How do I create a new idea conversation in the Instructure Community?

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Idea conversations allow people to initiate conversations about desired improvements or enhancements to Instructure product functionality. It is one of many inputs considered when choosing to build new features into Instructure products. Idea conversations are found in the Ideas hub. Learn more about the feature idea process and development process.

Open Ideas

To open the Idea Conversations hub, click the Roadmap drop-down menu [1].

Use the options in the Ideas Conversations menu [2] to view idea conversations for Canvas products [3], Additional Products [4], and all Instructure products [5].

View Existing Idea Conversations

Before posting your idea, see if your idea or a version of your idea has been suggested.

To view all currently active conversations, click the Open for Conversation label in the Idea Statuses section.

Search Existing Idea Conversations

By default, the global search bar returns results for keywords in the entire community. To limit your search to the idea conversations hub, click the All Community drop-down [1] and select the Idea Exchange option [2].

To search for ideas by keyword, enter keywords in the Search field [3].

To view an idea conversation, click on the idea conversation title [4].

Comment, Rate, and Subscribe to an Idea

Add comments

If your idea is a slight variation of an existing conversations or you have additional thoughts, you may want to add comments to the existing conversation thread.

Rate the idea

If the idea is in the open for conversation stage, you can rate the idea.

Subscribe to the idea

If you'd like to keep an eye on the idea (along with the comments and status), you can subscribe to the idea.

Start a New Idea Conversation

To create a new idea, click the Suggest an idea button.

Note: You must be logged into the Instructure Community to suggest an idea.

Submission Guidelines

Follow these simple guidelines to write clear and useful idea submissions:

Have one idea per conversation

Conversations that contain more than one idea can be unclear and confusing when it comes to ratings and discussion.

• Complicated - 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 - Single Idea: I would like to be able to weight rubric points so that all of my criteria have the same weight but differing point totals.
• Better - Single Idea: I want parents to be able to see rubrics from the syllabus.

Choose a descriptive subject line for your idea conversation:

• Non-Descriptive Subject Line: Fix Discussion Threads
• Better Subject Line: Add a Manual Read/Unread Toggle to Discussion Threads
• Non-Descriptive Subject Line: Make Pages Better
• Better Subject Line: Text Wrap around Images on Pages

The Community Team reserves the right to modify the title of an idea conversation or subject line for clarity and/or ease of search. Author will be notified of changes.

Be Specific

Oftentimes people have the best ideas for improvement when they are the most frustrated. Try to state your idea clearly and concisely. Remember that you are asking many community volunteers to read and consider what you write.

In addition to a clear description, support your ideas with any/all of the following:

• Include specific examples of ways this feature is needed to facilitate teaching, learning, or administration.
• Share screenshots and/or screencasts of any kind.
• Stick to the single idea in your subject line and please avoid additional ideas in your post as it is hard to express sentiment on a series of ideas. If you need to expand your idea into multiple ideas, please submit a new idea.

State the specific desired outcome or goal, then let the product managers and engineers think about how they can best add a given functionality to the product.

• Prescriptive: I would like a blue button in the upper right corner of the student submission screen in the SpeedGrader that when clicked opens a file browse option that lets the teacher upload a file to the SpeedGrader and adds a submitted by text next to the submission date and time. And the student and any other graders in the class should then receive a notification that the teacher has submitted for the student.
• Specific: I would like for there to be a way for teachers to submit assignments on behalf of students.

Add Use Cases and Scenarios

Make sure other readers can understand why you want the option to do something in that Instructure product. What is the teaching technique or activity that this feature would enable teachers and learners to employ? Adding a paragraph that begins with phrasing such as, "In my discipline professors often ask students to..." can go a long way to helping people who may not be familiar with the submitter's background can understand why this feature would be a priority.

Tag Idea

Tags increase the success of searching for and sorting ideas. Help connect your idea to other ideas, or help other community members find your idea by adding tags for idea conversations.

Be Patient

Community input is very important to the product development process. While it is true that the product changes frequently, many of these improvements take months and thousands of hours of work to develop. We also periodically conduct major overhauls of different areas of Instructure products. This process means that even if everyone agrees that developing a given feature would be a good use of finite development resources, it may be a long time before the feature can be developed, and it may have to wait in line as part of a larger development schedule.

Subscribe or Bookmark your Idea Conversation

To view the options for your idea conversation, click the Options icon [1].

By default, you are automatically subscribed to ideas you create. Subscriptions allow you to receive email updates whenever users interact with your idea conversation. To unsubscribe to your idea, click the Unsubscribe option [2].

To bookmark your idea conversation, click the Bookmark option [3]. Bookmarks enable you to list your conversation on a special page so you can easily find it again.

Your continued support and participation in the community forums are very valuable to Canvas as a product and to the user experience. We urge you to keep sharing, commenting, and voting.