What is it?
Besides the option to run campaigns where each campaign more or less follows a different process, it is also possible to configure one general idea process and open different thematic campaigns on top of such a standard process.
This requires the definition of the idea workflow and a parent-child relation between a 'campaign parent' and the 'idea children'. In the following, the process of creating the campaign page and the parent-child configuration is described.
The Parent-Child feature enables you to automate the connection creation and grouping of content elements.
How does it work?
Creating a campaign entity and a first campaign example
To start with, you need to first create an entity that will reflect the template for any thematic campaign that you want to run in the future. You need to navigate to the Settings Wheel > Entity Configuration > Entity Configuration. Here, you can add a new template/entity, for instance, with the entity title: campaign. Add all the fields that you want to provide as part of the template. Apply the right permissions to define which user role is allowed to view and create in general a campaign.
You can also make use of the visibility tab to allow for more specific content-related campaign access. Please talk to your Customer Innovation Success Manager to enable this feature.
Once done, all allowed user roles will be able to create a campaign from the 'create' button in the main navigation menu. They can thus fill out the campaign template that you have defined.
You can further make use of the standard or a custom landing page to place each campaign prominently.
Allow the submission of ideas
The more critical part is now to allow the submission of ideas to such campaigns. Technically speaking, a parent-child relationship is created. Via a submission button, each new idea will be added as a child element to the parent campaign automatically.
On specific campaigns, users will find a Submit action button on the right-hand side of the detail page of the campaign, i.e., the parent element. This means that by creating the child element via the action button, the relation to the parent element is set automatically. Once clicked, the submission form for the idea intake will open, and the idea submitter is asked to fill it out. This step of the process is defined within the idea workflow configuration.
To make this submit button visible, you first need to enable the parent-child feature on the parent element, e.g., the campaign entity. If activated by your Customer Innovation Success Manager, you first need to enable the parent-child feature in the entity configuration of the parent element via the Settings Wheel > Entity Configuration > Entity Configuration and by clicking on the pen icon of the parent entity.
Here, you can select which entity (from the list of available entities) should become the child element. That means that you should have already configured a second entity, for instance, called 'idea'. If this exists, you will be able to choose this entity from the list of child entities.
You also have the option to activate a specific Kanban Board per campaign which will hold all submitted ideas to the respective challenge.
Once saved, a new configuration tab will appear called 'parent-child configuration', and a new static field 'Allow Submissions' is added to the Field Configuration of the respective parent entity.
On the parent-child configuration tab, you can now choose to hide the respective child element from the Create menu (1). This checkbox is unchecked per default. If the checkbox is checked, then the child entity type is not shown anymore as an option via the Create menu to the users who have permission to create elements. However, note that child elements may still be created via the Submit button on the detail page of a parent element.
Further, you may check the option to inherit parent information to a child element (2). This checkbox is unchecked per default. Enabling the option will allow you to define mappings between parent source- and child target fields to automatically inherit field values from a parent element to a child element during its creation. For example, a responsible user assigned to a parent element can now be automatically inherited during child element creation to reduce manual effort and improve consistency. The parent field values will thereby be added as default values in the mapped child fields in the child entity type create form. Hence, if the user saves the form with the inherited values, those will be assigned in the respective child field, however the values may still be adjusted during the creation process, e.g. aligned with the default value option for list fields. Note that the parent child inherit feature is not a continuous synchronization of the parent field values mapped to the child element, only during the creation process.
If checked, after saving the parent child configuration, a new sub tab Mappings will be shown besides the basic Overview sub tab. Clicking on the Mappings sub tab will open the mapping table. Click Add more fields (4) to select a field from the source entity, respectively the parent entity to the corresponding field of the child destination entity. Configure the Field Mapping (5) for list fields, and utilize the X icon (6) to remove selected field mappings again. Do not forget to save the mapping configuration by clicking on the Save button (7). You will be shown a validation message if the mapping has been saved successfully. Note that an adjusted mapping configuration will only apply to newly created child elements.
Once saved, the mapping will be active. Now, if a user creates a new child element via the Submit child element option on an individual parent element, any available values for parent fields mapped to a child field will automatically be inherited and displayed in the child create form. Note that the inherit functionality will not work when creating a child element from the global Create menu, since the dependency to a specific parent element is missing. Also, be aware that if a child field configured in the mapping table is not added in the create form of the child entity type, the default value will still be inherited on creation.
The following field types are available for selection for inheritance:
- Title, Abstract, and Profile Image
- List fields (excl. workflow field)
- User search fields
- User group search fields
- Element search fields
- Date fields
- Term search fields / Tags field
- Rich text editor fields
- Simple text field
- Location search fields
- Single line input fields /- of type number (excl. calculated fields and date field calculations)
- File fields
Note that for user search fields the system will prevent the inherit action for parent user values, if the Maximum Number configuration defined on the mapped child user search field would be exceeded.
