---
schema_version: "1"
id: b002343ea479c679c4cd32953df0e0569eeecd4523501c6f875310cc0dfd7379
title: Manage Ideas
collection: admin
version: current
locale: en-us
portal_url: https://docs.salesforce.com/admin/current/en-us/service/264-0-0/ideas_admin.md
canonical_url: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=service.ideas_admin.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5
source_site: help.salesforce.com
content_type: documentation
content_hash: 69943bbcf93ae2e8b989a434c0b548c54d8a8509baa53b6d4e4c6539533e065b
description: Learn how to manage Ideas.
products:
  - Service Cloud
release: "264"
---
# Manage Ideas

Learn how to manage Ideas.

### Required Editions

<table class="slds-table slds-table_bordered slds-max-medium-table_stacked slds-m-bottom_small edition"><colgroup><col></colgroup><tbody><tr class=""><td class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;"><a href="https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=service.legacy_editions.htm&amp;language=en_US" target="_blank">View supported editions</a></td></tr></tbody></table>

<table class="slds-table slds-table_bordered slds-max-medium-table_stacked slds-m-bottom_small permission">
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          <th scope="colgroup" class="slds-cell-wrap" colspan="2" style="text-align:center;vertical-align:top;" id="d25131e54">User Permissions
            Needed</th>
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          <td data-label="User Permissions Needed" class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" headers="d25131e54 ">To manage Ideas communities: </td>

          <td class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;" headers="d25131e54 ">Customize Application</td>

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The Ideas feature serves a community of users who post, vote for, and comment on ideas. Consider it an online suggestion box that includes discussions and popularity rankings for any subject. To further organize your community into smaller groups, you can create zones that reflect special interests, product groupings, or types of customers.

You can display Ideas to internal Salesforce users; Salesforce.com Experience Builder sites, Customer Portals, or partner portals; or to public users (requires setting up a Salesforce Site). You can also manage Ideas from the console.

Professional Edition organizations can have only one internal zone. All other editions can have up to 50 zones shared between Ideas, Answers, and Chatter Answers.

As an administrator, you can:

- Control whether ideas are enabled for your organization and customize the [half-life](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=service.ideas_about.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5) of ideas. See [Enable and Customize Ideas Settings](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=service.ideas_settings.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Manage organization-wide settings for Ideas.").
- Create zones for organizing ideas. See [Create and Edit Zones](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=service.ideas_new_comm.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Zones are shared by the Ideas, Answers, and Chatter Answers applications, allowing you to view and create zones from those locations. Answers can have only one zone displayed at a time. Supported editions allow up to 50 zones per organization.").
- Create [Idea Themes](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=service.idea_themes_overview.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Idea Themes lets you invite community members to post ideas about specific topics so that members can solve problems or propose innovations for your company.") that let you invite members to post ideas about specific topics so that they can solve problems or propose innovations for your company.
- Define picklist values for the Categories and Status fields. See [Define Picklist Values for the Categories and Status Fields](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=service.ideas_edit_picklist.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "For zone members to assign categories to an idea or view an idea's status, the Ideas administrator must define picklist values for the Categories and Status fields.").
- Specify the layout of custom fields. See [Set Page Layouts for Ideas](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=service.ideas_layouts.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "When you create a custom field for Ideas, you can add it to the Additional Information section that appears on the Post Idea and Idea Detail pages.").
- Make idea reports available to your users.
- Customize idea search layouts.
- Reduce the number of duplications by merging ideas.
- Assign a status to an idea.
- Erase all history that a vote ever occurred by deleting the vote through the API.
    
    Specifically, deleting a vote does the following:
    
    - Removes 10 points from the idea's overall score
    - Removes the user's name from the Last 100 Votes section on the idea's detail page