Proposal Statuses

Every proposal in an idea bank has a status that indicates where it is in its lifecycle. As the researcher, you control status transitions to communicate progress to participants and manage voting.

Status Overview

Draft

Proposals start in Draft status when created by the researcher. Draft proposals are hidden from participants, giving you time to refine the title and description before publishing.

Use draft status to:

• Prepare proposals before a voting session begins
• Review participant-submitted proposals before making them visible
• Stage ideas you’re not ready to share yet

To publish a draft, change its status to Open.

Open

Open proposals are visible to participants and actively accepting votes. This is the only status where voting is allowed.

While open, participants can:

• View the proposal title, description, and current vote counts
• Vote for or against the proposal
• Change or remove their vote

Keep proposals open while you want to gather votes. Change the status when you’ve made a decision or want to end voting.

Rejected

Change a proposal to Rejected when you’ve decided not to pursue the idea. The proposal remains visible to participants so they know the outcome, but voting is no longer allowed.

Use rejected status when:

• The idea doesn’t fit your product direction
• The idea is technically infeasible
• The idea duplicates another proposal
• You’ve evaluated and decided against it

Consider adding a note to the description explaining why the idea was rejected, to help participants understand your decision.

Implemented

Change a proposal to Implemented when you’ve built or completed the idea. This celebrates the contribution and shows participants that their votes matter.

Use implemented status when:

• The feature has been released
• The suggestion has been acted on
• The idea is now part of your product

This status helps build trust with your community by showing that popular ideas get built.

Closed

Closed is a neutral end state for proposals where you want to stop voting without communicating a specific outcome.

Use closed status when:

• A voting period has ended but decisions are pending
• The proposal is no longer relevant
• You want to archive old proposals
• The idea was superseded by another approach

Status Transitions

Draft → Open → Rejected
              → Implemented
              → Closed

• Draft → Open: Publish the proposal for voting
• Open → Rejected/Implemented/Closed: End voting with an outcome
• Transitions between Rejected, Implemented, and Closed are allowed if you need to correct a status

Voting Restrictions

Votes can only be cast or changed on Open proposals. Once you change a proposal to any other status:

• Existing votes are preserved and visible
• No new votes can be cast
• Existing votes cannot be changed or removed

This ensures vote counts are final once you close voting.

Participant-Submitted Proposals

When participants submit proposals (in Open Voting mode), new proposals start with Open status by default, making them immediately visible and available for voting.

If you prefer to review submissions before publishing, you can change participant-submitted proposals to Draft status, review them, and then change back to Open when approved.

Learn More

For deeper background on managing ideas through their lifecycle, see our Knowledge Base:

• Idea Bank - How to categorize and manage ideas (Candidate vs Parked)
• ICE Score - A framework for prioritizing which proposals to implement