a reviewer action and admins get no bypass.
How do idea campaigns work?
A campaign is an optional, time-boxed drive that groups ideas around a theme. It has a title, a brief, optional start and close dates, and an optional dedicated reviewer panel. Its phase is derived from those dates: a future start date means Scheduled, a past close date means Closed, and everything else is Open. Employees can only submit ideas to an open campaign. Campaigns whose close date has passed are automatically closed by a background sweep. An admin or the campaign’s creator can also close or reopen a campaign manually. Deleting a campaign keeps its ideas — they are detached, not removed. Campaigns as a feature can be turned off entirely in Settings > Enable idea campaigns.
What notifications does Ideas send, and can I turn them off?
Four events have their own switch in Settings > Notifications: stage change (to the author, including the reviewer’s note), panel routed (to reviewers when a new idea arrives on their panel), reply (to the author), and @mention (to the person mentioned). Each arrives as an email (for people with an email address), an in-app notification (the bell) and a phone push; turning a switch off stops all of them for that event. When an idea lands on a stage with the Implemented category, the author gets a special “Your idea was implemented!” notification.
A few notices have no switch in Settings:
- a review summary to each review panel’s members — campaign panels included — when ideas have waited more than 3 days for a first score, at most every 3 days per person (bell and push, while RICE scoring is on);
- a notice to a campaign’s creator when the campaign closes (bell only);
- a notice to an author when an Ideas admin removes their idea (bell only);
- an alert to admins when a new idea’s review panel has nobody in it.
Each person can mute Ideas notifications in their own notification preferences.
How do I import ideas from a spreadsheet?
Go to Settings > Import ideas. Upload a CSV, XLSX, or XLS file (10 MB maximum, 2,000 rows maximum). A downloadable template is available on the same page. Only Title and Description are required; optional columns include author email, stage, campaign, submission date, voting close date, and RICE scores. Rows whose title already exists in the workspace are skipped, so an accidental re-import does not duplicate. Only one import can run at a time per workspace. Imported ideas start with zero votes and send no notifications when they’re imported — though, while RICE scoring is on, an imported idea with no score whose submitted date is between 3 and 30 days ago still appears in its review panel’s summary.
Can I export ideas or analytics to a CSV?
Yes, both. On the Ideas feed, the people allowed to export (Ideas admins by default — Settings > Permissions > Who can export the ideas CSV?) see an Export CSV option that exports the current filtered and sorted list — whatever filters and sort you have applied carry into the file. On the Analytics page, Export analytics (CSV) downloads the full analytics dashboard: summary KPIs, stage funnel, time-in-stage, monthly trend, campaign performance (with each campaign’s status), and top contributors.
What happens when I reset settings to defaults?
Settings > Reset to defaults restores every Ideas setting to its shipped default: anyone can submit ideas and create campaigns again, the review panel goes back to the built-in All Admins group, and the three permissions (choosing a campaign’s review panel, seeing analytics, exporting the ideas CSV) go back to Ideas admins only. It also restores the five default lifecycle stages (New, Reviewing, Planned, Implemented, Deferred), matching stages by kind (category) rather than by name or position: a stage that is kept keeps its ideas and gets its default name and colour back, and ideas on a stage that is removed move to the default stage of the same kind — an implemented idea stays Implemented, a declined one stays Deferred. Each moved idea’s Audit Log records the move. This is not reversible — custom stage names, colours and extra stages are gone after a reset.
When something looks wrong
I can’t vote on this idea — why not?
Two possible causes. First, the idea may have a voting close date that has already passed — voting stays open through the close date and locks when that day ends (midnight in your workspace’s time zone), and from then on votes can be neither added nor removed. Close dates lock anything only while Allow ideas to have a voting close date is turned on in Settings. Second, you may have already voted: each person gets one vote per idea, enforced at the database level. If the Allow removing an upvote setting is turned off, your vote is final once cast.
I submitted an idea but nobody has reviewed it
The most common cause is an empty reviewer panel. When no one belongs to the assigned panel, Ideas sends a fallback notification to admins saying “No one can review this idea — its panel is empty.” Check Settings > Idea Reviewers > Reviewer group and make sure the group has members. If the idea belongs to a campaign with its own panel, check that campaign’s panel too. Remember that admins do not automatically get review access — they must be in the panel to score or move ideas.
My attachment was rejected — what happened?
Attachments must be under 25 MB each and must be a supported file type: images, PDF, Word documents (.doc/.docx), Excel files (.xls/.xlsx), PowerPoint (.ppt/.pptx), or plain text. The type is verified from the file’s actual contents, not the file extension. If Allow file attachments is turned off in Settings, the attachment field does not appear at all.
I posted an idea and it shows “similar ideas already exist” — what is that?
Ideas checks your title against existing ideas when you submit. If it finds matches (based on shared keywords), it shows up to 3 similar ideas and offers a vote on any of them that can still take one from you, or you can post yours anyway. A match that is already Implemented or Declined, one whose voting has closed, or one you have already upvoted is shown for you to look at, without a vote button. This is a nudge, not a block — you can always post.
Licensing and limits
Does Ideas require a licence?
Yes. Ideas is a licensed add-on, disabled by default. An admin enables it from Admin → Apps → All Apps. There is no automatic rollout to any workspace.
What are the limits I should know about?
| Item | Limit |
|---|---|
| Idea title | 200 characters |
| Campaign title | 120 characters |
| Stage label | 60 characters |
| Lifecycle stages per workspace | 2 to 10 |
| Attachment size | 25 MB per file |
| Import file size | 10 MB |
| Import rows per file | 2,000 |
| Votes per person per idea | 1 |
| Discussion depth | One level of replies |
| Duplicate-detection matches shown | 3 |
| Analytics reporting range | All-time |
| Submission trend window | Last 6 months |
| Top contributors shown | 15 |
More help
- Ideas Overview
- Ask AI — the assistant answers Ideas questions from these articles.