Get to Know Ideation in Higher Logic Community: Your Tool for Effective Feedback

When our organizations are guided by end-user feedback, we’re more effective, we create more satisfied members and customers, and ideally, we increase our revenue.

We all know getting feedback from our audience is essential, but with the current tools we have at our fingertips, like surveys, individual phone calls, or one-off emails, the feedback loop can be hit or miss.

With Ideation, we’ve made getting this type of feedback a reality in your online community.

If you were at our annual users conference, Super Forum, you would have seen some of this described during the Product Roadmap session. We’re getting into more detail on how this works and why it matters here.

How Community Ideation Enables Effective Feedback Loops

Higher Logic’s Ideation feature helps you create a better experience for all your users. You can crowdsource ideas and suggestions at scale, manage the feedback, and indicate to users where their feedback is in progress.

This dedicated space for feedback allows members and customers to help you build a better experience. The Ideation feature helps you manage customer feedback, crowdsource ideas and suggestions, and improve communication between your product or support teams and your end users.

You’re probably thinking, “Okay…”

via GIPHY

We like the enthusiasm. But first, let’s get into how Community Ideation works.

Resource: A New Perspective on Negative Feedback in Your Customer Community

How Does Ideation Within a Higher Logic Community Work?

Picture sending your customers and members to your “Ideas Portal” within your community, where they can share their suggestions. This could include new product features and enhancements or their member experience with your organization.

• In your Ideas area, users can submit text and embed images or videos (imagine being able to see exactly where they need that new button with a screenshot!).
• Once submitted, admins can tag ideas with a predefined set of tag options. New tags can be created by the author when nothing is a good fit.
• Users can browse existing ideas before submitting to see if someone has already posted something similar. If yes, they can upvote that idea and leave their thoughts in the comments section. If they don’t find what they’re looking for, they can submit their own idea for review.
• Users can vote for the ideas that best align with their interests.
• Your idea managers can use filters to show ideas with the most votes or ideas that still need to be reviewed.

How to Maximize Your Use of Higher Logic’s Ideation Feature

Our latest release of Ideation now supports two times as many ideas per page and new Ideation Administrative Permissions. You can grant specific administrative privileges to those managing your company’s ideas such as your own product managers.

These individuals can change the status of an idea, pin an idea and edit an idea directly from the idea card view without having keys to the entire administrative area.

For customers, you can find this new setting option in Admin > Feedback > Ideation > Settings > Who can edit ideas?

To use this setting, ensure the specified users are in a dedicated security group (for example, “Product Managers”). Then, select that security group from the drop-down menu. You can grant access to more than one security group.

Since this access gives the specified users the ability to edit, change the status and pin ideas, this is recommended for people who act on ideas posted to your community.

If you do not grant a specific security group access, your Super Admins can still manage Ideation.

If you decide to act on an idea, you can update the status of the idea to “under review,” “planned,” or even better, “released,” depending on what works for your organization. The status options can be configured to meet your needs. 

Creating an Effective Feedback Loop: Mastered

Being able to get this type of feedback is game-changing for organizations. By allowing your users to contribute ideas in the online community and giving them insight into where their ideas are in the queue, you’re making a huge improvement to the customer or member experience.

Interested in learning more? Contact us for a personalized demo where you can see how Ideation can work for you.

Lizzie Urban

Sr. Product Manager

Lizzie is a senior product manager at Higher Logic focused on our Community product. In her previous role on the Strategic Services team, she managed online communities for several Higher Logic customers.