The Scoped Ideation Statuses feature allows you to control which idea statuses are available within each of your community's subcommunities and categories, instead of relying on a single global list for your entire community. This is especially useful in communities that have multiple product areas, subcommunities, or workflows that require different idea pipelines.
Before we begin…
Scoped Statuses is an optional feature of the Ideation addon. It is assumed you understand how ideation works as a whole; if not, refer to our main Ideation article to learn more.
Scoped status feature overview
When this feature is enabled, your existing ideation statuses remain global; you then decide which ones to keep globally available and which to scope to specific categories and subcommunities.
In addition, the functionality and flow of how ideation statuses work in your community changes. You now have scoped statuses, default statuses, and a global default.
- Statuses can be scoped to specific subcommunities and/or categories so users and moderators only see what’s relevant in that area; unscoped statuses remain globally available.
- Default statuses can be applied at the subcommunity and category levels: if so, they're automatically applied to all new ideas in that area (but can be changed, if needed); if not, the system inherits from the nearest parent (subcategory > category > subcommunity) before falling back to the global default.
- The global default is a required default status you must set for one of your statuses; it cannot be scoped and is used whenever a scoped status or area-level default is not available.
Inheritance flow
Defaults follow a clear inheritance order:
- Subcategory default overrides its parent category; if none, it inherits from the parent category.
- Category default overrides the subcommunity default; if none, it inherits from the subcommunity.
- Subcommunity default overrides the global default; if none, fall back to the global default.
Are scoped statuses right for your community?
While scoped status may be useful to any community, they are purpose-built for large communities that have numerous categories and/or subcommunities to streamline the application of statuses across teams and their unique workflows.
- Relevance by area: Only statuses scoped to a category/subcommunity (plus global ones) appear when changing an idea’s status, so teams see just the options that fit their workflow instead of a single, global list.
- Streamlined idea creation: New ideas automatically get the defined (or inherited) default for their area, preventing idea creators from picking irrelevant statuses.
- Process alignment across teams: Different product lines or regional groups can run distinct lifecycle stages (e.g., “Needs Triage,” “In Review,” “Handed Off to Product”) without cluttering other teams’ workflows.
Permissions
The Garden > Settings > Manage permission is required to:
- Create and edit ideation statuses
- Scope statuses
- Set defaults (global and category/subcommunity)
The Garden > Moderation > Manage and Garden > Curation > Manage permissions are required to:
- Change an idea's status in the community
Access & enable scoped ideation statuses
- Access the Dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings > Posts > Idea Statuses.
- Click the Enable Scoped Status toggle to turn it on.
With scoping enabled, the Statuses page list includes a new column, Scope, making it easy to track each status's current scope (e.g., All, 22 categories, 2 subcommunities, etc.), and a label for the global default.
Create a scoped status
- At the top of the Statuses page, click Add Status.
- In the Add Status dialog, complete the fields (described below).
- Click Save to add the scoped status to the list.
Scoped status settings
- Name: The label that displays in the front end interface.
NOTE: Status names must be unique; duplicate names are blocked with a validation message.
- State: Select Open or Closed to control whether ideas with this status can be voted on.
- Default Status: Check this box to make the status the global default for your community. This default status will be used if no other category- or subcommunity-specific default is available. During idea creation, the system applies defaults in this inheritance order: subcategory default → parent category default → subcommunity default → global default. In short: if nothing more specific is configured, the global default is used
NOTE: You can only have one global default; in addition, the global default cannot be deleted.
- Categories: If you want to scope the status to one or more categories (and their associated subcategories, if any), select them from the dropdown.
- Subcommunities: If you want to scope the status to one more subcommunities, select them from the dropdown.
NOTE: Leave these two scoping options blank to keep the status globally available.
Manage your global default and area-specific defaults
Let's walk through how to set a global default for your entire community, as well as defaults at the category and subcommunity levels.
Set a global default
- Navigate to the Settings > Posts > Ideation Statuses page.
- Create or edit a status.
- Check the Default Status box to make that status the global default.
This will be the default status applied to all new ideas, unless superseded by a category or subcommunity default.
NOTE: You can only have a single global default set at a time.
The global default status cannot be deleted (the trashcan icon is hidden); if you want to delete a status that is set as the global default, you must first set another status as the global default or uncheck the Default Status box.
Set area-specific defaults
You can set a default status per category/subcommunity; when doing so, you'll be able to select from all statuses scoped to that area and any globally available statuses.
When creating or editing a category (Settings > Posts Categories) or subcommunity (Settings > Posts > Subcommunities), select a default status for that category or subcommunity via the Default Idea Status dropdown.
This will be the default status applied to all new ideas in that category or subcommunity.
Status application & management
Statuses are not applied during idea creation; once an idea is created, it will inherit the applicable default status: subcommunity/category or global default.
Users with the proper permissions can then update this default status at any time.
1. Navigate to an Idea post in your community.
2. Click either the ellipsis (…) menu or the status card's pencil icon.
3. In the resulting dialog, select a new status from the menu.
4. (optional) Provide an explanation for the change (e.g., if changing from In Progress to Complete, let users know when they can expect the new feature to be available).
NOTE: Changing an idea’s status will trigger notifications to the idea author and any idea voters, if these notifications are enabled for their accounts.