Also, note that hybrid user values are only inherited from a parent user search field, if the child user search field has the Is hybrid option enabled in its field configuration. If not the case, any hybrid value from a parent user search field will not be inherited, while non-hybrid user values would still be inherited.
Besides, note that for user group search fields the system will validate which groups/contexts are selected in the child user group search field configuration, and only inherit those values from the parent user group search field.
Similarly, for element search fields, the system will validate the entity types selected on the child element search field configuration, and only inherit those elements from the parent element search field matching the selected entity types on the child element search field.
Note that generally a multi-select parent entity field cannot be mapped to a single-select child entity field.
Note that confidential fields will only be available for mapping for users having the required access rights.
Also, via the parent-child configuration tab, you can now check the box to inherit the visibility of the parent to the children (3). This means that only participants invited to a specific campaign will be allowed to view the related submissions.
As a second condition, the visibility tab needs to be activated for the parent (e.g., campaign) and the child entity (e.g., idea). The Visibility tab is displayed when you create or edit an element and needs to be activated by your Customer Innovation Success Manager.
You can choose from two different options to grant visibility access.
- Choose to invite all users if you want to give all users access to the element with the respective system permissions. This is checked by default.
- Note: If a user has no permission to see the entity type, they will not see this element. If you check the box Send notification to the invited users, a warning message will appear to prevent you from mistakenly sending out notifications to a large number of users when creating a campaign element.
- Choose Others if you want to restrict the visibility of this element further. Now, no user can view the element except for the ones that are added via the search field below. You can add single users and user groups, roles, and contexts (often: Business Units).
Typically, you would choose others in the visibility tab and add the respective roles, users, or user groups.
Note: When the Parent-Child feature is activated for an entity, a new static field Allow Submissions is added to the Field Configuration of the respective parent entity. The status of this static field controls whether a user is able to create child elements or not. If the Allow Submissions button is set to Active, the Submit Child button is available on the parent element, otherwise if the status is set to Inactive the Submit Child button will be disabled on the parent element. Also, if the Allow Submissions field is set to Inactive, no parent element can be added to a child element via the Relations tab. This can be set from the create/edit form of the specific content element. Please do not forget to add it to the create/edit form configuration.
Once the visibility of the parent is set and the parent-child feature is configured, new children content elements can be added from the respective parent content element by clicking the corresponding button, i.e., "Submit [entity]". Now, the visibility restrictions put on the parent element will be inherited by the child elements.
Finding all idea submissions of a campaign
If activated, you also have the option to display all ideas in a Kanban Board and along different swimlanes within the specific campaign page. After the activation of the Kanban Board on the tile for activating the parent-child feature, a new tab Kanban Configuration is added (1). Here, you select any list field from the swimlane field (2). This field can be any single select list field from your child elements. Don’t forget to click the Save button once you are done (3).
On the Board tab (here Idea Board of a specific campaign), you find the activated Kanban Board with the different swimlanes. Each swimlane has a title (here: Sustainability, Artificial Intelligence, Revenue). There is also a numeric indication of how many child elements belong to this attribute (and based on your applied filter sequence).
You can drag and drop the child elements to update them according to your needs.
You can also use the child tab on the detail page of the parent element (2). This tab will only list all submissions to this campaign.
There is a Filter (1) section that allows you to narrow down the list of child elements in different ways:
- By applying a Search.
- By applying different Filters. The shown filters are:
- General filters, e.g. Followed by
- Child element filters e.g. all dropdown filters, or user search field filters
- By applying a rating filter (if there are ratings configured for your child elements).
Note: The default sorting applied in the parent child board is date of modification to easily allow tracing back the latest changes on the underlying child elements.
Combining the campaign analysis with other ITONICS modules
Since the created parent and child entities are regular entities defined in the entity configuration, it is possible to use any ITONICS module, i.e., radar, matrix, board, network graph, Explorer, tag cloud, custom dashboard for further analysis. It is thus also possible to compare submissions between different campaigns or re-allocate one/multiple submission(s) from one campaign to another campaign.
To activate any module, first navigate to the entity, e.g., idea, for which you want to define a visualization, i.e., via the Settings Wheel > Entity Configuration > Entity Configuration. Click on the edit icon of the respective entity and activate the respective module on the page you landed.
After defining attributes (plus marking them as rating criteria) and defining rating criteria, you will be able to define a default view for the Matrix, Radar, and Board. Once the module has been activated, you will find a new tab for the default module configuration.
This will help you to oversee your complete idea portfolio. Furthermore, you can use the filter options, such as the "relate to" filter to narrow down your view to a specific campaign by entering the campaign's name into the 'relate to'-search bar.