The Departmental Idea Box is a powerful app designed for teams that maintain an always-on, continuously open idea management system. This innovative solution enables leaders to streamline and organize incoming ideas through a single initiative, which—based on evaluation criteria and automated rules configured by the Idea Box Manager—can categorize and route those ideas into one of three preconfigured sub-pipelines: Quick Wins, Backlog, or Strategic Projects pipelines.
With this structured workflow, the Departmental Idea Box app empowers teams to prioritize effectively, focus on impactful outcomes, and maximize the potential of their idea management efforts.
To enable this application within your platform, contact your Customer Success Manager.
Read through the sections below to familiarize yourself with the capabilities:
Getting Started
To get started, System Admins can navigate to Command Center > Products > Idea Box and select the Departmental Idea Box app.
Follow the steps using the Setup Wizard and input the required information to complete the creation process.
Once the Setup Wizard is complete, three pipelines will be created for your Departmental Idea Box:
- Incubate: This is the primary initiative where ideas will be submitted and routed to the correct pipeline for further development. Ideas that aren't ready for development can also remain in this pipeline for incubation
- Strategic Projects: For large, strategic projects that require discovery, development, and testing
- Quick Wins: For high impact, low effort ideas
These pipelines are grouped within an automatically-created Community for organization and management.
Adding Sub-Pipelines During Setup
During the Departmental Idea Box Setup Wizard, administrators can add new sub-pipelines in addition to the three default pipelines (Incubate, Quick Wins, and Strategic Projects).
- To add a new sub-pipeline during setup, select Add Sub-Pipeline when prompted in the wizard and follow the configuration steps.
Note: The three default sub-pipelines (Incubate, Quick Wins, and Strategic Projects) cannot be removed in the Setup Wizard. The Quick Wins and Strategic Projects pipelines may be removed upon creating the Departmental Idea Box.
Team Site for Departmental Idea Box
After completing the Setup Wizard, administrators will be directed to their new Departmental Idea Box Team Site. Team Site gives administrators and participants a single, consolidated place to view ideas, metrics, and activity across all of the sub-pipelines in the Departmental Idea Box.
Participants can submit their ideas through a single submission page, which then get routed to the appropriate sub-pipeline. From Team Site, they can view all ideas across the Departmental Idea Box, and manage their own ideas, Whiteboards, Project Rooms, and action items.
Administrators and Idea Box Managers will also see an admin-only Manage section, giving them easy access to their Pipeline Steps views, along with a menu for quick links to other important pipeline areas.
In the Team Site home page, administrators can inline edit the Welcome Message by clicking directly into the text. To save the changes, simply click away from the editor.
Activity Card for Userhome
Administrators can control whether their Departmental Idea Box appears as a card on the User Home > Activities page, allowing you to control the visibility of departmental initiatives across your organization.
How to Enable or Disable the Departmental Idea Box Activity Card
To set Activity Card visibility in Team Site:
Navigate to the Departmental Idea Box Team Site and select Setup in the bottom left
The Setup popup will show an option Display Team Site Card in Userhome Activities tab
Toggle On to display the initiative card to users
Toggle Off to prevent it from appearing on the Userhome Activities tab
The Activity Card can use images uploaded from your computer, added from Unsplash, or generated from AI (if enabled for your system). In addition to Userhome, the image displays in:
- Team Site Navigation: The image appears in the site navigation
- Pipelines view (left panel): The image displays in the Departmental Idea Box container
Note: The Departmental Idea Box image only displays for the parent Departmental Idea Box initiative. It does not appear on individual sub-pipelines (Quick Wins, Strategic Projects, etc.). To configure these images, navigate to the Departmental Idea Box Team Site, select Setup in the bottom left, and upload your image under the Branding tab.
Optional: Completely Hide the Pipelines from the User Home Page
If needed, you may also fully hide Departmental Idea Box sub-pipelines from User Home:
In Site Setup for the sub-pipeline you wish to hide, toggle the option Exclude this initiative from User Homepage
When enabled, the sub-pipeline will not appear in the Userhome Activities tab
Note: These controls apply at the initiative level, allowing teams to selectively highlight or hide individual Departmental Idea Box sub-pipelines without affecting the rest of the Departmental Idea Box.
Custom Idea Code and Numbering
Departmental Idea Boxes can be configured to use their own custom idea code to more easily identify where ideas originate from. In Team Site Setup popup, administrators can configure their idea code in under the Ideas tab.
Once enabled, all ideas in the Departmental Idea Box will be updated to reflect the configured Custom Idea Code.
