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Collect Feature Requests and Show a Roadmap

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Collect Feature Requests and Show a Roadmap

Section titled “Collect Feature Requests and Show a Roadmap”

Use this guide to let customers suggest ideas, vote on them, and see what you plan to build. When you finish, you will have an Ideas space with voting and a public roadmap board. Everything here is in free Jetonomy.

What you will set up

Section titled “What you will set up”
  • An Ideas space where members post and vote
  • A status on each idea: Planned, In Progress, Shipped or Declined
  • A Roadmap board that groups ideas by status
  • A way to link to the roadmap from your menu

Before you start

Section titled “Before you start”
  • Jetonomy is installed and you have at least one category. See Categories.
  • You are signed in as an administrator, or as a moderator of the space.
  • You have a second browser window and a test member account.

Step 1: Create the Ideas space

Section titled “Step 1: Create the Ideas space”
  1. Go to Jetonomy → Spaces and click Add New.
  2. Enter a Title such as Feature Requests and a short Description.
  3. Choose a Category.
  4. Set Type to Ideas.
  5. Set Visibility to Public and Join Policy to Open. This lets customers vote without waiting for approval.
  6. Click Create Space.

Tip: Pick the lightbulb icon in the icon picker. The search field finds any icon by name.

Step 2: Check that voting is on

Section titled “Step 2: Check that voting is on”
  1. Edit the space and open the Settings tab.
  2. Make sure Allow Voting is ticked. It is ticked by default.
  3. If you changed it, click Save Settings.

If you switch voting off, the vote buttons disappear from every idea in this space, and the roadmap hides vote counts too.

Step 3: Show members how to post an idea

Section titled “Step 3: Show members how to post an idea”

Signed-in members see a + Share an Idea button in the space. The form is titled Share an Idea and its button reads Submit Idea.

New ideas start with no status. They appear in the space list and members can vote on them straight away. They stay off the roadmap until you give them a status.

Step 4: Set a status

Section titled “Step 4: Set a status”

Only moderators and admins of the space see the status buttons.

  1. Open an idea.
  2. Under the title, find the Status: row.
  3. Click Planned, In Progress, Shipped or Declined.

The change saves at once and a coloured label appears beside the idea title. You can change the status again at any time. There is no button to clear a status once it is set.

Status Use it when
Planned You accepted the idea but have not started
In Progress You are building it now
Shipped It is live
Declined You will not build it

Tip: When you click Declined, also post a reply that explains why. People who voted deserve an answer.

Step 5: View the roadmap

Section titled “Step 5: View the roadmap”
  1. Open the space on the community side.
  2. Click the Roadmap tab, next to Ideas.

The board has four columns: Planned, In Progress, Shipped and Declined. Each column lists its ideas from most votes to fewest, with the vote count and reply count. A column shows up to 50 ideas. A link such as “+3 more ideas in the space feed” covers the rest. An idea marked private shows only to its author and to moderators.

The address is /community/s/your-space-slug/roadmap/. Use your own community address if you changed it.

Section titled “Step 6: Link to the roadmap”
  1. Go to Appearance → Menus and choose your menu.
  2. Open Custom Links, paste the roadmap address, and set Link Text to Roadmap.
  3. Click Add to Menu, then Save Menu.

There is no block or shortcode that embeds the roadmap board in a page, so link to it.

Check that it works

Section titled “Check that it works”
  1. As the test member, open the space and click + Share an Idea. Post one idea.
  2. Vote on a second idea from another account. A member cannot vote on their own idea.
  3. As a moderator, open the idea and click Planned.
  4. Open the Roadmap tab. The idea is under Planned.
  5. In the test member’s notifications, you should see: Your idea “…” is now Planned.

Common questions

Section titled “Common questions”

Who is told when I change a status? The person who posted the idea gets a notification. You get none for your own ideas. They also get an email if they switched on My idea roadmap status changed under Notification Preferences on their profile. Email is off by default. You can change the default under Jetonomy → Settings → Email → Notification Defaults, on the Your idea roadmap status changed row.

Can guests see the roadmap? Yes, in a public space. Guests can read it but cannot vote. In a private space only members can see it.

Can I limit who posts ideas? Yes. On the space Settings tab, change Who Can Post.

Can I run more than one roadmap? Yes. Each Ideas space has its own roadmap, for example one per product.

Section titled “Related guides”