Overview

Forums are a great tool for employees to submit feedback or suggestions. However, what if you want suggestions and submissions to be private, and not out in the open? The How-to below provides steps for you to set up an area where all users can submit ideas, but only a specific group of users can view the ideas submitted. Users who have submitted ideas can view their own ideas, but can't view ideas submitted by others. 

Recommendations 

Build your Idea Submission and Final Idea List Channels, and a parent page: 

1. Create a page
2. Create two child forum channels underneath the page, and hide both forum channels - one for Idea Submission, and one for the Final Idea List. 
3. Enable Moderation and set moderators on the Idea Submission channel. Set the moderators for the channel so the appropriate users get notified. 
4. Set up a forum widget on the page, enable the "Show Add Link" checkbox, and select the sources (the Idea Submission and Final Idea List channels) for the Forum widget. 

Set Access for the parent page and the channels

1. Set access for the Idea Submission forum channel - all members who are entitled to submit ideas require Write access. Any 
2. Set access for the Final Idea List forum channel - only users who are entitled to see the Final Idea List should have access to the channel. Any other inherited access rules should be removed/disabled. Users who are entitled to see the Final Idea List should have Full access to the channel. This allows users to mark items as resolved. 

Resulting workflow: 

1. All users who are entitled to submit ideas are able to add topics to the "Idea Submission" channel. Idea Submissions are sent to the moderator. 
2. Before publishing ideas, moderators move submitted ideas to the "Final Ideas List" channel. 
3. Users who are entitled to see the "Final Ideas List" channel can see all ideas that have been submitted. 
4. Other users can see any ideas they have submitted on their own by going to the parent page - ideas appear in the Forum Widget. Users can't see ideas submitted by other users.