PPM Express Business Challenges solution was designed to create and manage challenges within the organization and allow team members to submit their ideas, project requests, change requests or suggestions for improvements within business challenges.
PPM Express Business Challenges solution is a platform that would let anyone in the organization submit new ideas, suggest improvements, request changes, or propose new projects and products.
In this article, we will review how to create a new business challenge, add ideas to it, manage these ideas, and create projects out of the most reasonable ideas.
Creating a new Challenge
To create a new challenge, perform the following:
1. On the Business Challenges page, open the New drop-down and select the Challenge option.
2. Provide the name for your new Business Challenge, select the sections that will be included in this challenge, and click Save.
3. Business Challenge Dashboard will be opened at once, where you can provide the details for your challenge.
Details section
On the details section of the Business Challenge Dashboard, you can provide the following information:
- Area - this field is used to set the area where your challenge belongs. This field is displayed on the Business Challenges page as well, and all users will be able to see it.
- Description - here you can populate a description of your challenge. All users can see the description in the Details section of the challenge tile on the Business Challenges page.
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Stage - this field allows you to select the stage for your challenge: Draft, Active or Closed.
Please note: The challenges are created in the draft state by default. Users cannot see the challenges in the draft state, it will be grayed out on the Business Challenges page. The challenge in the draft state will be seen only by the users with Manage Challenges and Ideas permission.
As soon as the challenge state is set to Active, users can review this challenge and post their ideas to it. - Manager - this field will display the user account of the person who created the challenge, this user is a manager of the challenge by default.
- Created Date - this field shows the date when the challenge was created.
Ideas Section
This section allows adding ideas to the newly created challenge and managing them.
Please note: The ideas can be added only to Active challenges. All users with the 'Collaborate on' permission can add ideas to active challenges.
Submitting an Idea
To add a new idea to the challenge, perform the following:
1. Open the Business Challenges page and click the Submit Idea button on the required challenge. Or open the required challenge from the Business Challenges page first and click the Submit idea button in the Ideas section of the Business Challenge Dashboard.
2. Provide the name of your idea.
3. Click Create Idea to save your idea.
3. As the Idea is saved, the Idea Dashboard will be opened.
On the Idea Dashboard, a user who created this idea can provide the details and leave the page, the information is saved automatically.
Please refer to the table below for the information on user permissions for Ideas depending on their role and permission set on the People Management page:
|
Permissions |
|
|
Users/Team Members with ''Collaborate on' permission |
1) can submit Ideas to active Challenges, edit their details, change a stage from Draft to Proposed, vote for active ideas, delete their Ideas while they are in the Draft and Proposed Stage 2) can view all Challenges in any state 3) can view ideas submitted by them in any State but Archived 4) can view ideas submitted by other users in any State but Draft, Proposed, Archived |
| Users with 'Edit' permission |
1) can create, edit, and delete Challenges in any stage 2) can submit, vote, activate, reject ideas, create projects from Ideas (in case of having the additional permission to create projects), manage Idea flow 3) can view, edit, or delete any Idea no matter of its stage |
Please note: Please refer to the People Management article for information about user permissions to create, edit, delete, and manage Challenges and Ideas.
Managing Challenges and Ideas
As the Ideas are created by PPM Express users, they can change the state of the Idea to the Proposed. The challenge manager will see the ideas in the draft and proposed state on the Business Challenge Dashboard and can take further actions.
Ideas can be Activated, Archived, Marked as Draft, or Deleted.
To activate the proposed Idea, click the Activate button that is available on the Idea Dashboard page or Business Challenge Dashboard.
As the idea is activated, all PPM Express users can open it and vote for it.
Active ideas can be Selected or Rejected by the challenge manager according to the number of votes or any other criteria. Select and Reject options are available from the Idea dashboard as well.
If the challenge manager rejects the Idea, users can no longer vote for it. Rejected ideas can be reactivated by the challenge manager at any time.
If the idea is Selected by the challenge manager, PPM Express Project can be created out of this idea. The idea cannot be changed back to Active if it was already selected.
To create a project out of the idea, click the Initiate new Project button. A project will be created at once, and the Project Dashboard will be opened. The idea name, description, stage, risks, decision matrix, and strategic alignment will be transferred to the newly created Project. The values in the fields (both OOB and custom fields in Ideas and Projects) are copied when a project is created from an idea if the corresponding fields are completely matched by type and name.
As the idea is selected, the challenge can be closed.
If the Project was created out of the idea, it is possible to review what idea the project was created from. For this purpose, open the project created out of the idea, in the Details section, open the Configure fields menu and check the check-box of the Parent Idea field.
This field will appear in the Details section as a link, leading to the required idea.
Project Stage will be set to 'Idea' automatically and can be changed as required.
If you open the idea from which a project was created, the Created Project field of the Details section will display a link that opens the created Project.
Ideas can be Archived from any stage and then activated again if needed unless the project is created out of the idea.
Please note: If a project was created out of the idea, it can no longer be archived.
If the idea was selected, it cannot be activated anymore. However, it can be archived. If the idea is selected and archived, it can be activated again, if needed. This is a workaround for activating selected ideas if there is such a necessity.
Idea Layouts
When a new idea is created, a layout set as default for all newly created ideas is applied. The default layout for all new ideas is set on the Idea page -> Layouts and views -> Edit Layout -> Set as default.
Provide the name for the Idea on the Create Idea page, and a default layout with a certain section list will be applied.
Sometimes there is a need to create all new ideas with a different layout for a certain Business Challenge only. For example, if one Challenge is used for internal requests and another for customer feedback, then the ideas for such challenges should appear in different formats (layouts).
For this case, it is possible to overwrite the default idea layout for a particular Business Challenge. All newly created ideas within this particular Business Challenge will be created with a different layout by default.
To set a default layout for new ideas for a certain Business Challenge, open the Business Challenge page and click on the ellipsis button. Navigate to the 'Set Idea Layout for this Business Challenge' option and choose the default layout for all new ideas of this Challenge.
When a new idea is created for this challenge, the selected layout will be applied by default, despite the general setting for all ideas of other Business Challenges.
To apply the same layout to all existing ideas of a Business Challenge, select the ideas, open the Apply Layout option and apply the required layout to all selected ideas.
Please note that if you have more than 10 ideas in the list, the list should be opened to apply the layout for all ideas. Otherwise, the layout will be applied to the first 10 ideas in the list only.