Introducing Custom Idea Fields and Advanced Filtering

On the heels of a very productive 2022, we wanted to jump-start 2023 by tackling two feature requests that have received a lot of interest from the UserVoice community: Custom Idea Fields and Advanced Filtering.

As anyone who has received a lot of customer feedback will tell you, managing a large volume of feedback without the right tools and processes in place can be overwhelming. Add a backlog of mature requests and various stakeholders to the mix, and it becomes even more complicated. 

Organization and visualization become essential in this regard. Without parameters for grouping and prioritizing ideas, deriving meaningful insights from feedback becomes nearly impossible. 

UserVoice has excelled in the depth of contextual data and analysis tools we provide. Still, these requests indicated that our users wanted more data autonomy to mirror their unique business workflows and objectives as closely as possible.

With that, we’re pleased to introduce Custom Idea Fields and Advanced Filtering– two exciting feature updates that give our users even more flexibility over how they want to view, manage, and connect their feedback data.

Custom Idea Fields: Next-Level Idea Management

With Custom Idea Fields, UserVoice admins have the power to create their own fields to capture and link important business information to ideas using the following field types:

• Text: A single line of text.
• Multi-Line Text: A long text field that can span multiple lines. This option is good for notes and longer descriptions.
• Select List: Text entries that can be added as drop-down options in a single-select format. This option is great for attaching an idea to a specific business goal or strategic initiative.
• Select List (numeric values): Numeric entries that can be added as drop-down options in a single-select format. This field type helps calculate rank, effort, scores, etc.
• Number: Whole or decimal numeric values for scoring, prioritizing, and assessing development hours.
• Date & Time: Date entries for assigning due dates and release dates.
• Boolean: A yes or no toggle to indicate (for example) if an idea has undergone review.
• URL: A text field for adding a hyperlink to a resource, design prototype, pitch, etc.
• Admin Select: Admin names for assigning a team member to an idea.
• Currency (USD): Whole or decimal numeric values for adding dollar amounts to an idea (to forecast impact or determine associated costs). 

‍

‍

How Can this Feature Help my Team?

Custom Idea Fields are a way to ensure customer requests and ideas contain internal-facing information that aids your idea management and prioritization process. For instance, these fields can be used to:

• Assign ideas to a fellow administrator. When an admin gets assigned to an idea, they will automatically receive an email notification for visibility. 
• Assign an internal priority to an idea.
• Assign a go-live date and time to an idea.
• Indicate whether an idea has been reviewed or not.
• Associate an idea with a strategic goal.
• Allocate a budget to a feature request.
• Add a prototype link to an idea.

How are Custom Idea Fields Different From Labels?

Many users may be using labels (or tags) already in this capacity, but fields offer the advantage of a cleaner UI, and each custom field will have its own dedicated column when exported. Only a handful are currently sortable, but we plan to enable sorting options for additional field types in a follow-up release. 

To learn more about Custom Filters and watch a quick tutorial, visit our Knowledge Base. 

Advanced Filtering: For Deeper Data Analysis

Along with adding Custom Fields, we enhanced our filtering capabilities to allow users to build their own insights criteria. Using multiple filters (following “and” logic), customers can narrow in on data to extract finer insights. For example, they can apply a stack of filters to see:

• Which of their ideas, existing in a specific forum and category, received support (or engagement) from specific accounts (ex. in-target or churned)? 
• Which of their older ideas (based on a designated time frame) had a recent uptick in activity (votes, comments, importance ratings)?
• Which of their ideas garnered more than X votes in a specific period?
• Which of their ideas had no end-user activity (comments, votes) in a specific period?
• Which of their ideas had internal activity (status updates) but need follow-up as that activity last happened long ago?

‍