You might have seen this blog post that explained why we devote ridiculous amounts of manpower to talking with our customers. Lots of great ideas come out of those talks. In fact, 87% of the improvements in our last couple of releases came directly from our customers’ ideas!

One such idea was to add the ability to convert Improvements and Projects to different idea types so that, if the idea was created as the wrong type, you could easily convert it to another type without having to manually recreate your work. In June, we were excited to add this feature to KaiNexus!

You can convert an Improvement to another Improvement type or to a Project type, or convert a Project to another Project type or to an Improvement type.

When would I want to convert a Project or Improvement?

There are lots of scenarios that might make you want to convert them. For example, if you or someone on your team:

1. Entered a Project or Improvement as one type, but after further reflection, you realized it should be another type.
   
   
2. Created a new Improvement, but later realized that it’s a much wider scope than you thought and that it would be better as a Project with more moving parts
   
   
3. Created a new Project, but later realized that its scope was narrower than expected and that it would work better as an Improvement that a smaller team could focus on.

What happens when I convert a Project or Improvement?

Before you convert, you want to be sure you're aware of what's going to change (and what isn't). Since the two have different designations and terms associated with them, there will be a little field mapping going on.

So what stays the same? 

Most things. Your title, comments, files, links, Tasks, and charts will remain exactly as they were. If you have an Attribute (such as Priority or Strategic Initiative) on both the original and the new type, it will be carried over as well. Otherwise, it will be discarded. 

Make sure you're aware that the status of your project or improvement will become "New" once you convert it. That means that it will no longer be assigned or considered “in-progress.” If you’re converting an Improvement, that means that any Resolution details will be lost.

If you’re converting a Project to an Improvement:

• You’re able to make the Project’s team Participants.
  
  
• Any nested Projects and Improvements will be un-nested.

If you’re converting an Improvement to a Project:

• You’re able to make the team Collaborators.
  
  
• You can decide how you want to map each text field. The text entered in the existing type’s fields will be copied into the new field when you complete the conversion.
  
  
• If you map multiple fields to the same target field, all the information from each of those fields will be copied into the new field separated by a blank line.

Give it a try and let us know what you think!