Contributors are Productboard users in customer-facing roles, such as support, sales, marketing, and customer success. They submit feedback and stay updated on product plans. That feedback is often the most direct signal a product team has about what customers need.
This article covers what a contributor can do in Productboard and how to do it. It applies whether you're new to the platform or checking on a specific action.
In this article:
- Checking your role and permissions
- Understanding how contributor feedback fits into the product cycle
- Submitting feedback that's easy to act on
- Getting feedback in through the channels you already use
- Tracking features and roadmaps
- Preparing for customer calls
- Sharing your team's plans through the Portal
- See also
Checking your role and permissions
Contributors can create feedback, tag it, and link it to related features. You can assign ownership of feedback you own or create, comment and @mention colleagues, and follow features or feedback to get notified about changes. You can also view the Features and Roadmap boards and review the Portal where it's shared.
If you aren't sure whether you're a contributor, see Member role definitions to learn how to check your role.
Understanding how contributor feedback fits into the product cycle
Product teams pull feedback from many sources and turn it into ideas, called insights. Many of these insights come from contributors. The team prioritizes which ideas to build, communicates the plan on a roadmap, and can collect further ideas or announce launches through a Portal.
Submitting feedback that's easy to act on
Feedback is easier for a product team to act on when it includes a few consistent details. When you submit feedback, include:
- The company name.
- The user's name and email, not your own.
- Relevant tags.
- The use case.
- The problem itself.
For more information, see Create your first insight.
Getting feedback in through the channels you already use
You don't have to log into Productboard to submit feedback. Forward an email, push a message from Slack, or capture something on the spot with the Chrome extension. You can also connect a tool you already use, like Intercom, Salesforce, or Zendesk. Zapier connects Productboard to thousands of other tools if none of these fit.
If Spark is enabled on your workspace, feedback submitted through any of these channels feeds into it automatically. It's included in the patterns Spark surfaces to your product team.
For more information, see Forward emails to Productboard and Submit user insights with the Productboard extension for Chrome. For Slack, see Getting started with Productboard's integration for Slack.
Tracking features and roadmaps
On the features or grid board, click a feature to see its description, owner, and status. Filter by companies to see which features your customers are interested in, and follow a feature to get notified about updates.
Your product team shares one or more roadmaps to communicate their plans. Filter a roadmap by companies to see what feedback led to a given feature. Follow features on the roadmap the same way you would on the features board.
For more information, see Grid board examples and Popular roadmaps guide.
Preparing for customer calls
The Companies and Users boards give you a single view of everything a specific customer has asked for, including features that have already shipped. You can prepare for a call without a separate briefing from your product team.
For more information, see Companies and Users boards: View and understand customer context.
Sharing your team's plans through portals
A portal is a public page where your product team collects ideas, validates them, and announces launches. Share Portal cards directly with customers instead of forwarding requests by email.
Once an idea ships, export the list of people who expressed interest in it so you can follow up with them directly.
For more information, see Getting started with portals.