Merge ideas - how do you use this feature?

[Kate Pawlak _Appsvio_]

Recently, I've been exploring the features of Jira for Product Discovery, and one feature that has caught my attention is the Merge feature. I'm a bit puzzled about its purpose and how it can be useful, so I thought it would be great to start a discussion here and gather insights from the community.

Like many of you, when I or my colleagues have an idea, we typically check the project first to see if a similar idea already exists. So, initially, I was a bit confused about why we would need a Merge feature. After all, if we're vigilant about checking for duplicates, shouldn't this problem be minimized?

[Tom Haapanen]

Not all contributors will be as vigilant, though. And, in some cases, another seemingly different idea may cover the requested functionality.

The more complex the project, the more useful this feature will be, I think.

[Lindsey Strong]

We've set up an easy channel of non-technical folks to submit ideas. It allows us to triage and merge if necessary,  while keeping them informed of the path their request took. 

[J Conners]

I think it depends on whether you restrict idea generation to licensed product users or you permit contributors to create ideas. In the latter case, having the ability to merge ideas can be very useful.

[Amanda Barber]

Like others have said, it really depends on who is allowed to create ideas. We use a different application for customer feedback, but it works similarly and I merge ideas frequently.

One thing the other app (Pendo Feedback) does nicely is that it prompts users to select an already open idea based on their request description. Then, they can select one from the list or keep their own. It's helped filter out duplicates quite well!