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Documentation/Public Submission Portal

Public Submission Portal

A branded portal for customer-submitted ideas

Scale Plan Feature

The Public Submission Portal is available on the Scale plan and above. Give your customers a dedicated place to submit, vote on, and discuss product ideas.

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Overview

The Public Submission Portal is a branded, customer-facing page where users can submit ideas, browse existing suggestions, vote on what matters to them, and leave comments. It acts as a community-driven feedback board that feeds directly into your IdeaLift backlog.

Unlike the embeddable widget (which is lightweight and contextual), the portal is a full-page experience designed for customers who want to engage deeply with your product direction.

Setting Up Your Portal

1Enable the Portal

Go to Settings → Public Portal and toggle "Enable Public Submission Portal." Choose a URL slug for your portal.

Your portal URL:
https://idealift.app/portal/your-company

2Configure Portal Settings

Set up the basic portal configuration:

Portal title:e.g., "Acme Feature Requests"
Welcome message:Greeting text shown at the top of the portal
Categories:Which categories are visible to submitters
Authentication:Open (anyone) or email-required

3Share With Customers

Link to your portal from your app's help menu, footer, or changelog. Some teams include the portal link in their support email signatures and onboarding emails.

Customizing Appearance

Make the portal feel like a natural extension of your product:

Brand Colors

Set primary and accent colors to match your brand. The portal adapts buttons, links, and highlights automatically.

Logo

Upload your company logo. It appears in the portal header alongside your portal title.

Custom CSS

For advanced customization, inject custom CSS to adjust fonts, spacing, and layout to perfectly match your design system.

Dark Mode

The portal supports dark mode. Choose whether to follow the visitor's system preference or force a specific theme.

Submission Form Fields

Configure which fields appear on the submission form:

Title
Always shown. The one-line summary of the idea.
Required
Description
Rich text field for detailed explanation. Supports markdown.
Optional
Category
Dropdown of categories you have enabled for the portal.
Optional
Email
Capture the submitter's email for follow-up and attribution.
Configurable
Attachments
Allow file uploads (screenshots, documents, etc.).
Configurable

Moderation Workflow

Control what appears on your public portal with moderation settings:

Auto-publish

New submissions appear on the portal immediately. Best for trusted communities or internal portals where spam is not a concern.

Manual review

New submissions go into a moderation queue. Your team reviews and approves or rejects each submission before it appears publicly. Approved ideas are added to your backlog.

AI-assisted moderation

IdeaLift's AI screens submissions for spam, profanity, and off-topic content. Flagged submissions are held for review while clean submissions are published automatically.

Voting and Commenting

The portal supports community engagement through voting and comments:

  • Upvoting — Visitors vote on ideas they want to see built. Vote counts feed into signal scoring.
  • Comments — Users add context, use cases, and workarounds to existing ideas. Comments are visible to your team in the dashboard.
  • Status updates — When you move an idea to a new stage (e.g., "In Progress"), voters are notified automatically via email.
  • Duplicate merging — If a submission duplicates an existing idea, moderators can merge them. All votes are combined.

Tip: Respond to popular ideas with an official comment. Even a simple "We're looking into this" builds trust and engagement.

Best Practices

  • 💡Require email for submissions — anonymous feedback is less actionable and attracts more spam
  • 💡Start with manual moderation until you trust the submission quality, then switch to AI-assisted
  • 💡Post status updates regularly — a portal with stale statuses signals that feedback goes into a void
  • 💡Seed the portal with 5-10 existing ideas so it does not look empty when customers first visit