Goal-driven idea collection.
Collect ideas from any audience with goal-driven idea collections that help you focus your innovation and uncover opportunities.
How Do You Run Multiple Collections Without Starting From Scratch Every Time?
Idea collections are the foundation of your innovation workspace. Each collection focuses on a specific challenge or opportunity. You define the question, the phases ideas move through, the submission form, rating criteria, and who has access.
Run multiple collections at the same time across different departments or initiatives. Structure them within sections for company-wide programs, department-specific efforts, or external innovation. You control whether a collection stays open for ongoing submissions or closes after a set deadline.
Once you configure a collection with phases, forms, and permissions, save it as a template. Reuse the setup for future collections without rebuilding the workflow each time. Clone event setups to repeat programs across quarters or years.
Each collection moves ideas through phases based on your process. Define stages like feasibility review, pilot, or business case. Set different rating criteria for each phase. Control who sees what with collection-level permissions. Run private collections for specific groups or require approval before ideas become visible to others.
You decide where people submit ideas. Create focused collections with clear problem statements or set up a catch-all collection for ideas outside predefined topics. Embed collection widgets on your website, intranet, or SharePoint to meet contributors where they already work.
Ideanote gives you the structure to run repeatable, permission-controlled collections that align with your goals and fit how your organization works.
Do you support both time-boxed campaigns and always-on idea collections?
Yes. You have full control over how you run each idea collection. You decide whether a collection stays open for ongoing submissions or closes after a deadline.
When you set up a collection, you choose if it runs for a fixed period (like a three-month challenge) or stays open indefinitely (like a continuous improvement inbox). Ideas progress through their phases individually, so you keep momentum even after a collection closes.
How do I submit ideas outside of a specific collection or challenge?
You have two options. First, you create a general "catch-all" collection where people submit ideas that don't fit anywhere else. An idea manager then reviews these submissions and routes them to the right place.
Second, you set up an always-open collection with a broad focus, like "Operational improvements" or "Customer experience ideas." This gives your team a place to share ideas year-round while still maintaining structure and ownership.
How do I reuse a collection setup without rebuilding everything?
Once you configure a collection (including phases, forms, rating criteria, automations, and permissions), you save it as a template. The next time you need a similar collection, you start from that template instead of building from scratch.
This means you define your process once and reuse it across departments, quarters, or years. Your team gets consistency, and you save time on setup.
How do I run different processes for different collections?
Each collection has its own workflow. You define the phases ideas move through, the forms people fill out, the rating criteria for evaluation, and who participates at each stage.
For example, your product innovation collection might have phases for feasibility review, prototype, and pilot, while your cost-saving collection uses a simpler submit-review-implement flow. You configure each collection to match the process your stakeholder needs.
How do I control who sees which collections and ideas?
You set access permissions for each collection. You decide who submits ideas, who rates and manages them, and who views them at each phase.
You make a collection private to a specific department, require approval before ideas become visible to others, or open it to your entire organization. You also set up collections where people submit ideas without seeing what others submitted, which works well for competitions or sensitive topics.
How do I embed a collection on our website or SharePoint?
You use an idea collection widget to embed a collection on external sites, your public website, or internal pages like SharePoint. People submit ideas directly from that page without needing to log into Ideanote separately.
This approach meets people where they already are, whether that's your intranet, a department site, or a customer-facing page. You configure which collection the widget connects to and what information it collects.
How many collections should I run at once?
You decide based on your capacity to act on ideas. We recommend starting with one to three focused collections on topics where a stakeholder is ready to implement ideas, has budget, and asked for solutions.
You add more collections as your program matures. Some organizations run one new collection per quarter. Others run a large annual collection plus a few ongoing ones. The key is to only launch collections when someone is committed to reviewing and acting on the ideas you receive.
What should I include when setting up a collection?
You define the section it belongs to, the innovation goal it supports, a cover image and title, and a "How Might We" question that frames the challenge. You also write a short context description (two paragraphs maximum) explaining why this collection matters and what happens to ideas.
Then you configure the phases ideas move through, the submission form, rating criteria for each phase, and access permissions. Once you finish, you save the collection as a template if you plan to run similar collections later.
Smart and Easy Idea Management
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