Categories help organize Submissions in your Initiatives. Inputting the category during submission creation helps the Administrator monitor and prioritize incoming Ideas. Categories also help users visualize ideas more clearly. Other benefits of leveraging Idea Categories include:
- Users can subscribe to a category to view only relevant Submissions.
- An additional aid to assist with maintaining the Site goal from beginning to end.
- Routing Ideas to different experts for evaluation
- Routing Ideas to different implementation teams
- Better understanding of pain points and solutions suggested by the community.
- Users can filter Ideas submitted during the Community Collaboration phase.
Table of Contents
Getting Started:
- Idea Categories are managed for an Initiative by Admins under Site Setup > Ideas > Categories
Adding a New Category:
- Input text into the empty field and select + Add Category
Deleting a Category:
- Select "Delete" next to the applicable name.
- WARNING: PLEASE REFRAIN from deleting Categories if there are existing ideas.
- Admins will be given two options:
- Move the associated Ideas to another Category to save any related data (recommended)
- Delete the existing Ideas in that Category (not recommended)
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- If there are no Ideas associated with a Category, the system will simply prompt to confirm the deletion.
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Editing a Category:
- Admins can change existing Categories to a new name by editing the text
- Note: Changes are retroactive and will affect existing Submissions. The original Category name will not be maintained on existing Ideas and will reflect the current configuration.
Changing the Display Order of Categories:
- Admins can also update the display order by clicking and dragging the bars up and down.
Customizing the "Categories" label for end users:
- Admins can edit the terminology for the Categories field on the Submission Form under Site Setup > Ideas > Submission Form
- To learn more about the Submission Form Builder, check out this support article.
Assigning a Category Image for Idea Boards:
- Category images enhance the utility of Idea Boards by automatically assigning missing Idea images as Submissions are created. If a Submitter doesn't add an image for their Idea, this feature will automatically assign the Category image as the Idea image.
- Note: This is a BETA feature and must be enabled under Site Setup > Beta
- Once enabled, Admins can assign an image to a Category by selecting Upload Category Image
Updating the Category for Idea(s) in Pipeline Management
- Admins can update the assigned Category for an Idea in Pipeline Management.
- Admins can edit the Category for the selected Idea(s) in both the List and Steps views.
- Note: No notification is sent to the Idea submitter or Idea subscriber(s) when the Category is updated. Users who are alerted via Category will not be alerted if any Idea's categories are changed.
Steps View
- To edit an Idea's assigned Category from the Steps View, Admins can select the Idea(s) and either click the "Actions" button or right-click on the Idea and select Change Category
- Select a new Category for the Idea(s):
- Select Change Category to save the change.
- Admins will see a pop-up confirming the change was successful.
List View
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There are two ways to edit an Idea's assigned Category from the List View:
- Highlight the Idea(s) by selecting the checkbox in the left column, then click Actions or right-click on the Idea(s) and select Change Category
- Admins will see a pop-up modal and follow the same process as in Steps View
- Change the Idea's assigned Category via Inline Editing.
- Note: Category must be an enabled column in the List View by selecting Category from the gear icon:
- Locate the Category column and click directly on the Idea Category:
- Admins will be prompted to select a new Category from the drop-down menu:
- Admins can then click anywhere outside of the category box to automatically save the change:
Important Things to Note:
- NEW Initiatives must have at least one Category. If your Initiative only has one Category, the Submission Form will automatically hide the Category field.
- Categories can be configured to alert users when relevant new Ideas are submitted.
- To learn more about category alerts, check out this support article.
Hello! Is there any way to filter more than one category at the same time? For example.: Widget. Thank you.
Hello -
At this time, there is no way to filter more than just one category - you can do that through the WebStorm Admin interface, not in the front end WebStorm unfortunately.
Best,
Anthony
Is it possible to have nested categories?
Hello Damian,
There is no functionality in the software to support nested categories at this time.
However, Brightidea is always looking for great ideas to make our software better. We therefore strongly encourage you to submit this enhancement request to “IdeaSpace” (http://ideas.brightidea.com). This will allow all Brightidea clients to collaborate and vote on their favorite ideas – including yours!
Our Product team will then select the most popular ideas and incorporate them into our software roadmap for development.
Thank you,
Brightidea Support
What is the current max amount of categories a webstorm can have?
Hi Kuhan,
There is no limit on categories in the system.
Thank you,
Ron Orlovetskiy
Brightidea Support
Hi - is there any way i can delete ALL categories. I dont want this functionality as i submit an idea. However the systems keeps asking for have atleast one category.
Hello Jaideep,
Categories are part of the core requirements for idea submission (including title, description and status). It's not possible to completely remove them in the software.
Please let me know if there is anything else.
Thank you,
Brightidea Support
Is the only way to subscribe to a category to view an idea within that category and hover of the category name? Or is there a quicker way for users to subscribe to categories?
Hi Cynthia,
That is correct, the only way is to do it on the view idea page and selecting the subscribe icon.
Please let me know if you have any further questions on this topic.
Thank you,
Brightidea Support
Hello Ron,
Are categories still a part of the core requirement of the idea submission?. Or now I could not use this feature?
Best Regards,
Oscar, just have one category and then during the idea submission process the category option doesn't show.
On the submission form, it is possible to change the category question to a checkbox so that the user can select multiple categories?
@Stephanie no you can't do that .. if you wanted multiple choice it has to be an additional submission form question
I can set categories. But I can't use Category assignment, is that some advanced feature not avaiable for ideabox?