Get started with Collaboration

9 min

With Collaboration, a hypothesis captures all the requirements, workflow, collaboration, data, and analysis for an experiment in one place.

Hypotheses enable teams to work effectively through Optimizely Experimentation. By tracking a hypothesis, a whole team can collaborate across the process of developing and executing an experiment: from a new idea in the backlog to a complete experiment with recorded results.

Note

The following is a high-level overview that guides you through setting up Collaboration to manage your experimentation program. Click on the links for information and step-by-step instructions on completing specific actions.

Invite users and assign roles

To get started with Collaboration, you must invite users and assign them roles.

Configure a hypothesis brief

The next step is to set up a hypothesis brief template. Brief templates use fields to provide users with structure and a consistent experience.

Fields represent the metadata of Collaboration. You can reuse them to filter through hypotheses and activities. To get started, consider:

Which fields you would apply to your main program.

Which fields you would apply to your deliverables or other tactics.

Which fields would help you filter your activities and run reports. Think about how you want to organize your data.

For information on creating and updating brief templates, see Manage hypotheses.

Configure a workflow

Next, configure your workflow. Workflows offer teams a structured yet flexible process to ideate, design, approve, and launch experiments. Consider the following when configuring your workflow template:

The activities you need to do to launch an experiment.

The activities you do to conclude and share experiment results with other stakeholders.

If you have default assignees for certain steps.

The overall duration of each workflow setup.

For information on how to manage your workflow dates, see Manage hypotheses. For information on how to set up your workflow, see Hypothesis workflow.

Collaborate on the hypothesis

The hypothesis is where collaboration and experiment design take place. Below is an overview of the actions you can do in a hypothesis:

Brief – Assign a brief template to document experiment design parameters.

Variations – Upload variation designs as a screenshot or add a link to Figma, InVision, or Office365 and have the content unfurled.

Proofing and Versioning – When uploading a screenshot or adding a URL to a live webpage, directly provide feedback and comment on the image.

Update permissions and dates – Share the hypothesis with other team members to prompt discussion.

Assign a workflow – Ensure teams are following a repeatable workflow.

See Manage hypotheses for information on creating a hypothesis or Hypothesis workflow for information on updating a workflow.

Link experiment to hypothesis

Beta

Linking experiments from Optimizely Feature Experimentation to a hypothesis is in beta. Contact your Customer Success Manager for information.

On the Experiment tab, after connecting Optimizely Web Experimentation or Optimizely Feature Experimentation with Collaboration, you can link your experiments to your hypothesis. This lets you reference and orchestrate your experimentation program from one place.

For step-by-step instructions on linking your experiments in the Experiment tab, see link an experiment in Optimizely Web Experimentation or Optimizely Feature Experimentation to a hypothesis in Collaboration.

Plan experiment run dates

Instead of linking an experiment, you can manually add your experiment start and end dates and a URL reference to where you configured the experiment. Use experiment run dates to communicate when you plan to start or stop an experiment associated with your hypothesis. Toggle on Show on Timeline to display the run date on the timeline view or off so that the run date does not display on the timeline view.

See Manage workflow dates for information on setting experiment run dates. See the View campaigns, sub-campaigns, hypotheses, and events section in the Timeline calendar for Collaboration documentation for information on viewing the experiment run dates.

In the Create Work Request module, you can use a brief template to set up an idea submission form. Use this to help centralize and structure idea submissions to ensure each idea contains the appropriate information and goes to the right team for review.

Upon approval, assigned stakeholders can initiate activities and start collaborating.

To build an intake process, define work request templates and routing rules. For more information, see Work requests.

You should dedicate a section in the brief to capturing the post-experiment analysis to inspire action and share learnings. You can document action items and assign them to individuals.

Set up a saved view in the Plan module with interesting result information to set up your own results repository.