The Frog Ideas Portal was launched last year so that Frog customers could put forward suggestions for how we can improve our products, see what other ideas have been suggested and vote for their favourites to influence our development work. It allows schools to know where their idea is, what we and others think about it and if we’re going to take it on board. Register for the Ideas Portal and have your say.
Your Ideas Count
Since the Ideas Portal was launched we have implemented nearly 60 ideas, with a further 12 currently in development or ready for release. Ideas can be for Learn, Play or Progress and can be as simple or complicated as you like.
Examples of ideas suggested by customers and which have been developed and released are: an Image Carousel widget, Document Preview widget, the ability to use custom mark schemes and grades for assignments, users resetting their own password and many others. For a full list of ideas which have been implemented visit the released page on the Ideas Portal.
How the Ideas Portal works
Each school is asked to nominate three advocates – one technical, one for teaching and learning, and one from school administration. These advocates represent the school and can suggest ideas, vote for ideas submitted by others and leave comments. You can view ideas already submitted by category, see which are trending and which are most likely to be implemented based on having the the most votes.
Once you’ve logged in, an advocate can:
· Submit a new idea
· Vote for an existing idea
· Comment on an existing idea
· Subscribe to an existing idea
Once an idea has been submitted, other schools can then vote and comment. We review the Ideas Portal regularly, and if an idea receives over a set number of votes we will review it for development and will update its status. Once an idea is accepted it will move into our development window and eventually moves towards release. At each phase we will update its status so that any user who has voted, commented or subscribed to an idea will receive an email notification and see exactly what is going on.
List of statuses in the Ideas Portal:
- Already Exists - This idea already exists in the product and therefore the idea can be closed
- Under Consideration - We have looked at the idea and are considering it. Often we will set this status if we have asked a question, or are looking for more clarification.
- Likely to implement - The idea has been accepted, but it has not been moved into planned workflow. It is waiting to move to ‘Planned’ status. No estimate of delivery will be given – we intend to do it, but we don’t currently know when.
- Planned - The idea has been accepted and moved into our planned work. This means it is in line for development and will have an estimate of a release when it may be delivered.
- In Development - Our dev team are working on it right now.
- Complete - The idea has been developed and is awaiting a release.
- Released - The idea has gone out in a release.
- Will Not Implement - It is not possible for us to make every single change, and sometimes we will not be able to implement an idea. We will always give a reason for this.
- Closed - A general safety net for ideas that simply need closing. We will always give a reason for this.
Changes to the Ideas Portal
Since the Ideas Portal was set up we’ve received over 420 suggestions and 6,500 votes from you. There’s a lot of ideas on there, so to make the portal easier to use we’re making some changes over the Summer. Any ideas which haven’t had any votes or comments for over 12 months will be closed and archived so the portal does not become unmanageable. Don’t worry just yet though, if you’ve submitted one of these ideas you have next few weeks to get support and votes for your idea before it will be archived. We are not saying we don’t want to build them, just that we need to commit our development resource on the most demanded ideas and so if ideas stagnate then we need to keep them moving.
Tips for using the Ideas Portal
Only vote for what is important
If you vote for everything, then that simply raises the baseline across the whole portal. Your votes are not ‘Likes’ – don’t vote for everything you like, vote for the most important for you at this time.
Everyone using a small number of votes to focus on what is important to them will have a much more significant effect.
Leave comments
The more information that is attached to an idea, the better. It will encourage other users to vote – and when we come to develop the idea, our team has a much clearer idea of what we need to achieve.
Avoid duplication
It’s worth searching and reading ideas that are already in the portal to see if anything already posted covers what you need. You can then vote that up the list. After all, one idea with 10 votes will rank higher than two ideas with five.