Slate's greatest asset has always been the extraordinary engagement from the Slate community. At Slate Summit, in the Community Forums, in the Knowledge Base, and especially in Feedback - you show up with enthusiastic, insightful suggestions that genuinely shape where Slate goes next.

Why your feedback matters

The stories you share in Feedback help us understand real problems so we can prioritize the most meaningful work for the whole community. When you tell us what's breaking, what's missing, or what could work better, you're not just reporting issues - you're helping us build the right solutions.

We created this guide to answer a simple question that came from the community:

🤔 What is Technolutions looking for from my feedback?

Effective feedback comes in many forms, but there are patterns that consistently help us understand your needs faster and respond more effectively. This guide breaks down what makes feedback actionable - and how you can help us help you.

Bring your story into focus

Great feedback tells us a story. We want to understand the experience from human, business, and technological perspectives - and a robust narrative helps fill in those details. Think of this as moving from blurry to clarity: the more context you provide, the sharper the picture becomes for us.

Here are some of the things that help us most:

Problem statement

Start here - tell us what prompted you to write this feedback in the first place. What isn't working? What outcome is missing? Did something unexpected happen? Is there an existing process that could be improved?

Who is affected?

This can always be thought of as "who does this affect?" and also "who doesn't this affect?" Knowing the scope helps us understand scale and priority. How many users do you estimate are impacted on your campus? What types of users - students, applicants, donors, admissions staff? Are there connected systems or downstream processes involved? Is this region-specific, or does it exclude certain areas?

Impact and severity

How often does this happen? What's the time cost? Are there risks involved - to data, to compliance, to other processes? Are there deadlines we should know about?

Current workarounds

How is this issue being navigated today? What tools or processes are being used to meet these needs? What are the limitations in current solutions?

Desired Outcome

What does success look like? Try to be specific - is it "the field saves without error" or "users can complete this process in half the time"? Imagine you've solved the problem: what benefits will you see? What will be different?

Evidence

This is the "show and tell" part. We'll dig deeper into what evidence helps most in the next section.

One Issue, One Post

To clarify what receives votes, it's important to make sure there is one offered idea per post. Sometimes we see people list out a set of unrelated or loosely related ideas that might not all be the targets of votes. We at Technolutions appreciate when we can tell which item a vote is for - bundling them together dilutes the message of what is most important. It's absolutely fine to create a feature set that you're interested in seeing implemented, but we do encourage breaking things out so we know which parts are most important within a larger package.

Evidence & Context: Show Us What You're Seeing

This is where feedback goes from good to great. Evidence helps us see exactly what you're experiencing, validate the issue, and understand the context around it. Think of it as building a case - the more you can show us, the faster we can act.

Reproduction steps

Walk us through what you did. A clear sequence of actions helps us recreate the issue and jump right into solving it.

For example:

• After setting the field value to 100000000 and clicking save, it loads, then shows an error: "something went wrong"

• Creating a new Key in the Content Blocks tool and assigning it to a folder - upon clicking save, that folder assignment doesn't persist

• Using the Apply Page Redirect with Custom Application Management Portal:

  1. Set the Apply Page Redirect configuration key to Custom Application Management Portal

  2. Impersonate the status portal for a record with 2 eligible applications

  3. Use the dropdown menu top-right to switch between available applications

  4. Instead of opening that application, the applicant is returned to the custom management portal

Mega-screenshots

Take full page screenshots in Chrome by opening DevTools (F12 or Cmd+Option+I), then Cmd+Shift+P (or Ctrl+Shift+P), type "screenshot", and select "Capture full size screenshot."

Typing is hard

Record a video and narrate what you're doing and why. Take the transcript and those are your repro steps.

Screenshots and Videos

Visual evidence is incredibly helpful and so easy to gather. Screenshots capture the moment, videos show the full workflow.

Supporting Materials

URLs, error messages, SQL statements, related tables, a sample (or GUID for a sample) of failing/error data - anything that gives us technical detail.

Important: Remove Personally Identifiable Information from all submissions - student names, email addresses, SSNs, any sensitive data.

From Feedback to Feature

Now that we've covered how to get information into Feedback, let's talk about how it gets from Feedback into Slate.

As product managers, we seek to understand the needs of users, maintainers, and makers to faithfully convey agreement, disagreement, expose misunderstandings, and clarify the ideas into a crafted story that is shared with and understood by each side. We serve as an interface between the user community and the engineering group.

When feedback is clear, actionable, and contextualized, we can:

   Quickly understand the underlying need

   Accurately assess scope, impact, and urgency

   Engage stakeholders in meaningful discussion across both sides

   Prioritize and implement the most valuable ideas

   Close the loop with you, building trust and engagement

What Happens Next?

Once we have these ideas clearly articulated, the conversation continues. In 2026, we're implementing new systems to pull more detail from feedback posts - understanding whether use cases have been established, whether the context we're looking for is present, and how these requests connect to our development roadmap.

We'll be reaching out to gather more information through various research methods:

   Feature feedback surveys from Research to understand impact and usability

   Focus groups to dive deeper into specific workflows

   Direct outreach to people who've commented, voted, or have relevant experience

When you see these opportunities, please engage! Your participation in this research ensures that we clearly hear your point of view.

When features move through the pipeline, we're looking for measurable moments to increase the visibility of the development process, including some additional statuses to give a better sense of how ideas are moving through development and refinement.

Keep the Conversation Going

Feedback isn't fire-and-forget. The conversation continues well after you hit submit, and your ongoing participation helps shape how features evolve.

Watch for Updates

Our weekly release notes keep you informed about what's new in Slate - and they're newly much more searchable. We're also creating dedicated spaces to discuss specific new releases, making it easier to share implementation strategies, surface issues early, and help us calibrate next steps.

Stay Engaged

When you see questions or comments on your posts, jump back in. When others post about similar challenges, add your perspective. When we reach out for research or surveys, participate. The more context we gather, the better we can advocate for solutions that work across the diverse landscape of higher education institutions using Slate.

Your voice matters - not just in the initial submission, but throughout the entire development process. Together, we're building Slate to meet the real needs of the community.

P.S. - Keep an eye out for the Feedback Captain, coming to shore in 2026. This Slate AI Chatbot will help clarify needs within your feedback posts and make the submission process even smoother.