What are the guidelines for submitting a new idea?
At Instructure, we value product feedback from you, the actual users of the product. Submitting a new idea in the Instructure Community is the best way to have your voice heard by our product teams. To help you create an idea that is unique, constructive, and clear we have specific guidelines and policies. This helps our product teams best understand your requested change and how it applies to a product or feature.
In the Instructure Community, we require new users to spend time exploring and engaging with Community content in order to rank up to Community Member before submitting a new idea. If your Community account has the Community Novice rank, you will not be able to submit a new idea. You can learn more about ranking up in the Community.
Before you Submit a New Idea
Before you submit a new idea, we strongly recommend searching existing ideas for similar requests. Adding a rating and a comment to an existing idea adds more weight and clarity to the ongoing conversation and helps our product teams during the exploration stage of product planning.
Keep in mind that creating a new idea does not guarantee that it will be implemented. Our product team looks at many aspects of product planning and ideas when planning future work. Learn more in:
Submission Guidelines
The Community Team reserves the right to modify the title of an idea or subject line for clarity and/or ease of search. The author of the idea will be notified of changes.
Follow these simple guidelines to write clear and useful idea submissions:
Follow the Template
When completing the idea submission form, follow the template and answer all of the questions. Be sure to provide a clear explanation of the problem or opportunity you're encountering and your proposed solution or change to the product.
Have One Idea per Conversation
Conversations that contain more than one idea can be unclear and confusing when it comes to ratings and discussion. Ideas that contain more than one idea will be archived and the author will be notified.
Complicated:
One conversation with multiple ideas.
- I would like to be able to weight rubric points so that all of my criteria have the same weight but differing point totals, and I want parents to be able to see rubrics from the syllabus.
Better:
Multiple ideas split into two conversations.
- I would like to be able to weight rubric points so that all of my criteria have the same weight but different point totals.
- I want parents to be able to see rubrics from the syllabus.
Be Patient
A Community Team member will review each new idea within a few days, and a Product Team member will review it within a week. The thread will be updated with a status - Seeking Clarity, Open, or Will Not Consider - at that time.
Additionally, authors may be asked follow up questions to provide clarity for the product team or other members of the Community. Please respond to these time-sensitive inquiries at your earliest convenience.
Community input is very important to the product development process. Please remember that although Instructure products change frequently, many of these improvements take months to develop.
