Behind The Feedback: Notifications
05 Aug 2021

Recently, Mopinion launched another exciting feature that we know our users will love. Say hello to Notifications! This addition has been on our radar for a while, and we know it will benefit our users massively, allowing them to gain insights into exactly how Mopinion is being used across their organisation. In this Behind the Feedback story, we caught up with Product Manager Jos van der Kooij and Anwar Jebali, our Head of Development to take you through the process of how this innovative feature came to be, why it was so essential to us and of course, what it means for our users.

Feedback got us here

It should come to nobody’s surprise that we practice what we preach, meaning we are absolutely obsessed with feedback. By collecting feedback consistently, we are able to constantly improve and better our product, and our relationship with our users! This means we are always working to improve our customer experience because helping our clients get the most out of their feedback strategy is our number one priority.

This exciting new feature, in-app notifications, allows Mopinion user’s to be notified of different actions taken within the platform. Not only that, but this feature will allow our user’s to collect extra information and insights to find out how those within their organisation are using Mopinion.

Why notifications?

Our once small clientele of enterprise customers has expanded a lot in the last few years, and in order to match the growing demand, our developers are always looking for ways to enhance our product. As you may have guessed, our preferred method of improvement is by collecting user feedback. Though notifications were on our roadmap for quite some time, it was really our users who brought this feature to life. By collecting user feedback, we discovered that in this age of remote working, our users found it was a little difficult to gain insight in the changes occurring within the Mopinion platform.

“Basically, we have this platform where users can create a lot, they can create and deploy their forms, put notes on feedback, add users, but there wasn’t really any way for our users to get insights into how the app is being used by their colleagues.”

– Anwar Jebali, Head of Development

Did you know that 77% of remote workers say they’re more productive when working from home? And that 85% of managers believe that having teams with remote workers will become the new norm. For those of you who are still working remotely, this feature is especially helpful, allowing for seamless collaboration and coordination within your organisation.

Let’s say your colleague has made some changes to a feedback form that you need to know about. He emails you to let you know, but something goes wrong, and you never receive the email. Sure, your colleague could have added a note to a feedback item, but you might have missed it without a notification to let you know. Well, now, thanks to your feedback, that’s a thing of the past.

The Road to Knowledge

Through collecting feedback and continuous testing, we found that switching between applications creates opportunities for things to become lost in transition. Once we became aware of these issues our users were facing within our product, our team quickly got to work.

Using product feedback, we pinpointed all the actions within the product that we believe our user’s wanted to know about. Our development team began solving this issue by building an event stream, which basically means logging all the actions or events taking place within the Mopinion platform.

You’ll find the new Notifications feature next to your avatar image on the top right corner.

These events or actions include:

• Whether a feedback form is removed or created
• If a new user is created
• If a note is added to a feedback item
• Whether actions or charts are created, updated or deleted.

Thanks to our users and their product feedback, we found out that some users noticed that when they generated an Excel export they had to go into their email to see the export link, which they found to be time-consuming. Anyone with a full mailbox knows how messy email can be, and how easy it is for things to end up in the wrong folder. Not only that, but switching between apps takes up valuable time. To solve this, now users will conveniently see these updates inside the notification menu!

We know that nobody wants a tonne of notifications that aren’t relevant to them, as that would just make life more difficult for our users.

Say you want to be notified when a new feedback form is deployed, or when a new user is added, but you don’t necessarily need to know about every single chart that’s deleted, for example.

Of course, we had to make sure that users will only receive the notifications relevant to them, based on whether they have rights or access to certain projects, or depending on their roles within the organisation.

An Organisation-Wide Feature

Another exciting feature included in this release is the new public user profile pages, which will be accessible from the notifications bar as well as from the ‘users’ page. These handy profiles have some basic information, such as the users’ function, job title, and department, as well as an overview of their latest activity within the Mopinion platform. Working across your organisation, this new feature means that you’ll be able to see what’s happening inside Mopinion, and what others are working on.

Let’s say a co-worker said to you, “Hey, I added a note to this feedback item, could you check it out?”

It would be easier to simply go into the notification menu rather than switching between apps to follow up. Now, you can easily see which report the event(s) took place in and be directed to the right report instantly from the notifications bar.

With this new feature you can manage your notifications easily, with a handy option to mark your alerts as read or unread, so you can come back to the ones you need to later. Not only that, but users can also conveniently unsubscribe from an event or user straight from the notifications’ menu.

Our Takeaways

Whether you’re on a higher level, or not, this feature can help give insight into everything that’s happening within the platform. Perhaps you really want insight into the changes that occur when forms are being created, or to be notified when users are deleted from the platform. Maybe you’re debating whether your organisation is reaping the full benefits of Mopinion? Well, now, thanks to notifications, team leads can gain valuable insights into how the app is being used by their employees.

As you may have guessed, we are absolutely obsessed with feedback, and are always looking for ways to improve our product. Let us know what kind of things would you like to be notified about, are we missing anything? Get in touch with us!