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How submission works

This page covers the concept of submission. For the procedural fields-and-buttons reference, see Submitting an idea.

The path from Submit to In review

Section titled “The path from Submit to In review”

You write your idea on the new-idea form, click Submit, and several things happen at once.

  • A reference number is generated. Your idea gets a short identifier in the format IDEA-2026-0047. The number is unique to your workspace, increments per year, and never changes.
  • The criteria for the category are snapshotted onto your idea. This locks the rubric for your specific idea. If an admin tunes weights or adds criteria later, your idea's score isn't rewritten retroactively.
  • The idea is created with status in_review. The pipeline starts here, not at a "submitted" status.
  • Coordinators are notified. Everyone assigned to the category gets an email and an in-app notification, and a Slack DM if they've linked Slack.
  • The AI first reviewer queues up. The AI scoring runs in the background; humans don't have to wait for it before they start.
  • The system generates an embedding for overlap detection. From this point on, when someone else starts a similar idea, your idea will appear in their overlap panel.

After all of that, you see a confirmation screen with your reference number and the message "We've notified your reviewers."

The reference number

Section titled “The reference number”

Reference numbers follow the format {prefix}-{year}-{counter}. The default prefix is IDEA. Workspace admins can change the prefix in Settings → Organisation.

The counter is zero-padded to four digits and resets at the start of each calendar year. So the 47th idea submitted in 2026 is IDEA-2026-0047. The 1st idea of 2027 is IDEA-2027-0001.

The number is the canonical way to reference an idea in conversations, in Slack, in email subject lines, and in support tickets.

What happens next

Section titled “What happens next”

The idea sits in in_review until every assigned reviewer (humans and the AI) has finished. The AI usually completes within a few minutes; humans take as long as they take. When the last reviewer submits their scorecard, the system advances the idea to scored and the auto-decision rule fires.

You can follow progress on the idea's detail page or wait for the decision email.

Editing after submission

Section titled “Editing after submission”

Submitting is not always final. The rules for who can edit and when:

  • Submitters can edit their own idea's title and description fields while it is in_review, but only if no reviewer has yet completed their scorecard. Once one reviewer submits, the idea is locked for the submitter.
  • Admins can edit any idea at any status. This includes ideas that have already been scored, approved, or rejected. Edits are made inline on the idea's detail page and are recorded in the activity feed.

Inline editing opens directly on the Details tab of the idea page — there is no separate edit URL.

What's next

Section titled “What's next”