The NI Idea Exchange is a product feedback forum where NI and users work together on ideas for new features or ideas for improving existing functionality. Users can submit ideas, and vote and comment on ideas submitted by others. NI will review the ideas and collaborate with users on those ideas chosen for development.
Before you get started, make sure you review the following guidelines.
How to use the NI Idea Exchange
Choose an Idea Exchange board
First, choose the proper location for the product for which you have an idea. You can find all of the Idea Exchange boards here.
Search for Existing Ideas
Next, you should perform a search to check if your idea already exists. If you do find an existing idea, be sure to give the idea kudos and even post a comment to include your use case and thoughts.
Draft Your Idea
When you're ready to post a new idea, click on the New Idea button. Give your idea a specific title; for example, don't write "New Idea for LabVIEW" as the subject.
Avoid posting questions or bugs to the Idea Exchange. You will want to find the best support board to ask your question instead. Also, be sure to only submit one idea per post.
When writing your idea, you will want to include the following:
- The New Feature: What is it that you are suggesting?
- The New Functionality: How would it work and what would it do? How does this feature fit into a user's workflow?
- The Current Functionality (if applicable): How does this feature work now and how does your idea differ from it?
- If you are posting an idea for improving existing functionality, be sure to include suggestions for how it can be improved. Simply posting that you don't like certain features is not sufficient for an idea.
- The User: What type of user is this feature for? For example, a cRIO user trying to deploy to multiple targets.
- The Benefit: Why is this helpful? What value would you and others derive from the feature?
Please include descriptive text and context for your suggested feature, as well as any screenshots, drawings, process diagrams, etc. that may be useful. If you have any, please also include examples of where you've seen a similar feature elsewhere.
After your idea is posted, you'll soon start to see comments and kudos given to your idea by other users. Once NI has reviewed your idea, the status will be updated.
Status Definitions and Process
Ideas can be segmented into two categories -- active and inactive. There are statuses within these categories which may vary depending on which board you are viewing.
Active Ideas
- Open - Ideas that are open for voting which have not yet officially been reviewed by NI
- Under Review - Ideas that have passed a particular threshold and are ready to be reviewed by NI
- Under Consideration - Ideas that NI views as potentially valuable and is further investigating for feasibility and alignment with the product roadmap
- In Development - Ideas that NI is actively developing
- In Beta - Ideas that have been included in a Beta release
Inactive Ideas
- Completed - Ideas that have been included in a product release
- Already Implemented - Ideas that have been closed as a duplicate of an existing implemented feature
- Duplicate - Ideas that have been closed as a duplicate of an existing post in the Idea Exchange
- Declined - Ideas that have been deemed as unfeasible or unaligned with the planned product direction
