Thousands of Clients Have Put Features in the Hands of Our Users

Anthology is committed to building and developing our products in collaboration with you, the higher education community. Our Idea Exchange, where our clients can share ideas, vote on ideas, and interact with the product management team about our plans, is one way we ensure that our clients have a voice in product strategy and development priorities. We officially launched the Anthology Idea Exchange in July 2022 and are excited to share updates on the outstanding amount of client participation, the innovative ideas our clients have suggested, and our ability to execute on those ideas as they aligned with the overall perspective of the community. Keep reading to discover the remarkable growth our Idea Exchange has experienced this year! 

Idea Exchange really hit the ground running! We are proud to share that, in just one year, more than 5000 Anthology users have joined the Idea Exchange. Anthology has teamed up with clients from over 50 countries spanning six continents to develop EdTech solutions for the global education community. To all those who have been part of this journey, we extend our heartfelt gratitude! 

Our clients’ collaboration has directly influenced Anthology’s roadmaps and assisted us in meeting their needs. Through votes and detailed comments, our clients have provided us with insightful perspectives that guide our development efforts, ultimately benefiting the broader EdTech community.  Our clients’ voices have been heard! Since last year, ideas voted on by more than 11,000 users have been implemented or added to our strategic roadmaps.

The Idea Exchange: Our Guiding Principles

Responsiveness:  Our commitment is to review and respond quickly to each idea. We read every idea and comment and, more importantly, respond within 17 days on average.

Engagement: We are grateful for our clients’ contributions and value their participation in the Idea Exchange. We honor that investment by engaging with them through user groups, office hours, and community forums to learn more about their perspectives. We delve deep to truly understand client needs and frequently share proposed screenshots and workflows to get their feedback before finalizing the new feature. 

“One of the most important means of client feedback is through the Idea Exchange, which is a core contributor we use for project prioritization and planning.” 

-Dominic Gore, Director of Product Management 

Transparency: We are committed to keeping our clients informed so they always know our perspective, even should an instance arise where an idea is not likely to be implemented in the near future. Since we launched the Idea Exchange in 2022, 12% of ideas have already been implemented or are informing our near-term roadmaps. We updated every one of those ideas to share in which software version the idea was implemented or note inclusion of the idea in our roadmaps. 

“Anthology is actually listening and taking our ideas and making them happen. It's very validating.” 

-Kim Kenward, Director of E-learning Technologies, Grand Valley State University 

Here are just a few examples: 

• Within Anthology^® Engage, we created an option for institutions to generate QR codes to share forms and collect information.  
• Within Blackboard^® Learn, we updated the Messages landing page to display the most important messages first.  
• Within Anthology^® Student, we added the ability to easily remove students from reports - our most popular idea for Anthology Student!

We are honored by the opportunity to learn from our valued clients to build solutions that best meet their needs. If you haven’t already, please join us at https://community.anthology.com/idea-exchange. We’re listening!