If someone posts an idea that isn’t one of the product areas in scope for ideation, do you close the idea down or move it over to the appropriate area and convert it into a discussion?

Question

@Julian @Alistair FIeld and community teams that run the Ideation module: I have a best practice question for you:

If someone posts an idea that isn’t one of the product areas in scope for ideation, do you close the idea down with a closed status, or move it over to the appropriate forum area and convert it into a discussion?

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Best answer by Seb 29 June 2022, 17:12

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Seb · Accepted Answer

Hi @timcavey, I’d say that really depends on how you’ve set up your product areas. If they’re very specific (like in our case, Ideation, Groups, Customization, Search, etc.) and there’s an idea outside of these areas because we don’t have that feature or a product area yet (like a mobile app), we’d still like to assess interest and keep it in there to accumulate votes. I’d then try to map it to the closest Product Area, or map it to Other.

If the product areas are set up more broadly (like in a suite of products, so Product A, Product B and Product C), I’d say the same thing still applies. If we’re willing to consider it because it may be a solution to a problem we’re trying to solve now or in the future, I’d leave it open to gather votes and basically validate it.

Either way, if the idea is far outside the scope than we ever want to venture in (say a CRM-like feature), we’d mark it Closed with an explainer that it’s not in scope and why. If it’s more of a general remark or a question instead of a feature request, or when the proposed suggestion is too vague for people to interpret and vote on, then I’d definitely convert it into a discussion. Which may, in turn, lead to a more concrete idea :)

Julian · Answer

Very good question, very long title.😂I am not involved in our own ideation processes any more, my experiences are from a pre-”Product Area”-era.So I can only tell how I would do that if I would work on it.😉I usually handled this on a case-by-case basis in the past, whenever I spotted something which was wildly different to what we wanted to have ideas for.If you think that such an idea might be interesting / valuable in the future, e.g. if there is a chance that you will define a Product Area that this idea would fall in to, I would close it and update the user that this idea is not a match right now but parked for the future.If the idea is pretty unique, in the sense that probably only this one user wants this, then you could also close it and simply say that it is very unlikely to happen.Others might have a different opinion and would recommend to move it as “unoffical” idea / suggestion to a discussion category, but I would only do that if certain conditions are met:Only if there is really something to discuss, e.g. if there might be a chance of achieving this in a different way, or if other users have an interest to share their opinion, I would convert it into a discussion and move it to a category. Otherwise chances would be very high that it just sits there and never receives a response from another user.Hope that this makes sense and will help you!😀

If someone posts an idea that isn’t one of the product areas in scope for ideation, do you close the idea down or move it over to the appropriate area and convert it into a discussion?

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