Want to get ideas from your staff? The Suggestion Box App Share allows employees to share their thoughts on improving procedures or customer service, improve productivity.
In This Article
The Suggestion Box App lets users submit ideas which can be viewed and rated with a 'thumbs up' by other staff. Add folders if you want to categorize suggestions by type.
Build Your Suggestion Box
Start by following the process to add an App to a site.
Once you have the App in place, on the App Card change the title and/or description if you want to customize it for your intranet. You might want to name it something that relates to your company, or have a contest for employees to create a name. Click Create if you'll return to it later, or Build if you want to start customizing or adding content right away.
Default Suggestion Box Layout
The Suggestion Box App comes with a standard layout for its default home page, List View, and Item View, as shown with sample content below. All layouts can be customized.
App Home Page View
If the Suggestion Box has multiple folders, the default Home Page will look like the image below.


Item View

Customize Suggestion Box
When an item is added to the Suggestion Box, it takes the format of a required title, suggestion or idea text field, and various additional fields such as file attachments or links.
As with all Apps, there are many ways to customize. When you're in the App, hover over the Admin icon in the Toolbar, and click App Admin to access the settings.
Other than the name and description, you can:
- Choose which fields to display - click Manage Fields to view the current fields in the Suggestion Box. If you mouse over a field you will get the crosshairs which allow you to hold and drag the field to reposition it, or you can click the edit pencil to show more options or the red circle to delete the field. Learn more about managing fields in the App Overview article.
- Change the layout - edit the layout of the App Home page, List View, or Item View. Learn more about Layout for Apps.
- Use folders to group contents - click Folders | Security to add, rename, or delete folders to categorize Suggestion Box info. Click on the folder name to adjust the security of that folder. Learn more about Security for Apps.
- Add an approval function - click Approval Workflow, then click on a folder name to assign an Approval Manager workflow by folder. Learn more about managing folder workflow in the App Overview article.
- Advertise items - click Advertising Options, then click on a folder name to determine whether items in that folder will be advertised to the site homepage.
These are just a few of the many ways you can customize the Suggestion Box App so it fits with your goals.
Create Employee Recognition App from Suggestion Box
A common modification of the Suggestion Box App is to customize it so that employees can nominate a coworker for recognition - often called Kudos for Staff, Nominate a Coworker, Employee Recognition, or something similar.
An example of what this may look like with some recognition submissions:
Getting the customization in place requires a few steps to both get the right data fields in place, and have them display correctly for users.
- The initial process is exactly the same as for building a Suggestion Box App or any App: start by following the process to add an App to a site.
- Once you have the App in place, on the App Card change the title and/or description if you want to customize it for your intranet. Click Create if you'll return to it later, or Build if you want to start customizing or adding content right away.
- As an Admin, hover over the Admin icon in the Toolbar, click App Admin, then click Manage Fields.
- By clicking the small red circle to the right of the fields, delete the following fields from your new App (assuming you want to limit the App to the basics as shown above):
- Additional Notes
- File Attachment
- Link Attachment
- From the left margin, click and drag Employee Field into the list of fields as the first item.
- Click Save to retain your changes to the fields.
- Retitle fields as follows:
- click on Title and type Why?
- click on Suggestion/Idea and type Description
- click on Created By and type Nominated By
- Click Save to retain your changes to the fields.
Now you need to change how the fields are displayed to users, as follows:
- On the right side of your screen, click List View, then click Edit Fields in the middle of your screen.
- Under the column with Tags, click Delete Column, then click OK to confirm.
- Beside Description and Comments, click the red circle to delete the fields from the display.
- Click and drag the Label column to the left of the Why column.
- From the left margin, drag and drop Employee into the Label column - which will be retitled.
- Click Save.
- On the right side of your screen, click Item View, then click Edit Fields in the middle of your screen.
- Click and drag Description as well as Why to an empty lower row.
- From the left margin, drag and drop Employee into the top row.
- Click Save.
Lastly, set Global Permissions to allow all employees to submit their recognition submissions:
- On the right side of the admin screen, click Folders | Security
- Click Folder 1 (default folder when app is created)
- Rename folder if desired and save changes
- Click 'apply security'
- Click 'turn on' next to Global Add OFF
Your Employee Recognition app as shown in the above example has now been created, and is ready for data to be added.
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