Migrating from the legacy Ideas application to Idea Portal

  • Release version: Washingtondc
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Migrating from the legacy Ideas application to Idea Portal

    As you upgrade to the Washington DC release, it's essential to complete migration tasks to utilize the new Idea Portal effectively. This migration involves understanding new idea states, categories, and conversion processes to enhance your idea management experience.

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    Key Features

    • New Idea States: The Idea Portal introduces states such as Completed, Under Review, and In Backlog. Existing state values map to these new states, providing a clearer management structure.
    • Idea Categories: Organize ideas using categories for better relevance to products, departments, or business units. Default new categories are installed, and existing ideas can be mapped accordingly.
    • Conversion Options: Ideas can be converted into projects, epics, and stories through the Create Task button, provided the necessary Agile plugins are installed. You can control conversion options through button settings.
    • Business Rules: Review and adjust existing business rules in the idea table to ensure they align with your new processes.
    • Legacy Navigation Removal: To streamline user experience, remove navigation for the old Ideas application and deactivate the Submit an Idea option from the Service Catalog.

    Key Outcomes

    By completing the migration, you can enhance idea management through a structured portal, promote user engagement with improved navigation, and ensure that your existing ideas align with the new system. This transition will allow you to efficiently manage, categorize, and convert ideas into actionable work items, ultimately driving innovation within your organization.

    If you are upgrading to the Washington DC release, complete the migration tasks after the upgrade to start using the new Idea Portal.

    Review the following information and make any necessary changes to your configuration:

    Idea States

    The new Idea Portal provides new idea states such as Completed, Under Review, and In Backlog, which are mapped with your existing idea states. The following tables provide a comparison to the existing idea states and the equivalent new states with their values.
    Table 1. Legacy Ideas application
    Idea State Value
    Draft -5
    Submitted 1
    NA NA
    NA NA
    Accepted 2
    NA NA
    NA NA
    Closed complete 3
    Closed skipped 7
    NA NA
    NA NA
    Table 2. Idea Portal
    Idea State Value
    Draft -5
    Submitted 1
    Under Review -1
    Need more information -2
    In Backlog 2
    Planned 4
    In Development 5
    Completed 3
    Unlikely to Implement 7
    Duplicate 8
    Already Exists 9

    Starting with the Washington DC release, idea states are stored in and retrieved from the Idea [im_idea_core] table. You can continue to use your existing idea states along with the new idea states. However, if you want to use only these new states for managing your ideas, navigate to the Choice [sys_choice] table and delete the old idea states.

    Idea categories

    Organize your ideas using categories, for example, to group ideas that are relevant to a particular product, department, or business unit. If your existing ideas are not associated with any category, create new categories or select an existing table to define categories to which you can map your ideas. The Ideas application also installs a set of default new categories to which you can associate your existing ideas.

    If your ideas are already associated with categories and you want to use the new categories, you can map your existing idea categories to the default new categories. You then write and use a script to create m2m mapping between existing ideas and categories.
    Note:
    You must map an existing idea with appropriate categories for your ideas to appear in the Idea Portal.

    Converting ideas to demands or project, stories, initiatives, and epics

    You can convert an idea into work entities other than demands. The Create Task button enables you to convert an idea into a project, epic, or story as well as a demand becomes available in the Idea form.

    You must have the required Agile plugins Agile Development 2.0 and Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and Continual Improvement Management installed to view these options.

    If you want to allow conversion of ideas only to a demand, disable the Create Task button and continue using the Accept button or disable the Accept and Defer buttons to use other options. For more information see, Using the form designer.

    Business rules

    Review the existing business rules in the idea table. Set the business rules that you don't want to apply as False.

    Navigation for legacy Idea application

    To encourage your users to submit ideas through the new Idea Portal, remove navigation for old Idea application from the application menu and deactivate the Submit an Idea option from the Service Catalog. For more information see, Enable or disable an application menu or module.