Many companies have pointed out that Salesforce Ideas is a great application for cultivating ideas and discussing them, but how do you make sure the type ideas are executed on?

My recommendation is to build a project management app using Salesforce platform. It could be as simple as, project name, owner, and status, or you might have details you want to track. With the Salesforce platform the sky is the limit. We have custom fields, validation rules, workflow and approvals, and it is all point-and-click customization so you can make adjustments as your business changes. If you are looking for a good starting point there is a free Project Management App on the AppExchange which you can install and modify.

In terms of tying ideas back to projects, I created a related list on the projects tab called, “Related Idea.” When a project manager finds an Idea that pertains to a key initiative they can link it. Today that linkage might be somewhat manual (copying and pasting the URL or Idea ID into a custom field), but when the API comes out in February you’ll be able to do some interesting lookups. Also note that while a community might generate hundreds or thousands of ideas, you probably will only focus on 10-20 at any given time.

I’ll be writing more about innovation management in the coming weeks but I wanted to get a quick and dirty solution out to a common question we get.