Now that you’ve got your ideas selected and your evaluation criteria created, you’re ready to evaluate ideas.  To evaluate, click on the title of an idea to expand its detailed information.

At the top is a “Snapshot” area that gives you important details to help you better understand the idea.  Below that is the evaluation area.  Here you’ll be able to track the evaluation criteria you laid out earlier.  Drop down fields are saved as you select the desired choice.  Open text fields are saved once you begin typing and hit the “Save” button.

When you’re through with this idea, click “Next Idea” to quickly expand the next idea in your list.

Note: You can modify your fields by clicking the pencil icon on the right side of that field.  It’s an easy way to rename a field or add a choice that you may have missed during the initial setup.

Saving Time with Sorting and Filtering

When the number of ideas that are in your pipeline becomes great, you’ll need a way to prioritize which ideas get looked at first.  You can click the header of any column to sort by that field.  The basic fields are displayed below.  If you want to sort by the fields that you created for evaluation, click the double arrows to expand the grid and bring them into view.

If sorting the ideas in your pipeline still isn’t enough, you can narrow the number of ideas displayed through filtering.   Click “filters and views” to add filters or change any filters that were previously added. 

Depending on the type of filter you want to create (date, text, drop down), you’ll get an appropriate set of controls for that filter.  For example, with date filters, you get the option to filter “on or before” or “on or after” the date you enter.  With drop downs, you get “is,” “is not,” “is blank,” and “is not blank.” 

As you add filters, you may find that you’ve narrowed too far.  If that’s the case, click the red “X” on an individual filter to remove.  Or, you can remove all filters by clicking the button at the bottom of the filters section.

Note: You can combine filters to create interesting views of your pipeline.  For example, you could filter a “value” field and an “effort” field to see the set of ideas that your pipeline has deemed “high value and low effort.”

Exporting to Excel/CSV

As you slice and dice the data in your pipeline with filters, you may find you want to kick that data out into one of your favorite programs for further analysis, charting, or other reporting.  Brainstorm makes that process take just a click.

To export the current contents of your grid, click the green icons in the lower right hand side of the grid.  Excel (.xls) is on the left.  Comma-separated value (.csv) is on the right.  From there, you can perform additional actions on the data.

Next: Best practices for effective pipelines