Your ideas portal is a central place for your community to provide feedback and submit requests — so it should be a reflection of your organization. Customize your ideas portal to make it a natural extension of your brand and provide a consistent experience for your customers.
This article will walk you through configuring your Branding and Emails sections of your portal settings to reflect your brand's look, feel, and voice.
We are going to focus on settings that you can adjust yourself. But if you are ready for advanced customization (and know a little CSS or HTML), that is an option too.
Click any of the following links to skip ahead:
Confirm user permissions
Action |
User permissions |
Create and configure ideas portals |
Gather assets and resources
It is faster to update your ideas portal when you have your brand assets ready. If needed, ask your marketing or design team to review them before you begin so your portal matches the rest of your customer experience.
Get a copy of your brand style guide if you have one. It will usually include your brand colors, logo files, and content guidelines.
Draft your notification emails in advance if you plan to customize them. You can use the default templates, but preparing your copy first will save time when you update the portal.
Prepare your logo and favicon files. The ideal logo is 480px by 300px with a preferred aspect ratio of 1.6:1. Favicons must be 16x16px in .png, .gif, or .ico format.
If you want help choosing portal colors, prepare an image of your website or product. You can upload it in portal settings and let Elle, our AI assistant, suggest colors that match your brand.
Example logo
Example favicon
Add your logo and brand colors
Once you have your assets ready, update your portal's look in the Branding settings. This is where you choose your portal colors, upload your logo, and add your favicon.
If you want to fully customize your ideas portal's layout, font, and color scheme, give custom portal branding a try with your own custom CSS.
Navigate to Ideas -> Overview.
Click the pencil icon next to the portal you want to edit.
Open the Branding tab.
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In the General settings, choose how you want to set portal colors:
Click the color icon to choose a theme color or enter a hex code.
Or upload an image of your website or product and let Elle, our AI assistant, suggest portal colors that match your brand.
Review the suggested colors. If needed, expand the detailed color settings and adjust colors for headers, links, buttons, text, backgrounds, panels, and navigation.
Upload your company, product, or portal logo in the Logo section.
Upload your favicon in the Favicon section.
Changes to your colors, logo, and favicon appear in the portal right away, so you can review the results as you go.
With the Aha! Ideas Advanced plan you can add a custom domain for your portal to make it consistent with your brand's domain. Visit the Custom section of your portal's Branding settings to add a custom domain.
Customize your email templates
Next, let's customize your email templates. From the Emails portal settings, you can update your brand colors, your reply-to email, and your email templates.
Navigate to the Emails tab in your portal settings.
On the General tab, enter your brand color in the Color section.
Enter your Company name exactly as you would like it to appear in emails. It will be used as the "From" name for email sent from your portal.
Enter a Reply-to email address for email sent from your portal.
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Navigate to the Templates tab. The following template types can be customized:
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Invitation: Invites a user to join your portal.
If you have a submit-only portal or if you have enabled single sign-on (SSO) for your portal, your users will not receive invitation emails — so you will not see the Invitation template listed here. Thank you: Thanks a user for submitting an idea to your portal.
Status changed: Alerts the user to a status change to an idea they are subscribed to.
Admin response: Alerts the user that an official admin response has been left on an idea they are subscribed to.
New comment: Alerts the user that a new comment has been left on an idea they are subscribed to.
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Enter a Subject, Greeting, and Body for each email template. You can paste in pre-drafted emails, or edit them directly in the text editor.
If you would like to include dynamic information in your emails, there are several variables you can include. These variables replace information that will be relevant to a customer's experience — such as their name, idea description, or admin responses to ideas they are subscribed to:
Variable |
Meaning |
Invitation |
Thank you |
Status changed |
Admin response |
New comment |
$PORTAL_TITLE |
The title of your ideas portal, found on the Settings tab of your portal settings |
X |
||||
$PORTAL_USER_FIRST_NAME |
The invited user's first name |
X |
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$PORTAL_USER_LAST_NAME |
The invited user's last name |
X |
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$IDEA_REF |
The idea's record reference number (e.g. DEMO-I-38) |
X |
X |
X |
X |
|
$IDEA_NAME |
The idea's summary |
X |
X |
X |
X |
|
$IDEA_DESCRIPTION |
The idea's description |
X |
X |
|||
$STATUS |
The idea's current status |
X |
||||
$ADMIN_RESPONSE_DESCRIPTION |
The text of the admin response |
X |
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$COMMENTER_NAME |
The name of the user who commented on the idea |
X |
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$COMMENTS |
X |
Any changes you make to an email template will be saved automatically. Click Send me a test to see a test email.
Visit your portal
Now that you have added your custom branding, visit your ideas portal to see it from a portal user's perspective and make sure everything looks as expected. Something off? Double-check your image sizes, ask your marketing team for help, or reach out to us.
Once you are satisfied with your portal's appearance, you are finished! Your portal is now an extension of your brand, and your customers will have a consistent experience across all of your platforms.