Introducing feedback boards, a public roadmap, and a changelog in Helpnest

Support conversations are full of product feedback

Every support team hears the same requests over and over: an export option, an integration, a setting that should exist. Those requests usually end up scattered across chat transcripts, emails and spreadsheets, and customers rarely hear what happened to them.

Helpnest now gives every workspace a feedback portal: a public page where customers suggest ideas, vote on what matters, follow your roadmap, and read your changelog. It lives next to the AI agent and inbox you already use, so the place customers ask questions is also the place they can tell you what to build.

A board customers actually use

Open Feedback in the dashboard sidebar, choose a title, address and accent colour, and your portal is live at /portal/your-name. It starts with two boards, Feature requests and Bugs, and you can add up to 20.

Visitors don't need an account to vote. They're asked for their name the first time they post or comment, and can leave an email if they want updates. While someone types a new idea, the portal shows similar posts already on the board, so they can add a vote instead of filing a duplicate.

If you'd rather review posts first, turn on Approve posts before they appear. New posts then wait in a Needs approval filter until a teammate approves them.

Triage, prioritise, and reply as a team

Every post has a status: Open, Under review, Planned, In progress, Completed or Closed. Change it from the list, from the roadmap view, or from the post panel, where you can also see who voted, pin a post to the top, or move it to another board.

Replies you write from the dashboard are marked Team on the portal. Internal notes stay inside Helpnest, which is useful for recording why something was deprioritised or which customer asked for it on a call. You can also add a post on a customer's behalf when the request came in through chat or email.

Close the loop with your roadmap and changelog

Your public roadmap shows Planned, In progress and Completed ideas, ordered by votes. When you ship something, write a changelog entry in Markdown, label it New, Improved or Fixed, and link the feedback posts it delivers.

The first time you publish an entry, its linked posts move to Completed and everyone who voted for them, and left an email, gets one message saying it shipped. Voters also hear when an idea they backed moves to Planned or In progress. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe link, and you can skip the email for a single status change.

Your domain, your users, your app

Three options help the portal feel like part of your product:

• Custom domain. Connect a subdomain such as feedback.yourcompany.com in portal settings and add the CNAME record shown there.
• Single sign-on. Sign a short-lived token for your logged-in user on your server (an HS256 JWT with the user's id and an expiry) and pass it to the portal. Your users are recognised automatically, without a second login, and any votes they made anonymously in that browser move to their account.
• Feedback widget. Paste one script tag to add a Feedback button to any web app. It opens your board, roadmap and updates in a side panel.

The feedback portal guide walks through each one with code you can copy.

A widget that does more than chat

The Helpnest chat widget can now work as a messenger. Under an agent's Settings → Messenger, turn on any of these tabs alongside Messages:

• Home: a greeting, a message box, and shortcuts to help, feedback and your latest update.
• Help: visitors search your agent's trained knowledge and open the matching pages, or ask the agent if nothing fits.
• Feedback: browse, vote on and submit ideas without leaving your site.
• Updates: your latest changelog entries.

Each tab can be switched on or off per agent, and existing widgets keep the classic chat window until you turn a tab on. Feedback and Updates use your workspace's portal. See messenger tabs for the details.

Get started in five minutes

Set up the portal from Feedback in the sidebar, then add two or three ideas you already hear often so the board isn't empty when customers arrive. Share the link in your help center or app menu, or turn on the Feedback tab in your widget.

When you ship your next improvement, publish it in the changelog and link the ideas it delivers. The customers who asked for it will be the first to know. The feedback portal is available on every plan; paid plans remove the Helpnest link from the portal.