Last month, we made the exciting announcement that Idea Lab—our home for crowdsourced enhancements and feature suggestions—would be moving to the UserVoice-based Idea Exchange platform.
Like its predecessor, Idea Exchange will allow all Innovative customers to submit, comment on, and vote on ideas for product enhancements, while implementing several improvements to enhance the user experience.
What you need to know
Current Idea Lab members have until February 25, 2023, to vote and comment on current ideas. Working with leadership from the Innovative Users Group (IUG), the transition to Idea Exchange will begin in March 2023.
Idea Exchange is scheduled to roll out to all users on April 3, 2023.
Where to learn more
Your involvement with Idea Lab was paramount to its success. That’s why we want to make this transition as seamless as possible. To help answer some of your questions, and to better explain this change, we put together the handy FAQ linked below.
We will also be available on site at IUG 2023 Conference in Phoenix, Arizona to walk you through the UserVoice platform from May 10-13, 2023.
Idea Lab to Idea Exchange Transition FAQ
Some things will be changing as Innovative ideas migrate from Idea Lab to the new Idea Exchange platform.
As we posted recently, Idea Lab—your home for crowdsourced enhancements and feature suggestions—will be moving to the UserVoice-based Idea Exchange platform.
Like Idea Lab, Idea Exchange will allow all Innovative customers to submit, comment on, and vote on ideas for product enhancements, while implementing several improvements to enhance the user experience.
What is changing?
On April 3, 2023, the Innovative Product team and the Innovative User’s Group (IUG) will roll out the new customer engagement platform, Idea Exchange, which replaces the existing Idea Lab space. While we are introducing the new platform in April, we are planning activities to officially launch the site at the IUG Conference in May 2023.
Idea Exchange will be open to all Innovative customers, from front-line staff to directors, to submit, comment on, and vote on ideas for product enhancements. You are not required to be a member of the IUG to contribute to Idea Exchange.
Why is this changing?
With this move, Innovative will join ProQuest and Ex Libris in using the Idea Exchange platform, which means libraries will have a more consistent experience when making enhancement suggestions.
Additionally, the new platform supports several spaces. We will create spaces for our core products of Polaris, Sierra and Vega, as well as individual spaces for many of our other products, such as INN-Reach, Mobile Worklists and IPA. This will help our products get more recognition in importance and help drive our roadmap decisions.
What is the new URL?
The new URL for Idea Exchange will be ideas.iii.com.
Can I still submit ideas to Idea Lab?
The last day to submit ideas was December 31, 2022.
Until February 25, 2023, we are continuing to capture votes, comments, and other feedback for existing ideas at Idea Lab at idealab.iii.com. After February 25, 2023, we will close our existing Always Open spaces to begin the transition to the new Idea Exchange site.
By mid-March 2023, Idea Lab will be closed, as we move to the new Idea Exchange site.
Will there be any changes to the Idea Lab Leadership Team?
The current Idea Lab Leadership Team will work through the transition to Idea Exchange. We will pick a name for the team that better reflects the change to Idea Exchange.
How does Idea Exchange compare to Idea Lab?
Idea Exchange is very similar to Idea Lab. Both platforms provide an opportunity for users to submit ideas, vote on their favorites and engage in dialogue with other librarians about any idea. The Idea Exchange platform also allows the Innovative Product teams to share in the conversation as well as provide updates as the ideas move into different stages.
As noted above, Innovative will join ProQuest and Ex Libris in using the Idea Exchange platform. This will be a real benefit to our customers, many of whom have multiple products across the Clarivate portfolio. Using the same platform for all products will result in an easier-to-use experience!
Which ideas are moving to the new platform?
We will be moving many of the open ideas from Idea Lab to Idea Exchange. This transition offers us an opportunity to look through all ideas, and Innovative will work with the Idea Lab Leadership Team to identify the ideas to move forward to Idea Exchange. We’ll be sharing more information about the selection process in the weeks to come.
In addition, we are excited to announce that Vega LX will be part of the Innovative Idea Exchange experience, so get ready with those ideas for Vega Discover, Promote, and Program too!
What about Timed Challenges?
While Timed Challenges are not natively supported on the Idea Exchange platform, we understand how important these collaborative events are to the IUG community. We are researching how we can continue these fun events and how we might improve them using tools on the new Idea Exchange site!
We plan to introduce some options at the upcoming IUG Conference in May 2023.
Will we lose our existing votes & comments?
We are investigating options to bring forward existing votes and comments. Innovative and the Idea Lab Leadership Team are sorting through ways to preserve the history of ideas and will have more information as we work through the transition.
How will this impact the Product Roadmaps? Specifically, the “Submit Idea” button on the Product Roadmap pages?
This change will have no impact on the Product Roadmaps.
Are there any further changes?
There will be some nominal changes as we transition to the new Idea Exchange platform. One such change is that ideas will no longer be graduated to the next stage automatically. We understand that this is a change to existing workflows and feel that requiring a more manual approach will help to clarify the true nature of the idea status. This, in turn, will reduce some of the confusion that might exist when using an automated process.
While we will see other minor changes, we are confident that this transition will result in a better overall customer experience, as we join the Ex Libris & ProQuest products on Idea Exchange, in addition to bringing the Vega products to the platform too! We will see all the benefits of being Better Together!