
Table of Contents:
- What is the Development tool for?
- Configure the 'Development' Tool
- Assignee's Experience
- Revision History
What is the Development tool for?
The Development tool provides the Pipeline Managers / Administrators with ability to gather and build out ideas that are chosen to move forward.
- Development question are only visible to Admins, Moderators, and Evaluators on the back-end action items view, not on View Idea page or elsewhere in the front-end of the Initiative. Regular end users can't see development questions/answers.
- The manager can then create custom Development questions to further gather information for each idea.
- Once questions and fields are set, he/she can then assign a 'Development' action item to the idea's submitter/evaluators.
Configure the 'Development' Tool:
To get started with the Development tool, navigate to your Pipeline Steps View > Step Ellipsis Menu > Configure Development:

In the Configure Development configuration section, the Pipeline Manager will have two options for assignment:
Category Assignment: Administrators can configure the Development Step to assign Submissions based on Categories. If your Initiative has Categories based on departments, you can now configure one Step to filter Submissions to different Evaluators.
- An Administrator can assign different and/or same Development Lead/Team to each Category of an Initiative. Development Action Items will then trigger for the Category assigned Users only.
If your Initiative has Categories disabled, Administrators will see a warning message informing them of their settings
Action Items will then be assigned to all Evaluators (Development Lead and Development Team) to be completed.
Individual Assignment: Administrators can assign all Submissions to individual Users. This assignment method is broken down as follows -
- Idea Submitter: This will assign the Development Lead to the submitter of the idea
- Selected User: This will allow the admin to select any user to be the Development Lead
- Development Lead: When configuring Development Steps, managers select a specific user to assign as Development Lead:
- Development Team (optional): The user has the option to add individual members on the Development Team
- Due Date: The manager can set the due date dynamically from date assigned or manually select a date if needed.
- Development Fields: Questions that the Development evaluators will answer

After Administrators have assigned the User(s) to the Step, you will need to scroll down to select Development Fields to configure the question fields for this development step.

The Pipeline Manager / Administrator has the following options for each development field:
- Include: Select whether to include this field in the development step
- Required: Option to make the field required during the development step process
To edit the Development Fields, select the Edit Fields link in this window
The Pipeline Manager / Administrator will be redirected to the edit submission form page in Site Setup, where they can configure the development fields as needed:
- To set a submission form field for the development step, select the Development Field option.
- The configured fields will appear on the Development step configuration mentioned above.
- Note: The Instruction Text field can be used to provide additional instructions (text or image).

- Development field visibility can also be configured to control who can see the Development fields in View Idea. Fields can be configured to be visible to:
- Administrators, evaluators
- Administrators, evaluators, submitters
- Administrators, evaluators, all other users
As of the Spring 2021 release, you can now configure Development fields to be visible to Administrators only. When configured to Administrators only, Administrators, Managers, and Moderators will be able to view Development field data in View Idea 2.0. Evaluators will only be able to view Development field data in the context of their Development action item.
Idea Editing: Assignees who are not already administrators will be able to edit some idea attributes such as idea title, description and category.
Action Items: Cancel open action items when submission moves out of Step.
Send Alerts:
Daily emails will include any Action Items assigned from the previous day
Daily, Assignees will receive a single email alert for new Action Items for that step at 9:00 a.m. (this will respect system time zone settings)
Immediately: An email alert will be sent Immediately to each Assignee when a new Action Item is assigned.
Daily: An email alert will be sent to each Assignee when the first Action Item is assigned. Subsequent email alerts will be sent Daily.
Email Subject and Body: The assigner has the option to enter in any desired email subject and body text - which will be sent to the selected evaluators.
Dynamic Fields: Allows the assigner to include dynamic fields in an Email

Recurring Reminders: Send email reminders to assignees after X days of inactivity.
Action Item Escalation: Notify certain recipients when an action item hasn’t been completed in X days.
Assignee's experience:
The assignee / evaluator will receive a new Development action item to complete upon successful configuration and assignment.
The assignee / evaluator can complete the Development action item by filling in all required questions and selecting Mark Complete or Save to finish later.

Revision History:
Each time a user clicks the "Save", "Mark Done", or "Mark as Complete" on the Action Item page for Development questions a version of their answers is saved in the history.
Previous versions can be accessed in the far-right panel called "Revision History":

The following information is stored with each version:
- The answers to all development questions.
- The user who saved the development form.
- Date and time the development form was saved.

This development action item view displays the most recent version by default.
- Note: Answers to previous versions cannot be edited in this view
On the the top right the dropdown menu "Revision History" displays all previous versions:

The "Restore Revision" button allows the user to restore a previous saved version of the development answers:

When clicked the user is redirected back to the edit view of the form with the selected version's answers pre-populated in the form:

Note: The user cannot edit a previous version. If the user hits "Update" after loading a previous version's answers, a new version will be created.

Please Note: Previous versions of development questions will only be available for development versions saved after 6/29/16.
Can the development lead, when knowing more about the idea, add their own development team members or is this the privilege of only the Pipeline Manager?
Hi Damian,
Only the Pipeline Manager is able to change the configuration and add/remove team members from the development step.
Best,
Brightidea Support
After the development lead mark complete who/where can other see the fields he filled up? In our tests those fields cannot be seen on the original idea view, not either for evaluators of furthers steps.
@Simplez Administrador
you can only see them in further steps if you have further steps after development i.e. a scorecard or review in list view, or in the manage step option (by selecting the gear icon)
we've got a request in on ideas.brightidea around having a turn on / off feature in the platform that allows you to have them show up on the front end if you want (proposal would be to have check box next to development step when selecting it as development step)
Here is the idea
https://bi.brightidea.com/D11665
Thanks Damian, very helpful. Already voted for your idea at ideaspace.
When there are multiple people completing the Development action, are each person's form saved?
Are the development questions able to be seen outside of the development tool step? I seem to remember them being visible in the submission form once complete, am I remembering that incorrectly?
Hi Stephanie,
Development question can only be seen on the back-end, it's currently not possible to have developments questions/answers also show on the end user idea view in WebStorm.
Thank you,
Brightidea Support
Ron
Hi Ron,
So to be clear, it's only visible in that specific tool step in the manage development tool option?
Best,
Stephanie
Hi Stephanie,
Yes, and also in the action item view of action item assignees.
E.g. if you pass the idea to another step, e.g. scorecard, the user evaluating the scorecard can see the development answers on the action item view.
Thanks,
Ron
Hey Ron, is there a way to have the action item assigned to everyone on the team submission? Now that there is a revision history and all??
If not, how shall teammates of the submitter see the responses to the dev form questions?
Hi Stephanie,
Configuring a development step with idea submitter will not also include team members. You can however manually add team members to the development team.
Best,
Daniel
Hi Team... I'm back! Question regarding development team... I am using category assignment for the development lead and team. If a member of the dev team completes the development question, is there a way to mark the action items for that idea as complete for both lead and team members?
Hi Stephanie,
That is already the case, only the lead can complete a development action item and once that happens, it marks all of the development team associated action items for that specific idea/step as complete.
- Brightidea Support