How to take an idea from submission to quarterly priority

Good ideas don't always start at the top. At Northwoods Outfitters, their guide certification program started as a submission from Diego, an operations lead. By the time it became a Q3 priority, it had been scored, voted on by the team, promoted to a project, and linked to the company's quarterly commitment card — a full chain of evidence from "someone suggested this" to "we're accountable for it this quarter."

Here's how to run that workflow end to end.

Modules and permissions required

Both modules must be enabled under Settings → Modules.

Part 1: Submit and score the idea

Step 1: Submit the idea

Any workspace member can submit an idea. Navigate to Execution → Ideas in the sidebar. Click + New idea (top right). Fill in:

• Title (required) — make it actionable: "Launch guide certification program" rather than "Certification."
• Description (optional) — what problem does this solve? What would success look like?
• Priority — leave as Normal for new submissions; an admin can adjust later.

Click Create idea. The idea is created with status Submitted.

Step 2: Vote and build momentum

Any workspace member can upvote ideas. On the Ideas list, click the upvote button on any idea card to register your vote. The upvote count is visible on both the list view and the detail page.

Diego at Northwoods Outfitters reviews upvote counts every Monday morning. Ideas that gather 5 or more votes within a week get moved to Under review in his weekly triage pass.

To change an idea's status, open its detail page and update the Status field (admin, owner, or advisor role required).

Step 3: Score the idea

Admins, owners, and advisors can assign impact and effort scores to each idea on a 1–5 scale. Open the idea's detail page. In the sidebar panel, set:

• Impact — how much value does this deliver if executed? 5 = transformative; 1 = marginal.
• Effort — how much work does it take? 5 = very high; 1 = trivial. Note: lower effort = better placement in the matrix.

Once scored, the idea appears in the Matrix view of the Ideas page, placed in one of four quadrants:

The guide certification idea landed in Implement: Diego scored it Impact 4, Effort 2. That made the promotion decision easy.

Part 2: Promote the idea to a project

Step 4: Promote the idea

On the idea's detail page, click Promote (visible to admins, owners, and advisors). Select Promote to project.

A dialog opens pre-filled with the idea's title and description. Adjust if needed, then click Create project. This:

1. Creates a new project in the Execution module linked to the source idea
2. Sets the idea's status to In progress
3. Navigates you to the new project's detail page

The project carries a source idea link visible in the project record — the connection is preserved even if the idea or project is later edited.

Step 5: Build out the project

On the new project page, add:

• Members — add the people doing the work (Owners, Members, Viewers)
• Milestones — break the project into phases (admin, owner, or advisor required)
• Tasks — the first wave of atomic work items

Northwoods Outfitters added three milestones to the certification project: "Curriculum draft," "Pilot cohort," and "Full rollout."

Part 3: Link the project to a quarterly priority

Step 6: Create the quarterly priority (if it doesn't exist yet)

Navigate to Strategy → Quarterly Priorities in the sidebar. Use the quarter navigation arrows to confirm you're on the right quarter (for example, Q3 2026).

Click Add Priority (top right). Fill in:

Click Save. The priority card appears on the board.

Step 7: Link the project to the priority

From the priority card, click Promote to project. A dialog opens. If the project was already created (which it was, in Step 4), the dialog will display a notice that this priority already has linked projects if you had promoted it earlier — but since we created the project through the Ideas module instead, use this path to create the strategic link:

Click Promote to project on the priority card. In the dialog, update the title to match your existing project's name, then click Create project. This creates a new project linked to the priority and navigates you there.

Important: The promotion from a quarterly priority always creates a new project. If your project was already created through the Ideas promotion (Step 4), you have two options:

• Preferred: Set up the priority first (before the ideas promotion), then use the priority's Promote dialog to kick off the project — this creates the project with both the sourceIdeaId link and the strategyQuarterlyPriorityId link in a single action.
• Alternative: Run the workflows in parallel — the idea-promoted project handles execution tracking; the priority card shows the strategic commitment. Team members navigate between them via the priority chip on the strategy board and the project detail in Execution.

The priority card shows a project chip with a link to the linked project once the connection is made.

Step 8: Update the priority status as work progresses

Throughout the quarter, update the priority's status from its card (click the pencil icon):

Putting it all together

At Northwoods Outfitters, the full flow took about 20 minutes of admin time across three sessions:

1. Diego submitted the idea, the team voted, and it reached 7 upvotes in a week (10 minutes).
2. Priya scored it Impact 4 / Effort 2 and promoted it to a project during the Monday triage meeting (5 minutes).
3. At the quarterly planning session, the leadership team created the Q3 priority and linked it to the project (5 minutes).

From that point forward, anyone on the team could see the chain: the idea had a source, the project had an owner and milestones, and the quarterly priority showed the company's public commitment to get it done.

Variations

What if the idea is too small for a full project? Use Promote to task instead of Promote to project. The task appears in Execution → Tasks and can be linked to any existing project. It's not linkable to a quarterly priority directly, but you can reference it in the priority's description field.

What if you want to score many ideas quickly? Switch to Matrix view on the Ideas page. All scored ideas appear visually placed in the quadrants — you can open each one from the matrix for quick promotion without navigating away.

What if multiple ideas feed the same priority? Promote each relevant idea to a separate project, then promote the priority to one "master" project and reference the others in the project description or notes. There is no multi-project aggregation view on a single priority card today.