Inbox & Triage
Your starting point for every captured idea
Overview
The Inbox is the entry point for all captured ideas in IdeaLift. Every piece of feedback from Slack, Discord, Teams, Zendesk, the browser extension, or manual entry lands here first. Your job is to triage: review each idea and decide whether to approve it for your backlog, reject it, or defer it for later consideration.
Inbox Workflow
1Review
Open the Inbox from the sidebar to see all pending ideas. Each card shows the idea title, source (Slack, Discord, etc.), submitter, and when it was captured. Click any idea to expand it and read the full context.
2Approve
Approve an idea to move it into your active backlog. Approved ideas can then be pushed to your issue tracker (GitHub, Linear, Jira), added to your roadmap, or tracked through the Decide and Track views.
3Reject
Reject ideas that are out of scope, duplicates, or not aligned with your product vision. You can add a decision reason so your team understands why. Rejected ideas are archived but can be re-opened later if priorities change.
4Defer
Defer ideas you want to revisit later. Deferred ideas stay visible in your backlog but are marked as low priority. IdeaLift will surface them again if they accumulate more signals or votes.
Bulk Actions
When your inbox is full, use bulk actions to process multiple ideas at once. Select ideas using the checkboxes, then choose an action from the toolbar.
Bulk Approve
Move multiple ideas to your backlog in one click
Bulk Reject
Reject a batch of ideas with a shared decision reason
Bulk Tag
Apply tags or categories to a group of related ideas
Bulk Merge
Combine duplicate ideas into a single request
Filters & Sort
Use filters to narrow your inbox to the ideas that need your attention most.
By Source
Filter by Slack, Discord, Teams, Zendesk, manual, or API
By Category
Show only ideas in a specific category or tag
By Signal Score
Focus on high-signal ideas first (Growth plan+)
By Date
Sort by newest, oldest, or last activity
Tip: Sort by Signal Score descending to triage the highest-impact ideas first. This ensures you never miss urgent, high-value feedback.
Keyboard Shortcuts for Triage
Speed through your inbox with keyboard shortcuts. These work when an idea is selected.
See Keyboard Shortcuts for the full list.
Tips for Efficient Triage
- Set a daily triage habit. Even 10 minutes a day keeps your inbox manageable and prevents idea buildup.
- Use the AI summary to quickly understand long feedback threads without reading every message.
- When in doubt, defer rather than reject. You can always revisit deferred ideas, but rejected ideas are easy to forget.
- Merge duplicates early. Consolidating similar ideas boosts their signal score and gives you a clearer picture of demand.
- Add tags during triage so ideas are organized from the start. It saves time later when you need to find related feedback.