These Idea Code numbers will also be sequenced across all sub-pipelines in the Departmental Idea Box, so that the numbers are self-contained (i.e. ideas submitted to other initiatives in the system will not affect the numbering within this Departmental Idea Box). This makes each idea's origin easily distinguished from other ideas in the Brightidea system.
Share Dialog
From the Departmental Idea Box Team Site, the Share Dialog allows administrators to easily invite and manage other Idea Box Managers and participants.
Idea Box Managers can be invited, adding them as Idea Box Managers for the Departmental Idea Box, as well as Pipeline Manager roles for all sub-pipelines. Idea Box Manager and Brightidea Administrator licenses will be assigned accordingly.
Meanwhile, groups and individual users can be invited as participants to the Departmental Idea Box, giving access to all sub-pipelines.
Note: The Team Site Share Dialog gives access to all sub-pipelines. Sub-pipelines can also be managed on an individual basis (i.e. grant Manager roles or participant access differently per sub-pipeline). Also, invitation email settings are respected on a per-sub-pipeline basis. If users are invited to all sub-pipelines in the Departmental Idea Box, they will receive invite emails for all sub-pipelines where that email is enabled.
Manage Users
Administrators and Idea Box Managers can view all users with access to the Departmental Idea Box directly from the Team Site via the Manage Users page.
From this page, admins can view the General Access list, and see a list of all individual users with access to the Departmental Idea Box. This includes users in groups added to the General Access list.
- To access this view, navigate to the Departmental Idea Box Team Site and select Manage Users from the admin navigation section
- Profile fields and attributes can be edited from this view. Changes made from this view are global for user profiles
Idea List
The Idea List provides a cross-pipeline view of all ideas across the Departmental Idea Box, accessible directly from the Team Site.
- The Idea List displays ideas from all sub-pipelines in a single consolidated view.
- Ideas can be sorted and filtered, but cannot be edited or managed from this view.
Note: The Idea List in the Departmental Idea Box Team Site is read-only. There is no actions menu and inline editing is not available from this view. To edit ideas or take pipeline actions, navigate to the individual sub-pipeline.
Managing Sub-Pipelines from the Team Site
Administrators can add and remove sub-pipelines from the Departmental Idea Box Team Site.
- To add a sub-pipeline, navigate to the Team Site admin panel and select Add Sub-Pipeline. You can add an existing Idea Box sub-pipelines, or create a new one.
- To remove a sub-pipeline, view the dropdown menu for the sub-pipeline and select Remove. Removing a sub-pipeline from the Team Site does not delete the pipeline or its ideas — it only removes it from the Team Site view.
Note: This feature only works with Departmental Idea Box sub-pipelines. Standard pipelines from other apps cannot be added to the Departmental Idea Box Team Site.
Pipeline Setup and Management
The sub-pipelines included with Departmental Idea Box are pre-configured with Stages and Steps for their specific use case. These can be further customized and managed from the Pipeline Steps view.
Incubate Pipeline
The Incubate Pipeline is the main submission portal for Departmental Idea Box, a single place for users to post their ideas. It comes with a simplified workflow for quick validation and evaluation before routing to the correct sub-pipeline for development and implementation.
As ideas are evaluated and validated for implementation, administrators can drag and drop them to quickly move them over to the appropriate sub-pipeline.
- Note: We recommend that Idea Box Managers create rules to route to the correct sub-pipeline, to ensure fully automated management of ideas
Departmental Idea Box Sub-pipelines
In addition to the main Incubate pipeline, the Departmental Idea Box app includes two pre-configured sub-pipelines, for managing different types of ideas through to completion. Each sub-pipeline is automatically created and configured with a dedicated workflow.
Each sub-pipeline's Steps views can be accessed from the Team Site Manage section. When viewing from the Steps workflow view, sub-pipelines are also grouped in a special Departmental Idea Box folder for easy access.
Quick Wins Pipeline
The Quick Wins sub-pipeline is intended to siphon off ideas that are low-effort with high-impact, align with business priorities, and won't distract the team from larger imperatives.
Ideas land in the backlog step until ready for implementation. They then advance to the Find Owner step, which allows the idea to be forwarded to different users until finding someone who can own the implementation. Once an owner is found, ideas advance to the Implementation step, where the owner can indicate that the idea has been completed.
Strategic Projects Pipeline
The Strategic Projects sub-pipeline is intended for larger strategic projects that the team needs to scope, evaluate, and validate throughout execution using Stage and Gate Approvals feature.
Ideas will land in an initial scorecard step, where they will be evaluated and then prioritized. As resources become available, ideas can then be pulled into the Stage and Gate approvals process, using Project Rooms to complete requirements before being evaluated in Gate approval steps to determine whether they will advance to the next Stage.
Learn more about our Stage and Gate process and the corresponding Innovation Process app here.
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