From the Idea Lab site:

Idea Lab is for libraries and consortia of all types, using any Innovative product. We need all Innovative users to drive innovation.

Join an active challenge. Share ideas, comment, and vote on what’s most important to libraries. We can’t wait to hear from you!

Sign up for access here: https://idealab.iii.com/main/User/Login#/login and scroll down to the link for registering as a new user. 

With the introduction of Idea Lab,  Innovative changed how improvements were suggested. Previously, members of the Innovative Users Group (IUG) could suggest enhancements, and those would be added to a long list from hundreds of libraries. The list would be reviewed by volunteer functional experts and then shared with the IUG members to vote for their favorites. The items with the top votes would be forwarded on to Innovative, and those were used to inform future development of the ILS and online catalog.  

This wasn’t always a perfect system, however. Requests would get lost in the shuffle between members, functional experts, system leads and Innovative staff. Because of this, Innovative and members of the IUG partnered to create Idea Lab, a place open to anyone with an interest in improving the product they use.  If an idea gets enough support, it is automatically shared with Innovative, and influences the agile development of their Sierra and Polaris products.

The new Idea Lab site is divided into  two sections: Challenges and Always Open. Challenges are timeboxed  and focus on a specific topic. Past Challenges have included “Leveraging Data,” which generated 83 new ideas, and “Sierra Public Services Workflow,” which generated  150 ideas.

The Always Open section accepts ideas without restriction, and is dependent on garnering votes (in the form of “likes”) and comments.   If an idea gets both enough votes and comments, it flows on to the next stage for further review.  Because this system depends on crowd validation, it is a good idea to check back for new ideas often. 

Some recent suggestions that have attracted votes and comments:

  • Add an Undo Function: “It would be universally helpful to have undo functions wherever possible. Accidentally waive a fine? Didn’t mean to delete that block? Shouldn’t have hit save? Let’s undo our mistakes!”
  • Allow for system wide customization of fonts and colors to assist those with low vision.
  • Responsive, Accessible Catalog, Discovery Platform(s)

If you have an idea for improving Sierra, check out the Idea Lab.