Understand and Work with Ideas

Salesforce offers its own Ideas community for Salesforce users to submit product feedback and suggest new features. To visit, go to https://ideas.salesforce.com

Ideas Terminology

The following terminology is used for Ideas:

Category, Ideas

Categories are administrator-defined values that help organize ideas into logical subgroups within a zone. The View Category dropdown list on the Ideas tab allows users to filter ideas by category, and the Categories picklist on the Post Ideas page lets users add categories to their ideas. For example, if your ideas zone has the focus “Improvements to our clothing line,” then you can set up categories such as “Shirts,” “Jackets,” and “Slacks.” Each organization has one common set of categories that can be added or removed from each zone. An administrator defines separate categories for their ideas and answers zones.

Comment

Comments are plain text responses to posted ideas that enable discussions about the ideas. On the Ideas tab, the Comments subtab lists the comments that have most recently been submitted. On the detail page of an idea, comments are sorted in chronological order from oldest to newest.

Community

Communities are Experience Cloud sites that are customizable public or private spaces for employees, end-customers, and partners. Use communities to collaborate on best practices and business processes.

Community Expert

A community expert is a member of the community who speaks credibly and authoritatively on behalf of your organization. When community experts post comments or ideas, a unique icon displays next to their name. The Salesforce administrator can designate as many community experts as necessary.

Demote

If you dislike an idea, you can click demote to subtract 10 points from its overall score and decrease the idea's overall popularity ranking. You can’t demote the same idea more than one time, and after you demote an idea you can’t promote it. An idea can have negative overall points if more users demote the idea than promote it.

Half-life

The half-life setting determines how quickly old ideas drop in ranking on the Popular Ideas subtab, to make room for ideas with more recent votes. A shorter half-life moves older ideas down the page faster than a longer half-life. This setting affects all zones in your organization.

Idea

Ideas are suggestions posted by the members of an ideas community and are organized by zones. For example, if the focus of a particular zone is “Ideas for car features,” an appropriate idea for that zone can have the title “Insulated cup holders that keep your beverage hot or cold.” Or, if the focus of a particular zone is “Ideas for our company's employee benefits,” an appropriate idea for that zone can have the title “On-site day care.”

Idea Themes

Idea Themes provide a forum in which you invite members to post ideas about specific topics so that they can solve problems or propose innovations for your company.

Point

A point is a unit of measurement that represents the popularity of an idea. Each vote for an idea is worth ten points (promote adds 10 points and demote removes 10 points). An idea's total number of points displays to the left of the idea.

Popular Ideas

On the Popular Ideas subtab, ideas are sorted by an internal calculation that reflects the age of an idea's positive votes. Regardless of an idea's static total number of points, ideas with newer positive votes display higher on the page than ideas with older positive votes. This allows you to browse ideas that have most recently gained popularity, with less precedence given to long-established ideas that were positively voted on in the past.

Promote

If you agree with or like an idea, click promote to add 10 points to the idea. You can’t promote the same idea more than once, and you can’t promote an idea that you’ve already demoted. Salesforce automatically adds your promote vote to any idea that you post.

Recent Activity

Your Recent Activity page contains a summary of all the recent activity that relates to your participation within a zone. For example, this page lists all the ideas and comments you’ve posted to a zone as well as the ideas you’ve voted on. You can view your Recent Activity page by clicking your nickname on the right side of the Ideas tab.

Status

An idea's status helps zone members track the progress of the idea. For example, “Under Review”, “Reviewed”, “Coming Soon”, and “Now Available” are common status values an administrator can define and assign to ideas. An idea's status appears next to the idea's title for all zone members to see.

Top All-Time Ideas

On the Top All-Time subtab, ideas are sorted from most number of points to fewest. This subtab allows you to see the most popular ideas in the history of your Ideas zone.

Vote, Idea

In an ideas community, a vote means that you have either promoted or demoted an idea. After you vote on an idea, your nickname displays at the bottom of the idea's detail page to track that your vote was made. You can use your Recent Activity page to see a list of all the ideas you’ve voted on.

Zone

Zones organize ideas and questions into logical groups, with each zone having its own focus and unique ideas and questions.