This article discusses proxy votes or ideas portal custom domains. You need to be an Aha! Ideas Advanced plan customer to access these features. Please contact us if you would like a live demo or would like to try using it in your account. If your Aha! account was created before October 20, 2020, you may have access to these integrations, but you will need to upgrade to Aha! Ideas Advanced for any future enhancements.
One of the wonderful aspects of ideas portals in Aha! Roadmaps is that they can notify idea creators and subscribers for you. As you change the status of an idea or comment on it, anyone invested in the idea will receive email notifications of each update, so you do not need to remember who to contact.
This article provides information about portal notification emails that idea subscribers receive. To learn about notifications that Aha! users receive within the software, read our account notifications article.
Overview
When a portal user interacts with an idea in your portal, they become subscribed to that idea automatically. Subscribers to an idea receive notification emails from an ideas portal when certain changes are made to it. This keeps subscribers up-to-date and engaged.
There are several different types of notification emails your portal will send:
Thank you: Thanks a portal user for submitting an idea.
Status changed: Notifies the portal user that an idea they are subscribed to has changed status.
Admin response: Notifies the user that an official admin response is now posted to an idea they are subscribed to
New comment: Notifies the user that an idea they are subscribed to has a new comment
You can customize your portal notification emails from the Emails section of your portal settings.
Subscribing to ideas
Portal users subscribe to an idea in five ways:
Create the idea
Vote on an idea
Comment on an idea
Click the Subscribe button on an idea
Add a proxy vote to an idea (Aha! Ideas Advanced)
You can subscribe a portal user to an idea on their behalf as well. Use their name in @mentions in portal comments to subscribe them to ideas. If you created an idea on behalf of a customer, an owner or contributor can change the idea's creator to the customer's name to subscribe them to the idea.
Unsubscribe from portal notification emails
Portal notification emails provide two links at the bottom of the email, where portal users can unsubscribe from the specific idea or unsubscribe from all emails. When a portal user unsubscribes from all emails, they will be unsubscribed from all portal notification emails for ideas they are subscribed to and from the activity summary email.
You can unsubscribe portal users from notifications from Users -> General in your portal settings:
To unsubscribe individual users, hover over a user's name, click the More options menu, then click click Unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe all users in your ideas portal, click the More options menu at the top of the users list, then select Unsubscribe all portal users. Individual ideas portal users can always opt back in to idea notifications.
Portal notification triggers
Public portals
Portal users subscribed to an idea in a public ideas portal will receive a notification email when:
They submit an idea
An Aha! Ideas user publicly comments on the idea
They are mentioned in a portal comment
Generally, status changes are a good reason to notify subscribers that an idea has been updated — but you might not want users to be notified about certain status changes. In your idea workflow, use the View status portal visibility setting to control which status changes are visible in the portal and can trigger notification emails.
Private portals
Portal users subscribed to an idea in a private ideas portal will receive a notification email when:
They submit an idea
Any portal users or Aha! Ideas user publicly comments on the idea
They are mentioned in a portal comment
An admin response is posted to the idea
The idea's status changes to a status with View status enabled in your idea workflow
Submit only portals
Submit-only portal notifications work differently from notifications in public and private ideas portals. Submit-only portals allow anyone to submit an idea, but no one can see those ideas published. Portal users cannot subscribe to ideas that they did not create.
Portal users in submit only ideas portals will receive a portal notification email when:
They submit an idea
An Aha! Ideas user selects Email idea creator when adding a portal comment to the idea
Customize portal notification emails
Customize the email templates that notify portal users about invitations, new ideas, status changes, admin responses, comments, and mentions. You can enable or disable each notification type from its template.
To customize a portal notification template:
Go to your portal settings and select the Email tab.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Advanced settings.
In the Templates section, update a template's Subject and Body to match your portal's terminology and message. Both fields support HTML, and the Body also supports inline CSS. External CSS is not supported. The Invitation template also includes a text-only Greeting field for the header above the email body. It does not support HTML or CSS. Invitation emails are unavailable for submit-only portals and portals that use single sign-on (SSO).
To add dynamic information, type
/$in the editor or select a token (variable). The following table shows which tokens are available for each template.
Token |
Meaning |
Invitation |
New idea |
Status changed |
Admin response |
New comment |
Mention |
$PORTAL_TITLE |
The title of your ideas portal, found on the Settings tab of your portal settings (e.g. Fredwin Cycling Ideas) |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
$PORTAL_USER_FIRST_NAME |
The invited user's first name |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
$PORTAL_USER_LAST_NAME |
The invited user's last name |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
$IDEA_REF |
The idea's record reference number (e.g. DEMO-I-38) |
|
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
$IDEA_NAME |
The idea's summary |
|
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
$IDEA_DESCRIPTION |
The idea's description |
|
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
$IDEA_SUBMITTER_NAME |
The idea submitter's name |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
|
$WORKSPACE |
The workspace the idea is located in |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
|
$IDEA_LINK |
The link to the idea in the portal |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
|
$CATEGORY |
The idea's category |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
|
$STATUS |
The idea's current status |
|
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
$ADMIN_RESPONSE_DESCRIPTION |
The text of the admin response |
|
|
|
X |
X |
X |
$COMMENTER_NAME |
The name of the user who commented on the idea |
|
|
|
|
X |
X |
$COMMENTS |
|
|
|
|
|
X |
X |
Your changes save automatically. Select Insert default template to restore the original content, or select Send me a test to preview the email.
Enable quick comment buttons
You can encourage idea subscribers to add feedback on shipped on ideas by adding quick comment buttons to portal notification emails. These buttons provide suggested responses that the subscriber can click to quickly respond. You can customize the text on quick comment buttons in your portal settings.
To enable quick comment buttons, navigate to Emails -> General -> Quick comment buttons in your portal settings. Then check the box next to Enable quick comment buttons.
Navigate to Terminology -> Emails -> Quick comment buttons to customize quick comment button text.
Disable portal notification emails
If you want to disable all portal notification emails, you can do so from your portal settings. Navigate to Emails -> General and scroll to the bottom of the page. Under Enable, you will find the setting that controls all email communication (excluding password reset emails) from your ideas portal. Click the radio button next to Off to disable email notifications.
Improve email reception
If you or your portal users report that your emailed idea notifications are getting caught by your company's spam filters, you may need to allow list Aha! Ideas email domains and IP addresses.