Experts

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Introduction

The term Expert refers to a single user or group of users who are elevated in status within Planview IdeaPlace due to their subject matter knowledge. The concept of a Subject Matter Expert is commonly used in the business world and at IdeaPlace. We like to unite the offline world with our platform by driving ideas to the Expert Panel inside each challenge. See the attached Guided Challenge Expert Training PowerPoint deck, and also the Expert Role and Expert Overview articles for additional resources.

How it Works

What Do Experts Do?

Experts:

Guide the conversation and steer ideas towards implementation.
Offer advice on areas where they are subject matter experts. The "area" is often the "category" within a challenge.
Suggest improvements and support the work of the crowd and the system in identifying strong ideas.

Core Expert Platform Activities

Experts can:

Spark conversation and collaboration within the system.
Review ideas and offer advice to idea owners.
Guide the crowd and effect business change using the system tools to support them.

Experts have:

Category subscriptions for notifications.
Default reputation of 100.
Category level permissions for tasks and role access.

How to Add an Expert

Adding Experts is a quick task. Follow these steps to navigate to the Expert Manager and select users to which you want to grant Expert privileges.

Navigate to the challenge to which you want to assign Experts.
Access the Administration panel in the Challenge.
Navigate to User Management > Experts.
In the New Expert Manager, type the Expert's name in the Username field. (The field will begin to auto-populate as you type.)
Select the category or categories to which you wish to assign to the Expert.
Click Submit to save your changes.
You should now see your Expert added to the Experts panel on the same page.
You can repeat these steps to add additional Experts.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why should I assign Experts to my challenge?

Leveraging Experts is a great way to bring ideas to those who have the subject matter expertise to make a judgment upon them. The assignment of an Expert inside Planview IdeaPlace allows for the creation of a workflow whereby ideas are aligned with categories (optional) and therefore routed to the responsible Experts for each category.

This group should be seen as a way of bridging your ‘offline’ business world with the online crowd. By using the Expert role, you are providing your offline world an clear insight into the crowd collaboration.

What do Experts typically do inside Planview IdeaPlace?

The most common use of Experts is to send a light touch review form to them at a specific time (which is dictated by the workflow), which focuses their responses into defined areas. Typically, this review form takes a quantitative rather than qualitative approach, which helps in gathering responses from several experts.

Experts can also review ideas using qualitative review forms, but it should always be considered against the number of review tasks that they need to carry out. If there are multiple, it may be a better choice to use simple, quantitative forms.

Aside from review tasks, Experts may be expected to log in to challenges that they are experts within to help inspire ideation and boost collaboration through the use of comments, voting, and @mentions. In doing this, Experts guide the crowd through the challenge process within their category of expertise.

Are there any things I should be mindful of when selecting Experts?

Yes. As we mentioned earlier, the amount of expected effort should always be considered. For example, if your process indicates that there would be fifty ideas reaching the Expert Review stage, yet you have only four Experts assigned, there will be considerable work to do. Always balance the total number of reviews against the availability of Experts.

Also, it is important to be mindful that Experts normally have a job to do outside of the platform, so you should utilize their time tactically when asking them to carry out reviews and other duties inside the platform.

Can I have multiple Experts for a particular category?

Yes. In fact, this is advised. You should always have enough Experts to cover the number of reviews required per idea. For example, if you have two reviews per idea in a given stage, you should have two Experts assigned to the category.

Can I allow Experts to be responsible for two or more categories?

Yes. It is possible through the steps detailed earlier. Caution is advised in overburdening the experts with increased category workload.

Are private comments also viewable by Experts?

Yes.