Overview
When an idea is linked to a portal post, you can keep their statuses in sync — automatically. Define mappings between your idea statuses and post statuses, and Canny will update one side when the other changes.
Canny Ideas is available on Free, Core, Pro, and Business plans. Teams on legacy plans (Starter or Growth) will need to move to new plans to access Ideas.
How status sync works
Status mappings are bidirectional. You define which idea status maps to which post status, and Canny applies changes in both directions:
Idea → post: when an idea's status changes, the linked post is updated to the mapped post status.
Post → idea: when a post's status changes, the linked idea is updated to the mapped idea status.
This is optional — sync only happens when an idea has a portal post linked to it.
Setting up mappings
Go to Settings → Portal Statuses → Status mapping in Canny, then:
Pick an idea status (Internal status).
Pick the post status (Portal status) it should map to.
Repeat for each idea status you want synced.
You can map multiple idea statuses to the same post status. For example:
Planned idea → Planned post
Ready for eng idea → Planned post
In this setup, both "Planned" and "Ready for eng" ideas keep the post in "Planned" status.
Notifying voters on status change
Each mapping has a Notify users? toggle. When the toggle is on, end-users who voted on the linked portal post are notified when the status changes via the sync. When off, the sync still happens but voters are not notified.
Precedence rule for many-to-one mappings
When multiple idea statuses map to the same post status, the post → idea direction has to pick one. Canny uses list precedence: the idea status that appears first in your list wins.
Using the example above:
If you change an idea to Planned, the post becomes Planned.
If you change an idea to Ready for eng, the post becomes Planned.
If you change the post to Planned, the idea becomes Planned — not "Ready for eng" — because Planned appears first.
Things to note
Status sync only fires when an idea has a portal post linked to it.
Idea statuses you don't map are not synced — changing them has no effect on the linked post (and vice versa).
Updating the mapping does not affect current statuses — it only applies to future status changes.
Updating Portal Status from the Ideas dashboard's Portal Status column bypasses this mapping — it changes the post's status directly without notifying voters.
Related articles