While the Dell and Starbucks sites are two great ways of experiencing the Ideas application, we have also set up a new demo site called LookAtIdeas.com. 

It was built on the customer portal with a very modest amount of technical help. As a product manager I wanted to prove that a mere mortal could setup an ideas community. Based upon this experience I tried to create a step-by-step guide for setting up public sites.

The LookAtIdeas site also highlights what an internal or intranet community might look like. We have communities for Cost Cutting Ideas, Sales Feedback and Discussions, Employee Services, It Departments, and so on. You can browse the site to see what types of communities your company might implement and grab some sample ideas to get started. 

This site is a demo site, but I encourage people to sign-up for a free account and help me make the site feel alive with activity. Feel free to post, vote, or leave comments. This is a great resource for sharing best practices with other members of the community.

I've had a number of people ask if they can use Salesforce Ideas as a discussion forum vs. the innovation management use case we've talked a lot about. The answer is absolutely. With Salesforce you are able to re-name tabs so instead of "Ideas" you might want it to say "Questions."

Customers can post questions online rather instead of logging cases. Other members of the community can respond to the questions and vote the best ones to the top. With Salesforce Ideas the questions and comments are fully searchable so you can build up a rich knowledgebase.

You'll see that the screenshot above has a tab for "Blog." Salesforce doesn't offer a blogging application out of the box but it's really easy to plug one in using a web tab. In the example below I've set up a Typepad blog.

Here are two screenshots to show you how easy it is to create your own IdeaExchange. This is what Salesforce Ideas looks like deployed through the Customer Portal. It too me no time to set up and zero code. Just point, click, choose your colors, and renamed the tab. 

Salesforce doesn't offer a blogging application out of the box, but it's really easy to plug one in using a web tab. In the example below I've set up a Typepad blog. Once again no code, just point and click customization.   

It's a good best practice to set up a blog along side your Ideas community. It lets you call out interesting posts and highlight when you've delivered on an idea. It also allows you to recognize your top contributors and thank them for their participation.