Warning!

You’re now reading a legacy document. The features described below are only usable within the classic generation environment.

Do you need an application template with the same or similar functionality? Follow this link to leave a request!

After reading this article you’ll know:

Functionality and main features of the Ideation template
Basic steps on how to create and configure this template in your application
Some tips on visual stylizing for your application

Description

The ideation template allows you to post ideas and challenges on a feed, where colleagues can vote on them and leave comments. Each day all the votes are counted and the current best ideas are shown on the page as the most popular idea. This template should help your organization spark new innovative ideas and easily manage these.

Main features

Create record

Whenever any of your users come up with some new ideas or challenges, they can put them down and post. These records are called ‘sparks’. While creating a new spark, everyone has to fill in some fields that will be later shown on a feed:

Idea:

Idea Title
Idea Description
Media (image upload)
Targets
Contributions
Tags

Challenge:

Challenge Title
Challenge Description
Media (image upload)
Affected
Frustrates
Tags

Feed

A stream of content posted by users that you can scroll through. Each post is fully displayed on the feed, therefore you are able to see all characteristics described in the ‘Create record’ section. Also, the name of the creator and creation date will be shown on each post.

All posts on the feed are interactive. Users can react to posts by:

Upvoting (to support an idea or challenge)
Downvoting (to contradict an idea or challenge)
Receiving/stop receiving notifications
Leaving comments

Search records

Once you post a bunch of records, you can search through them by keywords. Search is only applied to titles.

View statistics

Besides the feed with records, some statistics are displayed on the main page. These statistics are:

Trending tags (showing tags recently featured in posts)
Top innovators (users that frequently post)
This month’s most popular idea
This month’s most popular challenge

All of these statistics show the tops of the last 30 days.

Edit account details

Before you start using the ideation template, you will need to create your account (see Creating account section). Fields to fill in are:

First name
Last name
User email
Password
Profile picture

On the ‘My account’ page you can always update those details: update your name, email, profile picture, and tick the checkbox if you’re a citizen developer. You can also find a form to change your password option in a separate tab.

Pages overview

Dashboard. The home page displays the feed with records and the navigation bar.
My Account. The page to edit your personal information and update your password.
Post. The page to create a new record (spark).
User Login - Create New Account. The page to create a new user’s profile.
User Login - Login. The start page of your application via which registered users can log in using their credentials.
User Login - Password Reset Request. Using this page you can request to reset your password; a special link will be sent to your email address.
User Login - Reset Password. The page with reset password form; here users can create a new password.

Creating the application

Open My Betty Blocks and see your dashboard with suggested application templates in the ‘Start building’ section. Choose ‘View all templates’, then find the Ideation template and click ‘Use template’.

Note: If you want to see the template’s live preview, click on its thumbnail, and in an open window find the ‘Live preview’ button.

The next steps will include coming up with a name for your application and setting a value for the application ID configuration. Find out why you need this setting and how to configure it properly in the Introduction to application templates article.

Using Ideation template

Once you’ve created your application and configured the app ID, it’s time to see what we can do withing this ready-to-use template.

Creating user account

The first thing we need to do to start using our template is create your user’s account. Go to Pages and choose your Dashboard page. Then click on the play button to enable compiling.

These actions will bring you to the login page. Choose the ‘Register new account’ option to create a new user. Fill in all the fields, tick the checkbox if you’re a citizen developer, and click on ‘Create account’.

Now your account has been created and you can log in using your credentials.

Creating spark

Everything has been set up and now we are going to use the main feature of the Ideation template - create a new record. These records are called ‘sparks’, create the first one by clicking on the ‘Create spark’ button.

In a pop-up window, you’ll have to choose between two options: ideas and challenges. In my example, I chose the ‘Ideas’ option as my spark is about getting together to play football with my colleagues. Three sections below - ‘Targets’, ‘Contributions’ and ‘Tags’ can be added one by one (like in my example) by typing them and pressing ‘Return’.

When you’re finished filling out the form and adding a picture (if you need one), click ‘Post’ to save your progress and create a new post on your application’s feed.

Spark interactions

Now that we’ve created our first spark, it will appear on the page’s feed. This post will be visible to all users who have access to this page. They can interact with the posted spark.

Below the post description, there is a line with three interactions (1). Here your colleagues, for example, can choose the ‘Upvote’ option (arrow up) to support the idea or ‘Downvote’ (arrow down) to refuse it. The bell icon stands for turning the notifications on and off. Each page user can turn this feature on to receive notifications once someone leaves a comment on the post.

Users can also leave a comment below the interaction line and click on ‘Add comment’ to post it (2).

Template stylization

So far you have already discovered how to set up the template and create new ideas and challenges to share with your colleagues. Despite this fact, your application might seem a bit plain. In this case, visual customization is here to help. Let’s go through some ideas on how to make your application look more original and branded.

Come back to the pages section and open up the ‘Dashboard’ page.

The first thing you can do here is insert a new logo. Click on the media component (1) and in the menu on the left insert your picture’s URL into the ‘Source’ field (2).

More information on adding a logo to a page and working with a navigation bar can be found here.

It is also possible to change your page style via the theme builder. You can find it in the Tools section.

Here you can pick up the most suitable color scheme for your application.

Also, it’s possible to configure your typography. Choose the fonts for the page titles and body text.

After you’ve finished customizing, don’t forget to click ‘Save and apply’.

Customizing your application could be really fun, whether you already have some references or want to do everything from scratch. Play around with styles and find the one you enjoy. More information about the theme builder is available here.

Contact Information

In case you have any feedback or suggestions regarding this template, let us know by emailing: templates@bettyblocks.com.

What’s new? Current-gen vs classic