UserVoice: 2022 Product Year in Review
2022 was full of milestones for our team at UserVoice—from launching a brand new product to expanding upon the core functionality of our software, we had many things to celebrate this year.
It probably goes without saying that user feedback makes our world go round—without it, we'd sorely miss out on opportunities to build a better product. This past year, we received a lot of valuable feedback and did our absolute best to deliver as many product enhancements as possible.
Here are some of the major updates we made in 2022…and (SPOILER) a New Year’s gift from our team to yours!
Internal Roadmap
A popular feature got a tune-up this year, the Internal Roadmap now has much more power on the kanban views.
We removed our dependence on old technologies and replaced the kanban view with a more efficient look and feel. With an updated UI, smoother drag and drop experience, a new quick feature edit option, and more, these improvements benefit the kanban load times and overall performance.
Shared Views
We wanted to give admins the power to be more efficient when it comes to teamwork, so we built the ability to share customized views of the Idea Grid. With Shared Views, users can collaborate with their team more effectively without disrupting any of their common workflows. Admins can build a view of ideas for their colleagues based on an area of interest or create a singular view for their entire team to review together.
Idea Export
We updated the Idea Export feature to give users even more control over which data they’d like to export. When exporting data from the Idea Grid, this modal offers users the ability to select which fields of data to incorporate — rather than including every single column in an export (and it automatically saves the fields for next time).
Check out the full details of this update in this video guide.
.webp)
Idea Grid
Next, we updated the Idea Grid to better streamline common actions taken by users when managing their UserVoice ideas. This update includes enhancements to existing features and some entirely new updates, like the "What's New" activity control which ensures users never miss new engagement activity (e.g. new votes, comments, importance ratings) on their ideas, drag-and-drop customizable data columns, and more.
Watch the video on all the new features here
Feedback Outreach
The next new feature we added this year, is the ability to send Outreach campaigns to customers. Sometimes, when a customer submits a feature request there’s simply not enough context to start formulating a solution.
This new feature allows admins to ask customers for additional information without having to leave UserVoice, and the feedback received is automatically associated with the original idea. By asking custom questions, users can uncover more context about the problem, and figure out a way to solve the problem in a satisfactory way.
Importance Rating
Next up, we helped our users quantify the impact an idea will have on their business by creating the Importance Rating feature.
Not all ideas are created equal, that’s why we wanted to give end-users the ability to rank ideas on a scale from not at all important to critical. This capability then allows teams to assess the importance of feedback during the analysis and prioritization phase of development.
We also updated the Importance Rating feature so ratings can be counted as votes! This keeps communication crystal clear by enabling end-users to receive notifications around status updates, new comments, and any subscriber emails related to the idea.
Merge Match
Merge Match actively shares recommendations for ideas to merge together and, with a click of a button, users can combine those duplicate ideas. These notifications offer admins the option to merge the ideas or keep them separate — making grooming data easier.
- Our AI technology can scan an entire database of ideas for matches, which removes some of the lift around data clean-up and makes managing ideas easier, saving our users valuable time.
Automated Email Response for Idea Creators
When it comes to product feedback, a best practice to close the feedback loop and let your users know that their idea is being considered. With this update, users have the option to send automated email responses to their customers. These customized automated emails let end-users know their idea has been received, so they aren’t left wondering if anyone is ever going to view and respond to their new idea.
UserVoice Validation
This year, we also brought you a brand new product research tool that helps brings actionable user insights to the forefront of roadmap strategy. UserVoice Validation allows product teams to test out product ideas under consideration and gives teams confidence that the released functionality resonates with their end-users.
Adoption and retention are consistently focal points for businesses. We wanted to help drive those KPIs by building an accessible solution that uses quick micro-studies to demystify the research process. UserVoice Validation quickly surfaces strong user signals to help product teams drive better outcomes.
Validation helps businesses identify at each stage of the development process if they need to reprioritize features or further evolve their products to meet customer needs, helping save money and other valuable resources.
16 Popular Idea Updates
As promised, we have a new year's surprise for our users. We compiled a list of feature requests from our users to complete before the start of the new year. Without further ado, here are those quick wins.
1. On the Web Portal, an extra confirmation step to "flag as inappropriate" links. When reporting an idea as inappropriate from the Web Portal, users are now asked to confirm the action before the idea is reported. This added step prevents users from unintentionally reporting appropriate ideas.
2. Updated description in the Contributor Console to indicate that the idea description will be public. We updated the copy in the Contributor Console to remind users that idea titles and descriptions created in the tool will be displayed on public forums. This ensures contributors don’t include private or sensitive customer/company information in any descriptions.
3. Idea Titles now includes a hyperlink when copied and pasted. When an idea title is copied and pasted, it will include a hyperlink to that piece of feedback.
4. Lock icon on the Web Portal for private forums. On the web portal home page, we added a lock icon to all private forums to help users distinguish public and private forums from the portal home page.
5. Adding new ideas from the Admin Console made easier. When admins create new ideas in the admin console, we display a confirmation message and direct link to the idea. Prior to this update, after creating an idea, it was difficult for admins to find the idea or even confirm that the idea was created.
6. Quickly remove labels from the list view. Labels can now be removed from an idea in-line on the Idea Grid with a single click. This helps our users work more efficiently within the Idea Grid. Before this update, removing labels involved a number clicks.
7. Get emailed when an idea has been flagged as important. UserVoice admins can now get an email notification anytime a contributor flags an idea as important. Now, potentially critical insight coming from contributors won’t slip through the cracks, and admins no longer have to monitor the feed in the admin console.
8. Edit internal comments. Internal comments can now be edited after they’ve been created by an admin.
9. Enlarged search field in merge window. We also increased the width of the search bar in the idea merge modal to enable users to view more of their search criteria.
10. Widened search bar for the admin console idea grid. We increased the width of the idea grid search bar to enable users to view more of their search criteria and to improve the responsiveness of the search bar.
11. Support Adobe illustrator (.AI) files as attachments. Adobe Illustrator files can now be added as attachments on ideas and comments. This helps users add context to their feedback.
12. Admins can flag an idea as important from the Admin Console. From the admin console, UserVoice admins have a new option to flag an idea as important.
13. Have Jira issues created from UserVoice reflect the Jira instance's default priority. Jira issues created from UserVoice now reflect the priority set as the default of the Jira instance in which the issue will live after it is created. This was built to reduce confusion for users of our Jira integration.
14. Remove columns from the Roadmap view. We added a column picker to the admin’s kanban roadmap view that enables users to add/remove columns from their view, allowing users to customize their view to their liking.
15. Add attachments to features on your Roadmap. Attachments can now be included on features created from the internal roadmap.
16. Filter in the Ideas Grid for Flagged Ideas. And lastly, we added a sortable column that shows the number of flags on idea that has not been addressed by an admin to make it easier for admins to prioritize straight from the grid.
Do you have any ideas you’d like to share about our product? We’re listening and use this feedback to prioritize our roadmap! Submit your ideas at our feedback forum.
