Spark: Explore weekly opportunity briefings

Jake Sawyer

Updated June 17, 2026 15:48

Each week, Spark analyzes your customer feedback and delivers an opportunity briefing on your home page. The briefing surfaces the three customer problems most worth your attention, grounded in real feedback and enriched with strategic context.

This article explains what the briefing contains, how Spark builds it, and how to get more out of it.

What an opportunity briefing is

Spark’s opportunity briefing isn’t a dashboard of metrics or an inbox of raw feedback. It’s a curated set of prioritized problem statements. Each one synthesizes dozens of customer signals into a single, actionable view.

Each Opportunity describes a real, recurring customer need. It tells you what customers are struggling with and why it matters, not which feature to build next. The evidence behind each Opportunity links directly to the original feedback notes, so you can verify every claim.

The briefing differs from a traditional analytics dashboard in one key way: it doesn’t show you numbers about what happened. It shows you what customers need, expressed in their own terms.

How Spark builds the briefing

The pipeline that generates your briefing runs automatically. No manual tagging or categorization is required.

Connecting feedback sources

Spark processes customer feedback from every source connected to your workspace. Supported sources include Zendesk, Gong, Intercom, and Mixpanel. You can also connect additional channels through the integrations settings. See Connect external tools to Productboard Spark for setup instructions.

The more sources you connect, the richer the signal Spark has to work with. Feedback from multiple channels helps Spark detect patterns that don’t appear clearly in any single source.

How Spark clusters and ranks signal

Spark processes your feedback through a three-stage pipeline:

Themes. Spark reads your feedback notes and groups them by topic. It identifies recurring subjects across customers and channels.
Findings. Related themes are synthesized into Findings, structured observations about specific customer pain points or unmet needs. Each Finding links back to the notes that informed it.
Opportunities. When multiple Findings point to the same underlying problem, Spark groups them into an Opportunity. It then ranks all Opportunities by signal strength and selects the top three for your briefing.

Nothing in this pipeline requires manual input. Spark handles the clustering, synthesis, and ranking automatically.

Reading your briefing

Your briefing appears as a card carousel at the top of the Spark home page. Spark refreshes the cards each week with the three highest-signal Opportunities from your space.

Opportunity cards

Each card shows the Opportunity title and a brief summary. From any card, you have two options:

Select Learn More to open the full Opportunity sidebar.
Select Dismiss to remove the card from your briefing permanently.

The Opportunity sidebar gives you the full picture. It includes:

Problem statement: A concise description of the customer need.
Supporting evidence: The Findings and feedback signals that informed this Opportunity.
Enrichment context: Strategic context across five dimensions.
- Strategy and OKR alignment: How the problem connects to your strategic goals.
- Competitive intelligence: Relevant signals from your competitive landscape.
- Segment sizing: Which customer segments are most affected.
- Product knowledge: How your current product relates to the problem.
- Roadmap and feature gaps: What’s planned (or not) to address this need.
Notes tab: All feedback notes linked through associated Findings.

From the sidebar, you can move directly into planning. Three actions open a Spark chat session with the Opportunity loaded as context:

Explore with Spark: Start an open-ended conversation about the Opportunity.
Create Initiative: Kick off a new initiative from the Opportunity.
Brainstorm Solutions: Generate possible solutions to the customer problem.

Drilling into the evidence

Every claim in the Opportunity sidebar traces back to a source. Select any Finding in the Supporting evidence section to open the Finding detail sidebar. It shows the full description of the observed pattern and lists all the notes that informed it.

To read the original feedback, open the Notes tab in the Opportunity sidebar. It lists every feedback note connected to the Opportunity through its associated Findings. Select any note to read the full customer feedback.

Exploring on your own terms

The weekly briefing shows Spark’s top three picks, but you’re not limited to those cards. The Insights area gives you direct access to every Finding and Opportunity Spark has generated in your space.

To browse all Opportunities, select Insights > Opportunities in the left navigation. The Opportunities board displays every AI-generated Opportunity in a grid view. Select any row to open its sidebar.

To browse Findings, select Insights > Findings in the left navigation. The Findings board lists all Findings sorted by creation date, with the most recent at the top. You can filter by Name or Owner using the grid controls.

Use the Insights area to explore a specific customer problem or verify whether Spark has already detected a pattern you’ve noticed. You can also find Opportunities that didn’t make the top three.

Tips for getting better briefings

Connect more feedback sources. Spark’s signal strength depends on the volume and variety of your feedback. Adding sources like Zendesk, Gong, or Intercom gives Spark more to work with and makes patterns easier to detect.
Keep your context documents current. Spark uses your strategy docs, OKRs, and competitive context to enrich each Opportunity. Outdated context produces weaker enrichment. Review your context documents regularly and update them when your strategy changes.
Vet your Opportunities. When you dismiss an Opportunity or engage with it, you teach Spark what matters to your team. Use Dismiss for Opportunities that don’t fit your current focus. Use Explore with Spark or Create Initiative for the ones that do. Over time, this feedback shapes the quality of your briefings.