In most cases, Innovation Central is open to Everyone to maximize collaboration and concept development. However, there are special use cases where submitting, reading and collaborating around content needs to be restricted. Innovation Central provides the flexibility to accomplish these special cases using Document Security and Embargo.

Use Case for Document Security

Document Security is most frequently used in conjunction with Open Innovation use cases. For example, you may have a group of suppliers submitting ideas to your company. While the company employees want to freely collaborate with the suppliers, the suppliers do not want to freely collaborate with one another to protect their own company IP. To achieve this scenario, Document Security would be set to Management and Above, and all participating employees would need the Special Role of Management. This restriction can be set for idea submission, comment submission or both depending on your unique situation.

Use Case for Embargo

In highly regulated industries, or with sensitive topics, it may be important to have each idea reviewed and released for viewing within an Innovation Central instance. Embargo will help you achieve this. When using Embargo, once an idea is submitted it is only visible to those who have an appropriate Special Role. Those individuals then have the responsibility to read the ideas and either permanently restrict them from the participants, or release them from Embargo for viewing by everyone in the Challenge.

When Embargo is enabled, those assigned to manage the process will go to the reports tab to complete their process work.  On the right hand side are the Ideas Under Embargo.  Documents under Embargo refer to any other types of content such as comments.

After clicking the link, a list of content under embargo will be presented.  To review each idea and release it from embargo, click on the link to the idea:

 


To release from Embargo, use the action menu as shown.  Notice at the top of the idea, the text in the yellow bar notes that this idea is currently still in Embargo.  Once the idea is released from Embargo, that text will no longer appear, and the idea will be visible to all participants.