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Set Up your Challenge "Format"

Last updated on Nov 25, 2025

An idea format enables you to control how users respond to your challenge. At its core, it’s a powerful and intuitive form-builder, providing a range of field types to choose from, control flows, and branching. When users create ideas for your challenge, they do so by completing the form you build as the idea format.

In this article, we explain how to manage your challenge’s idea format.

1. Find the Format Settings page

Firstly, navigate to the Settings page of your challenge. Find your challenge via the “Challenges” link in the top navbar, and then select “View challenge”.

From here, click the “Settings” button in the challenge toolbar.

Finally, tap the “Idea Format” tab in the sidebar.

2. Select a starting point

When starting out with a new idea format, you are asked to choose a “start point” from a number of options. Once you’ve chosen a start point, you are then free to modify the format by adjusting, adding, or removing sections and fields.

The following start points are currently available.

  • “The 3 Is”: A short-form template that asks idea-creators a small number of questions and includes a self assessment over the idea’s estimated importance, impact, and cost of implementation.

  • “Start from Scratch”: Start from an empty format, and you build up your sections and fields from the ground up.

  • “Automatically Generated”: Provide a scoping document or description and SimplyDo’s AI services will create a format for you based on the instructions you provide.

  • “Re-use a format”: Make a copy of a format used in a previous challenge, enabling changes without affecting the original challenge.

We recommend considering the following:

  • If you have run a challenge in the past and want to re-use some of the questions, we recommend re-using a previously-used format from another challenge. You can then add or change fields as you need once imported in order to fine-tune your format for this specific challenge.

  • If you have built a document that describes the fields or types of questions you want to ask, give the AI option a go to save time in building everything manually.

  • For other options, we recommend starting from scratch and then later using the specific section and field import options as needed.

3. Choose format settings

Once your format has been created (either pre-existing or selected from a start point), you are have some additional options for your format.

Enabling idea assessment lets you build an assessment framework into your idea format (for judges to assess ideas once submitted). We recommend leaving this “off” for now, and we’ll cover assessment in more detail in a future article.

Enabling idea attachments allows idea creators to upload additional files (including documents and images) to their ideas. If you’d like users to have the ability to do so, then we recommend enabling this setting.

4. Edit your format

4.1 Definitions

You’re now ready to make any changes to your format. Here are some quick definitions to help you understand what’s going on:

  • Section: A container of fields. All fields must belong to a section. Typically sections might group related fields together. When creating ideas, users can navigate between sections easily using their sidebar. There are different types of sections, which we’ll describe below.

  • Field: An individual question. Fields have a “type” (we describe them below) which governs how users will interact with your field.

SimplyDo has support for the following types of sections:

  • Standard section: This is what you want most of the time – it’s a section that’s visible to all idea creators and can contain any type of field.

  • EDI section: EDI sections are just like standard sections, except any responses recorded in an EDI section of an idea is restricted to organisational administrators with the “view EDI data” permission. EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) questions are used to ask sensitive questions.

  • Assessment section: These sections allow you to build an assessment framework into your idea format for judges to use to assess the idea. We’ll cover assessment in more detail in a future article.

  • Impacts section: These sections are used to allow idea creators to self-assess their idea’s impact against your organisational impact strategies. We’ll cover idea impact (and benefit realisation) in more detail in a future article.

Within standard and EDI sections, SimplyDo supports the following types of fields, and the interactions user can have with them:

  • Video: upload a video file, or embed a YouTube or Vimeo video

  • Image: upload an image file, or select one from Unsplash

  • Multi-image: upload a number of images as a gallery

  • File: upload a file (e.g. a Word or Excel document or a PDF file)

  • Multi-file: upload a number of files

  • Short text: enter up to one line of characters (e.g. a sentence)

  • Long text: enter multiple lines of text (and paragraphs)

  • Formatted text: enter text with rich-text formatting, such as headings, bold, italic, underline, links, bullets, and embedded images and videos

  • Numeric: enter a number

  • Slider: choose an integer from a selected range by dragging a slider

  • Dropdown box: choose a single item from a dropdown menu

  • Multiple selection: choose multiple items from a selection

You can also add information text fields (to provide additional context to idea creators) and row divider fields (to provide separation between non-related fields). These field types do not collect information in the idea.

Field restrictions: Each field may have different types of restrictions you can place on it. For example, a text field allows you to select a word limit, and sliders allow you to choose a minimum and maximum value.

4.2 Format toolbar

Your format toolbar floats at the bottom of the editor, and provides buttons for previewing the format, and saving it. We recommend saving regularly as you progress to prevent loss of work. Previewing the format is useful to see how it will appear to people creating ideas for your challenge.

