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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! Roadmaps | Idea management notifications

One of the wonderful aspects of ideas portals in Aha! Roadmaps is that Aha! Roadmaps will notify idea creators and subscribers for you. As you change the status of an idea, comment on it, or promote it to your roadmap, anyone invested in the idea will see each update, so you do not need to remember who to contact.

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Adjust 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.

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. They are also able to unsubscribe themselves from notifications with a link at the bottom of all emails.

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Notifications by user type

There are several types of users in ideas portals:

  • Public creators: This user registered or was added as a public user for a public portal and created an idea. Any idea they create is public by default.

  • Private creators: This user self-registered or was added as a user to a private portal and created an idea. Any idea they create is visible to other users in that portal, by default.

  • Employees: This user self-registered or was added as an Employee and created an idea. This means any ideas they create are private, visible only to other Employees. This type of user is useful for users who do not have access to your entire Aha! Roadmaps account, but who submit ideas that you do not want visible to your entire portal — like a beta test group, for example, or an invitation-only group of power users.

  • Aha! user: This user is also an Aha! Roadmaps user, meaning they have access to log into your Aha! Roadmaps account and will automatically be logged into the ideas portal. If they create an idea from within Aha! Roadmaps, it is automatically set to private. If they create an idea on a public or private portal (like any other user), it will default to Employee settings and only be visible to others who are Employee.

When a user creates, votes on, adds a proxy vote to, or comments on an idea, they become subscribers to that idea. Subscribers are notified of important status changes to an idea. The sender of the emailed notification will be the portal's name.

When a portal user creates an idea, they will receive an email acknowledgment thanking them for their submission. Then, on a public or a private idea portal, the user will be notified as the idea progresses through your idea statuses. Similarly, if a portal user votes or comments on an existing idea, they will become subscribers and also be notified of changes to the idea. Ideas portal users can one-click unsubscribe to portal email notifications if they do not want to receive notifications.

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 customer or user is subscribed to that idea.

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

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Notifications by idea status

Not all status changes trigger notifications. 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. 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

In addition to notifications sent based on status, other notifications are triggered based on the portal type and user type.

You may choose to have a public, private, or submit-only portal.

  • 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. You can also enable proxy voting in private portals, so users those portals can vote on behalf of customers and organizations.

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

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Notifications table: public or private portal

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

Action

Creator/Subscriber

Employee/ Creator/Subscriber

Aha! Roadmaps user

An Aha! Roadmaps 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! Roadmaps user comments* on an idea

X

X

X

An Aha! Roadmaps user privately comments* on an idea

-

-

X

A public portal, non-Aha! Roadmaps 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 table: submit-only portal

A submit-only portal allows anyone to submit an idea, but no one can see those ideas published.

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! Roadmaps administrator to make this change for them.

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

Action

Portal user

Aha! Roadmaps user

You create an idea

X

-

Admin response is posted

-

X

Aha! Roadmaps 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! Roadmaps 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! Roadmaps

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! email domains and IP addresses.

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