Feature Requests Board — The Voice of Your Customers#

Your customers know what they need. The Feature Requests board makes sure that knowledge reaches the people building the product — organized, prioritized, and connected directly to your roadmap.

Whether requests come from support tickets, sales calls, customer interviews, or internal brainstorms, the Feature Requests board is the single place where all of them land, get evaluated, and turn into action.

Who It's For#

The Feature Requests board is built for product teams and PMs who manage external input and need a structured process for evaluating what to build next.

It's also useful for any team that needs a single intake channel for ideas — from product feedback to internal improvement suggestions.

Flat Structure — No Hierarchy#

Unlike the R&D board, feature requests are flat. Each request is a single item. There's no story/task/sub-task breakdown because requests aren't units of execution — they're signals. The work of actually building the feature happens in your R&D board.

This keeps the Feature Requests board simple and fast: one row, one idea, one decision.

The Request Lifecycle#

Feature requests move through a focused workflow designed around the decision process, not execution:

The workflow is intentionally short. You don't need 20 statuses to manage feature requests — you need clarity on what's been reviewed and what decision was made.

Customizing Statuses#

These statuses are the defaults. You can rename them, reorder them, add new ones, or disable ones you don't use.

How to customize: Open your board → click the gear icon → Statuses tab. Toggle statuses on or off, reorder them within their groups, and give them names that match your team's language.

Built-In Fields#

Default Custom Fields#

These fields are pre-configured on every new Feature Requests board:

These custom fields are a starting point. You can rename them, change the available options on select fields, remove ones you don't need, or add entirely new fields for your process.

How to customize: Go to Settings → Fields to manage all custom fields for your organization. You can also access field settings through your board's gear icon → Fields tab.

Customer Portal Integration#

The Feature Requests board can be connected to a Customer Portal — a branded, publicly accessible page where your customers can submit feature requests directly.

When the portal is enabled:

• Customers see a submission form configured by your team
• New submissions flow directly into the Feature Requests board as new items
• You control which fields are visible on the public form
• Customers can optionally create an account to track their submissions and vote on others

This replaces the spreadsheet, the shared inbox, and the "just send us a Slack" approach with a real intake system.

Tip: Connect your Feature Requests board to your R&D board — when engineering ships a feature, the customer who requested it gets automatically notified. Close the loop without any manual work.

AI-Powered Duplicate Detection#

When a new request is submitted — through the portal or manually — Lifecycle OS scans existing open requests for semantic similarity. If a likely duplicate is found, you're prompted to review and merge before the new item is created.

This keeps your board clean without requiring someone to manually check for duplicates on every submission.

Duplicate detection works on:

• Title similarity
• Description content
• Customer and source overlap

Merging Duplicate Requests#

When you find duplicates that slipped through, merge them. Bulk-select multiple requests and merge them into a single item. The merge preserves:

• All reporters and customers from the merged items
• Combined vote counts
• Notes and attachments from each item
• The full activity history

The merged item becomes the canonical request. Original items are archived.

Linking to R&D#

When a feature request is approved and scheduled for development, link it to a story in your R&D board. The link is bidirectional — you can see it from both boards.

When the linked R&D story reaches Production Deployed or Done status:

• The feature request automatically moves to Completed
• Customers who submitted the request (via the portal) receive an automated notification
• The full audit trail is preserved — who requested it, when, and when it shipped

This closes the loop between customer feedback and product delivery automatically.

Tracking Reporters and Votes#

Every request tracks who submitted it. When customers submit through the portal, their identity is captured. For requests submitted internally, use the Requested By and Customer fields to record the source.

The Votes field lets you track demand. You can use it as a manual tally, feed it from your portal's upvote count, or populate it via automation from an external tool. Sort your backlog by Votes to see what your customers want most.

Public Submit Form#

The portal submission form is fully configurable:

• Choose which fields appear on the form (title, description, customer name, email, source, etc.)
• Set required vs. optional fields
• Add a custom prompt or instructions above the form
• Control whether the form shows existing requests (allowing customers to vote before submitting)

Tip: Keep the public form short. Title and description are usually enough. Every extra required field reduces submission rates.

Configuring the submission form: Open your board → gear icon → Form settings. You can choose which fields appear on the public form, control field visibility, and enable or disable the form entirely.

Reporter Tracking#

The board tracks all reporters associated with each request — not just the first person who submitted it. When multiple customers request the same feature:

• Use the Merge feature to combine them into one item
• All reporters are preserved on the merged item
• When the feature ships, everyone is notified — not just the first submitter

Related#

• Understanding Boards
• R&D Board
• Customer Portal
• Automations
• Custom Fields
• Views Overview