You can also use the toolbar to search for your fields, and expand or collapse all of your sections in one go.

4.3 Managing sections

The image below shows two sections in the editor. Below the image we describe some of the key components.

Key components of the section editor:

  • The image shows two sections: Section 1 is “expanded” (to view the contents) and Section 2 is “collapsed”. Collapsing sections is useful for navigating around when you have lots of sections in your format. You can collapse sections individually or in-bulk using the “Collapse all sections” button on your

  • When expanded, you can see the fields contained in the section. In this example, Section 1 has three fields (which are all currently collapsed themselves)

Adding new sections

You can add a section using the “Add new section” button. When adding a section, you’ll be asked what type of section you want to add.

Importing a section

If you have a section you want to re-use from a previous challenge, you can use the “Copy a section from another challenge” option in the “Add new section” menu. When selected, a window will open to invite you to select sections from previous challenges to import.

Select all the sections you want to import and then click the “Import sections” button.

Note that you can safely edit copied sections without affecting the challenge they were copied from.

Renaming your section

The first text field that appears at the top of the section is the section name. You can rename the section by changing this value.

Reordering sections

You can simply drag-and-drop sections around to re-order them. It may be easier to collapse sections before you do so to prevent the need for lots of scrolling as you drag things around.

You can also reorder sections using the “Options” dropdown at the top-right of the section editor.

Deleting a section

Use the Options dropdown and choose the “Delete section” option to delete your section. Note that deleting a section also deletes any fields contained by that section.

4.4 Managing fields

The image below shows three fields inside a section. Below the image we describe some of the key components.

  • The “Your idea” field is expanded, showing the settings available for that field. The other two fields are currently collapsed, and so only an overview is shown.

  • Fields can be collapsed and expanded using the controls to the right of each field. All fields in a section can be collapsed/expanded using the “Expand/Collapse fields” option.

Adding new fields

Add a new field to your section using the “Add new field” button. A number of options are presented to choose from, corresponding to the available types (as described above). Select one to add it to your section.

Importing a field

If you want to re-use a field from another challenge, you can select the “Copy a field from another challenge”. This will open a window, inviting you to select fields from other challenges to import. Complete the import by clicking the “Import Fields” button.

Note that you can safely edit imported fields without affecting the challenge they were copied from.

Reorder fields

You can reorder fields in a section by dragging them around or by using the options in the “Options” dropdown. When dragging fields, we recommend collapsing them first to reduce any scrolling that may be required.

Deleting a field

You can delete a field via the “Delete field” option in the field’s “Options” dropdown.

Managing field settings

Each field has a range of settings you can configure, as described below.

  • Title: The main question your field is asking. Generally this should be short (only a few words or a single question sentence)

  • Description: Additional help text or context you can provide to help users understand your question. You could give examples or other information to get the best responses.

  • Set field as required: If this is enabled, SimplyDo will ensure the field is completed before the idea can be submitted.

  • Automatically assign labels: If this is enabled, you can create a set of rules that allow you to auto-assign labels to the idea. For example, if a specific value is entered, a label can be applied. Labels can later be used to filter, slice and dice your ideas.

  • Conditionally show this field: This option lets you build in form branching, through conditional display of fields based on responses to previous fields. When enabled, you’ll be asked to specify rules that must be fulfilled in order for the field to be shown.

  • Restrict visibility to managers: If enabled, responses to this field in ideas will only be shown to people who can administer your challenge. It can be used to collect confidential information.

5. Branching formats

By making use of the “Conditionally show this field” setting, you can construct formats that branch (change dynamically) based on previous responses.

For example, this can be as simple as displaying an “Other” text field if no options in a dropdown apply, or displaying whole new sets of fields based on previous responses.

You can safely combine required fields and conditional fields, and SimplyDo will intelligently determine which fields are required in the given context.

6. Field settings

Different field types may have different settings that apply. For example, in the image below, a formatted text and slider field is shown. The formatted text field provides word limit settings, and the slider has settings related to the minimum and maximum available options and the ability to control the placement of a “justification box”.

7. Automatic label assignment

You can configure rules when you enable the “Automatically assign labels to the idea…” option, and SimplyDo will automatically associate a label to the idea – either as the idea is updated, or upon submission.

In the slider example below, the rules chosen will automatically assign a “thumbs-up” label to ideas submitted with a slider value of 3, and an “alert” label to ideas where the slider value is not 5. If someone selects “3” as the slider value, both labels will be applied.