Engagement Board

The idea board for your company

Engagement Board is a web part designed to facilitate the collection of ideas within your organization. Thanks to this innovative solution, employees can take advantage of the corporate intranet to actively contribute suggestions, proposals, and feedback, creating a collaborative and stimulating environment.

Engagement Board functions as a virtual bulletin board where users can post their ideas and vote on those of others. The following steps describe the essential workings of the component:

Idea submission: users can easily add new ideas by describing their content and objectives. They simply need to click the Add button (1).
Approval: an approval flow can be implemented so that ideas are published only after being approved by selected people.
Voting: each user can vote for the ideas they find most valuable and promising. The number of likes (votes) is displayed on each post (2).
Filtering: ideas can be filtered and organized based on various criteria, such as the number of likes (3) or the category they belong to (4).
Leaderboard: users who have proposed the most ideas are displayed on a leaderboard (5), which further incentivizes participation.

The use of Engagement Board brings numerous advantages to your organization, including:

Creativity encouragement: it allows all intranet users to contribute their ideas, fostering a creative and innovative environment.
Employee engagement: it increases the sense of belonging and involvement of employees, who feel they are an active part of the decision-making process.
Decision support: it provides a solid basis for making informed and strategic decisions, thanks to the collection of feedback and the active participation of employees.

Explore the advantages of Intranet.ai Engagement Board by clicking here to learn more.

Add the Engagement Board web part to a SharePoint Page

If your page is not already in edit mode, click Edit at the top right of the page.
Click on it and, in the web part search box, enter engagement to quickly find and select the Engagement Board web part.

Configuration

List settings

In this section you need to specify the lists from which the web part will retrieve information. Specifically, Engagement Board relies on three SharePoint lists:

Engagement Posts: this list stores the posts containing users' ideas.
Engagement Likes: this list stores the likes given to the posts.
Engagement Categories: this list is used by the intranet's administrators to create categories. To learn how to create categories, please read the dedicated section.

If you're not in edit mode already, click Edit at the top right of the page.

Enter the URL of the site where the Engagement Posts list is located.
Select the Engagement Posts list from the drop-down menu.
Enter the URL of the site where the Engagement Likes list is located.
Select the Engagement Likes list from the drop-down menu.
Enter the URL of the site where the Engagement Categories list is located.
Select the Engagement Categories list from the drop-down menu.

Each post on the idea board appears as a card with the following information:

The title of the idea;
The author of the idea (this information can be hidden);
The publication date (this information can be hidden);
The category, identified by an icon (this information can be hidden);
The number of likes;
A button to copy the link to the post (this button can be hidden).

Clicking on the card opens a panel which shows the description of the idea. The description may include one or more images.

This section of the property pane includes a number of settings to hide the following elements:

The category name;
The category icon;
The author of the post;
The publication date;
The Copy link button

Finally, you have two options to:

Enable image loading: if you activate this option, users will be able to load pictures to better illustrate their ideas. As mentioned above, these images will appear in the description of the idea.
Set the maximum number of images that can be uploaded: here you need to select a number from 1 to 5.

Filter settings

This section serves the main purpose of configuring filters and pre-filters.

If you're not in edit mode already, click Edit at the top right of the page.

Firs of all, click on Configure filters and complete the panel as follows:

Choose filter: Category.
Enter custom filter name: type the name of the filter, which will be displayed on the right side of the application.

For example: "Category"

Choose whether to show the search field: tick this box if you want to show a search bar in the drop-down menu of the filter. This search bar allows you to search for categories, so it is particularly useful if you have a significant number of categories, as it allows you to find them more quickly.
Indicate whether the filter is open by default: here you can choose if the drop-down menu of the filter will be open or close by default. Tick this box if you want it to be open by default.

When the configuration is complete, click Save to close the panel.

Then, you can decide to:

Hide filters: if you enable this option, the filter panel won't be displayed.
Hide the ranking: if you enable this option, the leaderboard won't be displayed.
Hide the Add button: if you enable this option, the Add button won't be displayed.

This functionality may be useful in the following use case: imagine creating a themed idea board where users can submit ideas and suggestions during a specific time frame. Once the submission period ends, the Add button can be hidden. This prevents users from adding new ideas while still allowing them to view the board and interact with existing posts. This functionality is particularly useful for managing time-sensitive initiatives or campaigns.

Finally, you can configure a pre-filter to display only ideas that belong to a specific category. The steps to take are as follows:

Choose the field for the pre-filter: select Category from the drop-down menu.
Enter the value for the pre-filter: type the name of the category you would like to display.

Display order and pagination settings

In this section you can set the number of posts to display.

If you're not in edit mode already, click Edit at the top right of the page.

Set the number of ideas to display by selecting a number from 1 to 6. Users will be able to view more posts by cliking the Load more button.

Text settings

This section allows you to customize some labels of the web part.

If you're not in edit mode already, click Edit at the top right of the page.

Specifically, you can type a custom name for:

The Add button;
The scoreboard;
The All button;
The Most voted button.

When the configuration is complete, click on Publish or Republish to publish your changes.

Submitting ideas: how does it work?

Intranet visitors can add new ideas to the board by clicking the Add button in the upper right corner of the application. Clicking the Add button opens the Create new panel, with a number of fields to fill in. The fields marked with an asterisk (*) are mandatory.

Insert title: here the user is asked to type the title of the post.
Insert description: the user can use this field to describe their idea more in detail.
Select category: a category must be selected from the drop-down menu, which displays the categories previously created by the intranet's administrators. To learn how to create categories, please read the dedicated section.
Upload image: if this option is enabled, the user can upload one ore more images to better illustrate their suggestion.

After completing the panel, the user needs to click on Submit. If an approval flow has been implemented, the idea won't be added to the board until it is approved. Otherwise, it will immediately be displayed on the board. For further information on the approval flow, please read the dedicated section.

This section explains how to add categories to the Engagement Categories list.

First of all, click on the Settings icon at the top right of the page, then click on Site contents.
Scroll down and select the list named Engagement Categories.

To add a new category, click on + Add new item.

Fill in the Title field with the name of the category. This is the only mandatory field, as indicated by the asterisk.
If you have created a custom icon and uploaded it to SharePoint, complete the IconUrl field with the picture URL.

To create the icon URL, follow these steps:

Access the folder where you have uploaded the image. Usually, pictures are uploaded to the Site Assets document library.
Select the picture.
Click on the Info icon at the top right of the screen.
Click on the Path icon to copy the URL of the icon.
Finally, paste the icon URL into the required field.

Alternatively, you can choose an icon from this library and fill in the IconName field with the name of the selected icon.

When you have completed the panel, click on Save.

Implement an approval flow

As mentioned previously, an approval flow can be implemented so that ideas are added to the board only after being approved by selected people. To add this flow, two actions are required:

1) Create the flow manually with Power Automate;

2) Configure the Engagement Posts list by changing the default value of the Approved field. By default, the default value of this field is Yes: in this case, you need to change the defealt value to No. To do so, take the following steps:

Click on the Settings icon at the top right of the page, then click on Site contents.
Scroll down and select the list named Engagement Posts.

Select the Approved column and click on Column settings > Edit.

Change the default value from Yes to No.

Click on Save.

Configure the Engagement Posts and Engagement Likes lists

The Engagement Posts and Engagement Likes lists require a specific configuration so that intranet visitors can interact with the idea board. To learn how to configure these lists, read the dedicated guide. In particular, please refer to the Second type of configuration section.