Catch-Up Briefings
Never miss what matters, even when you are away
Growth Plan Feature
Catch-Up Briefings are available on the Growth plan and above. AI summarizes everything that happened while you were away so you can get up to speed in seconds.
View PricingOverview
Product managers juggle meetings, stakeholder requests, and cross-functional work. It is easy to lose track of what happened in your feedback pipeline while you were focused elsewhere. Catch-Up Briefings solve this by generating an AI-powered summary of everything that changed since your last visit.
Instead of scrolling through dozens of inbox items, decisions, and status changes, you get a concise briefing that highlights what matters most: new high-signal ideas, decisions made by teammates, trending topics, and items that need your attention.
How It Works
1Activity tracking
IdeaLift records a timestamp each time you visit the dashboard. When you return after a period of absence, the system knows exactly how long you have been away and what happened during that window.
2AI summarization
When enough activity has occurred since your last visit, IdeaLift generates a briefing using AI. The summary groups related events together, highlights the most important changes, and provides actionable takeaways rather than a raw activity log.
3Briefing delivered
The briefing appears as a card on your dashboard or as a dedicated page you can access from the sidebar under Intelligence. It takes just a minute or two to read, replacing what would otherwise be 15-30 minutes of manual catch-up.
Viewing Catch-Up
There are two ways to access your catch-up briefing:
Dashboard card
When a new briefing is available, a card appears at the top of your dashboard. Click it to expand the full summary, or dismiss it once you have read it.
Catch-Up page
Navigate to Intelligence → Catch-Up in the sidebar to see your current briefing and browse past briefings. Each briefing is timestamped and archived.
Customizing Briefing Frequency
By default, a briefing is generated when you have been away for more than 24 hours and at least 5 events have occurred. You can customize this threshold in Settings.
Minimum absence
Set how long you must be away before a briefing is triggered (4 hours to 7 days)
Minimum events
Set the minimum number of events needed to generate a briefing (1 to 50)
Email delivery
Optionally receive briefings via email when you have been away for more than 48 hours
Disable
Turn off catch-up briefings entirely if you prefer to review activity manually
What's Included
New ideas
A summary of ideas captured while you were away, grouped by source. High-signal ideas are called out specifically so you know what needs immediate attention.
Decisions
A list of ideas that were approved, rejected, or deferred by you or your teammates during the period. Each decision includes the reason if one was provided, so you can understand the context without digging into individual ideas.
Trends and patterns
If new trends emerged or existing patterns strengthened during your absence, the briefing highlights them. For example, "Requests for a mobile app increased 40% this week" or "Three new ideas mention API rate limiting."
Status changes
Ideas that moved between statuses (shipped, pushed to backlog, stale) are summarized so you know the current state of your pipeline without checking each view individually.
Action items
The briefing ends with a short list of recommended actions, such as "Review 3 high-signal ideas in your inbox" or "5 ideas have been stale for 30+ days." These action items link directly to the relevant page.
Best Practices
- Start your day with the catch-up briefing before diving into your inbox. It gives you context that makes triage faster.
- Share briefings with stakeholders who want a summary without logging in. Copy the briefing text into Slack or email.
- Use email delivery when you are on vacation so you can stay informed without logging in daily.
- Review past briefings before quarterly planning to spot longer-term trends in customer feedback.