Add ideas that you're exploring to your roadmap and then promote these ideas to features when you're ready to build them. Internal stakeholders can add customers to the ideas on your roadmap to validate them before you promote these ideas to roadmap features, which you can then share externally.
For more information about roadmaps in Listen, including the items that you can add to your roadmaps, see Roadmaps in Listen and Create and edit roadmaps.
How it works
Adding an idea directly to your roadmap is different from promoting an idea to a feature on your roadmap.
- Ideas on your roadmap show internal stakeholders the ideas that you're considering. These internal stakeholders can add customer votes to the ideas on your roadmap to help you validate them.
- Validated ideas can be promoted to features on your roadmap to communicate your commitment to building them. These plans can be shared both internally and externally depending on who you choose to share your roadmap with.
Ideas on roadmaps
Ideas that are added directly to your roadmap are only seen by other Listen users, allowing you to communicate what you're considering with internal stakeholders, before committing to building them. Internal stakeholders can then add votes to these ideas to help validate them.
You can have the same idea on multiple roadmaps.
Directly adding an idea to your roadmap doesn't promote the idea to a feature and so isn't seen on external versions of your roadmap.
Ideas promoted to features on roadmaps
Ideas that are promoted to features on your roadmap can be made publicly available, allowing you to communicate what you're committed to building both internally and externally. For instructions on how to make changes to your roadmap public by sharing an external version, see Share roadmaps.
There are two ways to promote ideas to features on your roadmap:
A promoted idea remains as an idea in the Validate page of Listen, as well as appearing as a feature in a backlog or roadmap that you promote the idea to. Edits you make to a feature don't change the original idea that feature was based on. After promoting ideas to individual features in your roadmap, you can group them with other features into initiatives. For instructions, see Create item hierarchies in Create and edit roadmaps.
While you can add the same idea to multiple roadmaps, you can only have one version of an idea in the same roadmap. This means that you can't promote an idea to a feature and then also add the original idea to the roadmap. You must choose to represent the idea as either an idea or a feature in the same roadmap. If you've already promoted an idea to a feature, and want to add it to the roadmap as an idea instead of a feature, delete the feature and then add the idea to your roadmap instead.
Add ideas directly to your roadmap
Any ideas that you add directly to your roadmap represent ideas that are in discovery and are only visible in the internal version of your roadmap. For information about internal and external versions of roadmaps, see Share roadmaps.
There are two ways to add an idea directly to your roadmap.
- From the + Add to roadmap button in the top-right corner of your roadmap.
- By hovering over one of your swimlanes and selecting + Add to roadmap > Add idea.
In both cases, the action opens a list of ideas in a panel on the right side of the roadmap. From here, you can:
- Select View in the top-right corner of any idea to see its details.
- Drag-and-drop an idea into one of the swimlanes in your roadmap.
You can then promote an idea that's already on your roadmap to a feature when you're ready to build it. For instructions, see Promote ideas to features on your roadmap in this article.
Remove ideas from your roadmap
To remove an idea from a swimlane in your roadmap select the idea and then select the Remove idea (back arrow) icon at the top of the panel on the right side of the screen. A temporary success message then appears in the top-right corner of the screen.
The idea isn't deleted. You can add the idea back to your roadmap at any time by following the instructions in Add ideas directly to your roadmap in this article.
If you want to delete your idea, follow the instructions in Create and manage ideas.
Promote ideas to features from your roadmap
If you already have the idea in one of the swimlanes in your roadmap:
- Select the idea in the roadmap. This opens the details of the idea in a panel on the right side of the screen.
- Select Actions in the bottom-left corner of the panel.
- Select Promote to feature.
The details of the feature then appear in the panel on the right side of the screen, which you can edit by changing the title, status, and description. This doesn't change the original idea that this feature is based on.
Promote an idea to a feature from the idea's details
You can promote an idea to a feature from the individual idea in Listen > Validate ideas. You can then add that feature to one or more roadmaps that you've either created or have been given Editor access to. For information about roadmap access and how to manage items in your roadmaps, see Roadmaps in Listen.
Promoting ideas to features on your roadmap from an idea in the Validate page of Listen is a two-step process.
- Promote an idea to a feature that then appears in your roadmap backlog.
- Add the feature to your roadmap as you would with any other feature in your roadmap.
Step 1. Promote an idea to a roadmap feature
To promote an idea to a feature that appears in the backlog of a roadmap:
- Go to Listen > Validate ideas. The Ideas tab is open by default.
- Find and open the idea from the Ideas table. This opens a panel on the right side of the page, which shows the details of the idea.
- Select Actions in the bottom-left corner of the panel.
- Choose Promote to roadmap.
- In the window that opens, choose a roadmap from the dropdown menu. You only see roadmaps that you've created or have Editor access to.
- Select Add to roadmap in the bottom-right corner of the window. A temporary success message appears in the top-right corner of the screen, where you can select View now to go immediately to the roadmap that you promoted the idea to.
Step 2. Add the feature to your roadmap
After promoting an idea, you can find it as a feature in your roadmap's backlog and then add it to one of your roadmap swimlanes using the drag-and-drop functionality:
- Open the roadmap that you promoted your idea to. You can either select View now in the temporary success message that appears in the top-right corner of the screen, or go to Listen > Roadmaps and open the roadmap from the Roadmaps table.
- Select Backlog from the top-right corner of the roadmap.
- Select View to see the details of the new roadmap feature and edit it as appropriate. For example, you might want to edit the title or add a description.
- Drag-and-drop the feature into your roadmap, hover the new feature over an existing feature in the roadmap to create a new initiative, or drag the new feature into an existing initiative in the roadmap. For more information about how roadmap features and initiatives work, see Roadmaps in Listen.
You can then make promoted ideas public by sharing an external version of the roadmap. For instructions, see Share roadmaps.
Remove features from your roadmap
Features created from ideas are removed from your roadmap in the same way that normal roadmap features are removed. To remove a feature from a swimlane in your roadmap select the feature and then select the Move to backlog (back arrow) icon at the top of the panel on the right side of the screen. A temporary success message then appears in the top-right corner of the screen.
This doesn't delete your feature. To delete your feature, select the Delete feature (trash) icon instead. For more information about managing features in your roadmaps, see Manage items in your roadmap.