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This article discusses proxy votes or ideas portal custom domains. You need to be an Ideas Advanced customer to access these features. Please contact us if you would like a live demo or would like to try using it in your account. If your Aha! account was created before October 20, 2020, you may have access to these integrations, but you will need to upgrade to Ideas Advanced for any future enhancements.

Aha! Ideas | Idea management notifications

One of the wonderful aspects of ideas portals in Aha! Ideas is that they can notify idea creators and subscribers for you. As you change the status of an idea or comment on it, anyone invested in the idea will receive email notifications of each update, so you do not need to remember who to contact.

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Who can subscribe to an idea

Anyone who creates or comment on an idea is automatically subscribed to that idea — regardless of their user type. Portal users, employees, and Aha! Ideas user all receive notifications for ideas they have created or commented on.

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How portal users are subscribed to ideas

Portal users can subscribe to an idea four ways: if they create the idea, vote on it, add a proxy vote, or comment on it. You can also subscribe a portal user to a particular idea by using their name in @mentions in portal comments. After any of those actions, they will receive email updates as the idea moves through its status workflow

To submit an idea on behalf of a customer, portal users can create the idea, then owners and contributors can change the idea's creator to the customer. This is useful for reporting purposes but also ensures that the user is subscribed to that idea.

Finally, for Ideas Advanced users, portal users in private ideas portals can add proxy votes to ideas on behalf of organizations and contacts at those organizations. Proxy voting adds the portal user as a subscriber, not the organization.

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Notification defaults

By default, users who create or subscribe to an idea will receive notifications about that idea. However, you can change this default, unsubscribe single users, or unsubscribe all users in your ideas portal.

To adjust these defaults, open your ideas portal settings by navigating to either Settings ⚙️ Account Ideas portals or Ideas Overview.

  • From your account settings, click the name of the ideas portal whose settings you wish to edit.

  • From Ideas Overview, click the pencil icon by the name of the ideas portal whose settings you wish to edit.

You will need to be an administrator with customization permissions to do this.

Once in your portal settings, navigate to Emails General.

  • Scroll down to the Notifications setting. Check the box to change whether ideas portal users should be subscribed to ideas notifications by default.

    Individual ideas portal users can always opt back in to idea notifications.

Next, navigate to Users General.

  • To unsubscribe individual users, hover over a user's name, click the More options menu, then click click Unsubscribe.

  • To unsubscribe all users in your ideas portal, click the More options menu at the top of the users list, then select Unsubscribe all portal users. Individual ideas portal users can always opt back in to idea notifications.

Portal users can unsubscribe themselves from notifications with a link at the bottom of all emails.

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Status change notifications

Generally, status changes are a good reason to notify subscribers that an idea has been updated — but you might not want users to be notified about certain status changes.

You can control which statuses will trigger a notification. Notifications will only be sent to portal users when an idea's status changes to any status which has Show in ideas portal checked in your idea workflow.


You can customize the idea workflow by going to Settings ⚙️ Account Statuses and workflows.

Bulk editing the status of ideas will not trigger subscriber notifications.

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Notifications by portal type and user origin

Aha! Ideas will send a notification to an idea's subscribers when the idea's status changes, when an Aha! Ideas users adds an admin response to an idea, or when a user has added a new portal comment to an idea. Aha! Ideas will send other notifications based on your ideas portal type and portal user type.

You may choose to have a public, private, or submit-only portal. Here is a reminder of the type of ideas portals you can create in your account and who can use them:

  • Public portals allow anyone to register, but you can also add email domains to allow a subset of portal users to be classified as Employees. This means that a public portal can have both types of users.

  • Private portals, on the other hand, ensure that no one can access that portal unless they have an email address that matches the email domains you've entered into the configuration. For example, companyemail.com would allow anyone@companyemail.com to self-register. If you are an Ideas Advanced user, you can also enable proxy voting in private portals, so users those portals can vote on behalf of customers and organizations.

  • Submission only portals do not allow users to view their ideas once submitted. Notifications will only be sent when the idea is created.

See the tables below to see who receives notifications and what actions trigger them, based on the type of ideas portal you are using.

Notifications from public and private portals

The table below outlines which portal user types receive notifications and which actions trigger them.

X = users who receive an email if subscribing, watching, or participating

Action

Creator/Subscriber

Employee/Creator/Subscriber

Aha! Ideas user

An Aha! Ideas user publicly comments* on an idea

X

X

X

An admin response is posted

X

X

X

An idea's status changes**

X

X

X

You create an idea

X

X

-

A private portal, non-Aha! Ideas user comments* on an idea

X

X

X

An Aha! Ideas user privately comments* on an idea

-

-

X

A public portal, non-Aha! Ideas user comments* on an idea

-

-

X

You vote on an idea

-

-

-

Someone else votes on an idea

-

-

-

*Comment notification emails include the 10 most recent comments on an idea.

**Notifications will only be sent to portal users when the status changes to any status which has Show in ideas portal checked in your idea workflow.

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Notifications from submit-only portals

A submit-only portal allows anyone to submit an idea, but no one can see those ideas published. The table below outlines which portal user types receive notifications and which actions trigger them.

Unlike public and private ideas portals, submit-only portal users do not have access to a user profile. If a submit-only ideas portal user wishes to unsubscribe from notifications, they will need to contact an Aha! Ideas administrator to make this change for them.

X = users who receive an email if subscribing, watching, or participating

Action

Portal user

Aha! Ideas user

You create an idea

X

-

Admin response is posted

-

X

Aha! Ideas user privately comments*

-

X

Idea submitter comments* via email

-

X

Idea status changes**

-

X

*Comment notification emails include the 10 most recent comments on an idea.

**Notifications will only be sent to Aha! Ideas users when the status changes to any status which has Show in ideas portal checked in your idea workflow.

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Weekly summary email

You can enable the weekly summary email for portal users to provide them with a general view of your portal's weekly activity. The weekly summary email provides portal users with summary stats of ideas, votes, and comments for the previous week and details of the most popular ideas in the portal for the previous week. Portal users can customize which categories they want to see in the weekly summary email from their user profile page.

When enabled, all portal users will be subscribed to the weekly summary email automatically — but they can unsubscribe at any time if they do not wish to receive it.

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Improve email reception from Aha! Ideas

If you or your portal users report that your emailed idea notifications are getting caught by your company's spam filters, you may need to allow list Aha! Ideas email domains and IP addresses.

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