- Categories
- Challenges
- Spam/Moderation
- Review Management
- ROI Tracking
- Real-time Monitor
- Profiles
- Ad-Free
- Voting
- RSS/Share Feeds
- Single Sign-On
- Export Data
- Domain Aliasing
- Custom Styles
- Encrypted Data
- API
- Email Support
Frequently Asked Questions
Categories
What is this for?
When you collect suggestions, it helps to organize them by category. With this feature, you can easily create categories for ideas, support issues, new software functions, trouble tickets, suggestions, inventions, cost savings, new products, or… anything.
Challenges
What is this for?
Instead of collecting generalized ideas or suggestions, you can prompt your participants to give you solutions to specific questions/challenges that you pose. Consider asking your technical group to solve a particularly troublesome issue, or ask a set of customers their best use for a newly introduced product. These challenges can also be timed to bolster your innovation participation rates and success.
Spam/Moderation Tools
What are Moderation Tools?
Users of your system are able to flag inappropriate comments and information. This is logged by the Moderation Tools and then can be reviewed by the Administrator for deletion or reversal.
Review Management
Why do we need to review ideas if our users are already voting the best to the top?
Even the best crowdsourcing methods often don't produce implementable ideas or projects. Review Management allows the Administrator to assign statuses and move ideas to the next logical step in project management.
Return on Investment (ROI) Tracking
Why is this important?
It's already on everyone's mind, particularly the skepitcal. So, you can easily add costs, benefits, values, and classification to your implemented innovations. Reports quickly provide the total returns.
What sort of metrics can we collect?
Total costs, total benefits, participation levels, approval rates, and others. You'll also be able to compare your results versus the aggregate results of other organizations with the same characteristics as yours.
Real-time Monitor
Why is this important?
Know who's logged in, and where the most activity is coming from. Watch in real-time as innovations are submitted, comments are made, and other activities are performed. You'll be able to see where things are working and most importantly, where they aren't and then make corrections.
Profiles
What sort of information are you collecting?
Our integration with RSX allows full integration with FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter and other popular social networking sites and profiles. We only collect what users are comfortable providing, such as interests, skills, and expertise.
Do you collect personal information?
No. And we don't want you to give us any either.
Why would I want to add profile information?
For a couple of reasons. First, any ideas/suggestions that you enter are credited to you. Second, if your organization supports single sign-on or other similar methods, then connecting to Flagpole is seamless. Third, you may be interested in sharing your expertise with other users in your community.
Ad-Free
We had to give you some incentive for signing up for a paid version, right? I've got a mortgage to pay.
Voting
How does this work?
Each user is allowed to vote up/down for each idea in your system. You can decide whether you want to allow voting for anonymous users or require that they create an account first. Voting is only the first part of selecting the best ideas. After users vote, reviewers can promote ideas into projects for implementation, thus creating a two-step process that insures the best suggestions are implemented.
What is Positive Only voting?
With this method, users are only permitted to give an idea/suggestion a thumbs up or positive vote. It subscribes to the theory, ‘if you don't have something nice to say, then don't say anything at all'. It eliminates negative input, but doesn't consider the ‘other side of the coin'.
What is Postive/Negative voting?
Users can give either a thumbs up or thumbs down vote for an idea. It is a closer approximation to what the crowd thinks, however, it allows negative votes and if ideas have high amounts of up and down votes, their overall score will be relatively low.
RSS/Share Feeds
Put the content from Flagpole into other systems. Users can monitor the RSS or Share feed from their favorite browser, portal, or network. To use this feature, just click the RSS Feed Icon at the top of the website. Additionally, click the ShareIt Icon to link your ideas and challenges to dozens of social networking sites.
Single Sign-On
What is this?
Simply stated, it means your users don't have to remember another username and password. You can automatically log into Flagpole using login information you already have. For example, when you log into your organization's network, this same information can be used to verify your account and password on Flagpole.
What methods do you support?
If your organization uses a separate authentication site we can connect with you via SAML or XML. If you just want to use HTTP, we can connect your users through an encrypted parameter in the URL.
Export Data
Can we enter data from an old innovation collection system?
Yes. We've created a simplified template for you to use to upload your ideas. If your data is complex, give us a call, and we'll be glad to help you.
Can I get my information out of Flagpole?
Yes. You can easily save your data to spreadsheets for further processing.
Domain Aliasing
What is Domain Aliasing?
This allows you to use your own URL instead of using the Flagpole assigned URL of XXXXXX.Flagpole-software.net. For example, you could use your organization's website, such as ideas.mycompany.com to access your site. You can easily set up this in the Administration page of Flagpole.
Custom Styles
What can be customized?
Colors, logos, and wording of the site can be changed to make your site fit your usage. Use this feature along with Categories and Challenges to create unique sites tailored to specific groups, departments, or locations.
Why would I need this?
Let the software development group create a site for collecting software functionality suggestions and a separate site for the marketing team to collect new product ideas. In each of these examples, you could customize the text that users see to match what you're trying to collect, upload a graphic, and change the colors so that you create two distinct communities.
Encrypted Data
Is my Data safe?
Yes. Your data is protected as it travels from our servers to your PC via Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption over the Internet. Once the data is on our servers, the database is further encrypted in our world-class Expedient hosting facility. This SAS70 certified facility is protected with 24-hour surveillance and biometric security, and utilizes state-of-the-art fire supression, redundant power, off-site backups, and a full complement of enterprise level network security systems to provide you with the highest level of security for your data.
Application Program Interface (API)
Use our API toolkit to build a site with .NET, .ASP, or JSP pages. All major functions and data are available, so you can create your own specializations or automatically synchronize with other software systems.
Email Support
We try our best to make the process as easy as possible, however, even the best laid plans of mice and men require explanation. Email us your questions, concerns, or issues and we'll provide an answer. No personal advice provided.