Challenge types
There are three types of challenges in Medallia Ideas: Milestone, Funnel, and Standard.
Standard Challenges
A standard challenge is a question or topic that doesn't have any timed phases or milestone targets. These challenges typically have a deadline by which all ideas must be posted. Read the challenge brief carefully to understand if there's a deadline, and if there is anything else that you need to take into account when posting your idea.
Standard challenges are often used in the early stages of a project, when trying to gather a wide range of ideas, or in a challenge eliciting some feedback on a particular idea or topic.
Milestone Challenges
Milestone challenges require that ideas meet certain targets (milestones) to progress through the challenge. For example, your idea may need to get 20 votes from other users in the community to progress, or you may need to add more information to your idea.
Each milestone challenge has its own custom set milestones and criteria. Challenges may feature multiple stages of the same milestone type, such as several refinement stages, or consist of different types like voting. review, and approval. Ideas must satisfy each milestone's criteria to advance through the challenge.
Milestone challenges have time limits for each milestone or for the entire challenge. For instance, an idea might have 30 days to complete the challenge or 7 days for each milestone. Without specific time limits, ideas progress at varying speeds, with some achieving multiple milestones quickly, while others take longer.
There are three types of milestones.
- Vote Target Milestone
-
Ideas pass this milestone by achieving the required number of votes. This can be through thumbs up voting, where a specific count of affirmative votes is needed, or scorecard voting, where ideas must attain a minimum average rating. Voting phases can be tailored to grant voting rights to certain users or groups, while allowing all challenge participants to track idea progression.
- Refinement Milestone
-
Ideas pass this milestone after the author(s) supply additional information to the idea, such as answering further questions, or providing supporting documentation. - Approval Milestone
-
Ideas pass this milestone after being approved by a moderator. After reviewing the idea, the moderator will either - Approve it — progress to the next milestone
- Reject it — cannot progress
- Revert it — send back to the previous milestone.
Funnel Challenges
Funnel challenges involve timed stages where moderators determine if an idea progresses to subsequent phases. Initially accepting a broad range of ideas, the process narrows down selections, culminating with only the most promising ideas reaching the final stage.
When viewing a Funnel challenge on the Challenge page, the phases of the challenge appear below the brief, and countdown timer below the current phase reports when that phase ends and the next begins.
Each funnel challenge has its own, custom set of phases, each with their own time limits and restrictions. For example, in a later phase you may be able to vote on existing ideas, but not to post a new idea.
When viewing an idea in a funnel challenge, the idea reports where it is in the funnel advancement. See Funnel information for details.
