Have Ideas? Here's How To Tell Us About Them!

With the world continuing to practice social distancing by working from home, communication and feedback have become even more important. As such, we’re always looking to hear from you all regarding your experience with our Education management products, especially things that you think would help make them better.

Thankfully, we have an easy way for you to leave your thoughts right from the Community itself! The Ideas forum is the place to be to make your voice heard either by leaving your thoughts or voting on other people’s ideas. Let’s take a closer look at this piece of the Education management community.

I have an idea that I think could help make the Education management products better. What do I do?
If you want to leave your Ideas for us or view things that others are talking about, you don’t actually need to leave he community at all! If you look at the navigational tabs for this Community site, you’ll see multiple areas that you can click into like the Discussion forums, the Tips and Tricks blog (where you are now) as well as tab called Ideas. Select it to begin your journey, but in terms of this blog, open it in a new tab. Great, but how does this work exactly?
Admittedly, there’s a lot of information to take in when you first arrive. Thankfully, it’s not as hard as it appears so let’s break it down.
The middle of the screen shows the list of ideas that others have already submitted. The information displays who created them, a small description of their idea, and a number which shows how many votes it has from the community. At the top are three tabs to show you which ideas are popular, trending, or brand new.

On the left side of the screen are filters you can use to sort through the various Ideas already present. You have two options to sort by: Idea Status and Product category. In terms of product category, if you’re looking for topics pertaining to a particular product like Enrollment management, use these to remove anything not EMS related.

NOTE! For the next week or so, the product name filters will still display in their old “ON” product names. However, on June 1, these names will be updated to reflect their current product naming conventions in Education management. Each Idea also has a status relating to where that suggestion is along the implementation pipeline. If you know something is under consideration, planned, or any other status, you can use these to filter down your results as well.

Filtering, got it. But I’m ready to create an idea!
That’s fantastic to hear but there’s something very important you should always do before creating a new Idea post.

In an effort to keep the Ideas section uncluttered, it’s important to use the search tools to see if someone else had a similar thought to your idea. If they did, you can add your support to it by voting for it and/or adding a comment with your own thoughts.

Keywords, phrases, anything that you can think of will help narrow down the results.

Alright, Searching is important. Can I create an Idea now?
If you don’t see a similar Idea already posted then yes, it’s time to create a new one. Above the filters is a big button labeled Add a New Idea.

First thing to do is to choose a Workspace. Basically, it’s asking which product your idea relates to. Next, add a one sentence summary of what you’re thinking. Fear not as the next area allows you to add in all the details you want to support your summary.

It’s optional, but you can also add a category to your idea, which part of the product you’re looking to improve. For example, if you have an idea for Academics, you can specify what aspect of it you’d like to change or improve. Things like Assignments, Assessments, Class Pages, etc, etc.

Finally, add in your email address and press the Share idea button to post it for others to see and vote on.
That’s great, what happens next?
So your idea is posted but that’s not the end of its journey. The Idea now displays on the main page for others to select, read about, and vote for if they agree with it. People can also leave comments on your idea and if it gets enough attention, it may also reach a project manager who may then pass it along to the development team. If your idea does manage to garner some votes, select the Votes tab to see who is rooting for your idea to become a reality.

And that’s the main idea behind Ideas. Have any additional questions? Let me know below.

Thanks for stopping by this week and if you haven’t already, make sure to go have a look at the Ideas section of the community. Who knows, perhaps you’ll find something there to support to help make our products better.

Next week, we’ll be taking a look back at the month of May to see everything we released over the past four weeks.