Support parent/child hierarchy for product areas/features in Ideas and Product Updates

Hello @adam.ballhaussen I really like that idea . It makes a lot of sense for communities with several products.

I wonder about subscriptions. If an end-user is to subscribe to a product, would you say that they receive notification about all the features?

Also when posting a product update, would you make it mandatory to select a product and or a feature?

Hi @Marion Frecaut. Great questions.

Subscriptions: If there were an ability to subscribe to individual products, I would imagine that a user who was subscribed to a product would receive notifications for all of the features. I would be happy with a v1 that still only supports a single level of “subscription” options on the Product Updates page as it is today. Long term though, I could see it being beneficial for users to be able to select more specifically which products/features they are notified about.

Posting: I think it could remain optional to select a product and/or feature when posting a Product Update. There are some cases where an update might span across multiple features within a product, so either multi-selecting as a sort of “tag” or simply keeping some updates as “whole product” and some updates as “whole product + feature”

For Ideas, I think it should be mandatory to select a product and optional to select a feature

Upvoting this after @Anitahg created this idea, and @Cristina linked to this one via this thread:

I would like this hierarchy ability in product updates, similar to how things are organized in the community categories or knowledge base. However, I don’t want to lose the ability to tag the product updates in multiple areas - that’s the main reason we use product updates for our articles in favor of the knowledge base.

@Manon, @Sebastian do we know where does this sit on the roadmap? 

the UI for nested Product Areas should also give options to:

1. multi select so the parent product and certain (or all) feature areas can be selected.
2. Generate unique urls for the combinations selected for step 1, that can be served as a specific feed anywhere, e.g. on a Custom page Featured link or through a Dynamic widget

Thanks @anirbandutta for the extra requirements! Some follow up questions:

• Generate unique urls: what the url should link to in that case? 
• How do you see the relationship between Product Areas and categories? Do you want to be able to link a product area to a specific category? 

Thank you! 

Thank you @Manon for the prompt response.

Generate unique urls: what the url should link to in that case? 

I think currently we are doing a good job generating unique urls, like e.g. All Ideas for ‘Community’, all Statuses and sorted by highest no. of Replies

With the new nesting, we should retain the choices, one Or multiple choices, like I say if I want to chose certain ‘platform features’ as a cluster as opposed to just one.

Do you want to be able to link a product area to a specific category? 

I feel “Product Area” may serve as a metadata for the product, at that granular level and there may exist a 1:1 mapping between Product Area and Category for that exact Product Area or may not.

i.e. in some cases I might like to have a common category for a cluster of Product Areas (maybe as a usecase).

Like in a Gainsight context, GS Everywhere, a parent area would include

Zoom, Gainsight Assist (plugins), Sally, Mobile, Calendar widget, Company Intelligence (nested children) which may be offered a singular category but may/maynot have individual Product Areas to themselves.

But in any case options to have interlinking (even low tech through quicklinks) would only be possible through the unique urls

Hi everyone, we’re excited to share that we’re launching a limited beta for this feature and are looking for 10 participants to test it out. If you’re interested, please fill out this form to sign up for early access. We can’t wait to hear your thoughts!

This is going to be huge! Excited for this feature!

Hi all! We’re excited to share that Hierarchy in Product Areas is now live! Do let us know what you think about the enhancement and if there’s any feedback or suggestions. Looking forward to hearing from you!

​@Sudhanshu and ​@olimarrio - Can customers subscribe to just certain product sections for updates? with this update? If so, how as I don’t see that as an option and this was part of the idea provided above.

TIA

Hi ​@KellyBebenek! Subscribing to product areas is next on the list. We are running discovery on that atm. Would you be interested in a call to help us shape the feature?

​@Sudhanshu - yes, please sign me up!