Welcome to the ShipStation Ideas Forum

[SuperMgr-Sarah]

The Ideas section of the ShipStation Community is a place for you to tell us your ideas about how to make ShipStation even better! Our Product Team wants to make sure we continue to build the product that serves your needs and to do that we need to hear from you. 

The Ideas Forum is specifically for ideas. It’s not for bug reports, troubleshooting, or workflow advice (for these types of posts, head on over to our Discussion forums). If you have an idea about a new feature or how to improve an existing feature, you’re in the right place.  

Posts, Replies, and Kudos

There are three types of actions you can take in the ideas boards: Post an idea, reply to an idea, and give Kudos to an idea. 

Ideas with kudos and replies demonstrate the necessity and popularity of the idea to our product team. So if you have an idea, first search the ideas section to see if that idea already exists. If it does, give it a kudos and leave a reply.

• Kudos are like votes - the more Kudos an idea has the more support we know it has from the community. You should feel free to give Kudos to as many ideas you like in the Ideas forum, though you can only give one Kudos to any specific idea.
• Reply to an idea if you have more to add to the conversation, like your specific use case or thoughts on how best to implement that idea. The more replies an idea has, the more information our Product Team has to work with to understand the idea and the context more fully. 

If your idea hasn’t already been posted in the Ideas Forum, create a new post for it. Once created, the community can reply and give Kudos to your idea and our Product team can review it.

Read Tips for Writing a Great Idea to learn how to write an effective idea post that the community and our Product Team can easily understand and support!

What to Expect With an Idea 

All posts and replies are first reviewed by our Community Moderators. The moderator’s job is to ensure:

• All posts are categorized correctly within the various Ideas categories. If not, they may move them to the proper category. 
• The title of the post accurately reflects the idea so others can understand. If not, they may edit the post title to help others identify posts they want to support.
• New posts are unique ideas and not duplicates of others. If the same - or very similar - idea already exists, the moderators will merge the ideas together so we have a more accurate understanding of the kind of support the idea has.
• Any idea that has an existing solution or can be accomplished with existing features gets a response to let everyone know a solution or feature already exists and how to learn about it.
• Posts are really ideas and not bug reports or issues that require technical support. Any posts that need support will be moved to the discussion boards and escalated to the support team.

The moderators then triage the ideas into a dashboard for our Product Team to review each quarter. As ideas are considered by the Product Team, the moderators will update the statuses of the ideas and may reply with questions if the Product team requires additional information. 

If an idea makes it onto the roadmap, the moderators will update the idea status to Planned then Started then Completed as work progresses on the idea. If an idea is declined or archived, our moderator will update the status to indicate so with a message stating why. 

Please keep in mind that idea posts may not get a response right away, and unfortunately not all ideas will make it onto the product roadmap. It's simply not possible to implement every idea we get. Additionally, ideas may not be implemented exactly as you envision or suggest. 

Idea Statuses

Here are the idea statuses we currently use and what they mean:

• New: New ideas posted on the Ideas forum. An idea may remain new until it’s read by the Community team and assigned to another status.
• No status: The idea is no longer New but has not yet been sent to the Product Team for review. 
• Under Review: The idea has been sent to the Product Team dashboard to review. The idea may remain in Under Review status until it is being considered, declined, or archived.
• In Consideration: The Product Team is considering the details and challenges of this idea and how it may fit into the existing product landscape or a future roadmap. An idea may stay in the In Consideration status until the idea is officially on the roadmap or the Product Team has decided they are no longer considering the idea. We may move the idea back to Under Review if we would like more feedback on the idea from the community. 
• Planned: The Product Team is planning on implementing this idea and has added it to the product roadmap for an upcoming quarter (this does not necessarily mean the following quarter).
• Started: Development work on the idea has started. Depending on the idea, the full implementation may take several weeks, months, or even quarters and may be released in stages over time. During this time, the Product Team may also seek additional feedback or for users to join a beta testing group.
• Completed: Work has completed and the new feature or improvement has been deployed to ShipStation accounts. The feature may be rolled out progressively until all accounts have access to the feature or may be enabled all at once for all accounts.
• Declined: The idea has been reviewed and the team has determined the idea cannot be implemented. This could be for several reasons, including (but not limited to) technical limitations, conflicts with other features, or it’s not within the scope of ShipStation (for example, it’s a limitation on the integration partner side). 
• Already Exists: The functionality asked for in the idea either already exists or has an existing method to accomplish the stated goal. Our moderator will move the idea to the Already Exists status and explain how to achieve the desired outcome of the idea. 
• Archived: The idea has had no activity for a long time or the idea is no longer relevant to the current version of ShipStation. 

You may continue to reply to and give Kudos to ideas until they are moved to Completed, Declined, or Archived statuses.