How ZeroFox structured Canny Ideas around the way their product team already works

"It was so easy. The PMs took Ideas and ran with it. It's their own brain in Canny, and I'm just there as a guardian."

ZeroFox is an external cybersecurity platform. It protects businesses from digital threats across websites, social accounts, and the dark web. The company serves over 1,000 customers and monitors more than 30 million data points.

Ivonne Beltran is a Senior Product Operations Manager on the customer insights team. She acts as the bridge between product and the rest of the organization. A big part of her role is turning customer feedback into something the product team can act on.

With 1,000+ customers and multiple product teams, ZeroFox needed a scalable way to intake and organize feedback by team. Everyone across the company needed to stay aligned on what was being built.

Looking for more structure in their product process

ZeroFox had been using Canny feedback boards for a while. It helped them close the loop with customers. They could collect feedback, act on it, and tell people when something shipped. That part was working.

Deciding what to build next was harder for the product team. PMs would look through posts and choose based on what fit current opportunities. It worked, but it wasn't systematic.

"It was a bit less structured than now with Ideas. It was more of an organic process of trying to choose what posts could fit into any opportunity."

The team wanted a more structured way to evaluate and prioritize what came in. They needed posts organized by product area, so PMs could see what belonged to their team and spot connections across related requests.

An internal workspace that mirrors their team

When Canny launched the Ideas beta, ZeroFox was eager to try it. Ivonne wanted a more structured, internal space where PMs could view and organize feedback.

She set up Ideas to mirror how ZeroFox's product team is already organized. Each team got its own group inside Ideas with just the ideas related to their product area. Sub-groups break each team's work down further. This makes it clear where each idea belongs, and sub-ideas show how related ideas connect.

"We just tried to mimic how we are organized in Canny. Everyone knows who owns what and who is in charge of what."

Because Ideas is internal, PMs can triage, discuss, and organize freely. The structure makes it easy for each team to see what's happening in their own areas. PMs can focus on the ideas that belong to them and filter out what doesn't.

ZeroFox still uses Portal's feedback boards as the customer-facing source of new ideas. New feedback and votes flow automatically from Portal into the right group inside Ideas.

PMs adopted Ideas on their own

The switch to Ideas didn't need a big rollout. Ivonne introduced it, and the product team picked it up from there. No heavy training, no enforcement, no constant reminders.

Ivonne used to spend a fair bit of time helping people use Canny. That isn't the case anymore.

"They just took it and ran with it. They were just very organically using it."

The PMs move things around, organize their own groups, and drive their own workflows inside Ideas. The tool fits how they already think about their work. Because Ideas mirrors the team structure, every PM knows exactly where to go and what belongs to them. Adoption stuck because the workspace matched the workflow.

Layering automation on top of Ideas with Autopilot

With Ideas in place as the foundation, ZeroFox is testing Autopilot to automate more of their feedback workflow.

The product team is integrating Autopilot with the broader AI stack they're building. They want to speed up how feedback comes in, how they prioritize it, and how quickly they respond to users.

"We're trying to automate as much as we can. We're definitely thinking about automations and how we can improve even more the ingestion process."

Ideas gave ZeroFox the structured base that makes layering automation worthwhile. Using Autopilot to capture feedback and auto-group it is the next step.

Connecting Canny to their AI tools with MCP

Moving to Ideas gave ZeroFox access to Canny's MCP server. MCP lets them connect Canny directly to the AI tools their team uses every day.

That means PMs can pull Canny data, like ideas, votes, and customer context, into whatever AI workflow they're already running. Instead of jumping between tools to piece feedback together, they can ask their AI tools questions with Canny data already in the mix.

"We had many ideas six months ago that were maybe not possible to execute. With the MCP server, we can execute them faster than ever."

ZeroFox is still early with MCP. But connecting Canny to their AI tools is already opening up work that wasn't possible before.

A feedback ecosystem that works for every team

The biggest shift isn't just inside the product team. It's across the whole company.

Sales and CS now use Canny as a conversation starter with customers. They can see what product is working on, share it with clients, and bring specific questions into calls instead of relying on guesswork.

Internally, anyone at ZeroFox can submit an idea and vote. PMs respond with status updates, so nothing disappears into a void.

"Everyone knows that we have a place where they can put their requests, and that we will actually do something about it."

Why the ZeroFox team recommends Canny Ideas

After moving to Ideas, ZeroFox has a feedback workspace that fits how their team works and connects to the rest of their stack. Here's what makes it stick.

• Ideas mirrors how the product team is already organized, so PMs adopted it without training or enforcement
• Groups and sub-ideas make it easy to see which ideas belong to which team and how related ideas connect
• Portal feedback boards feed directly into Ideas, so customer feedback and votes are still tracked as insights
• Sales and CS use Canny to see what product is working on, turning feedback into a conversation starter with customers
• Canny's MCP server connects feedback data to the AI tools ZeroFox's team uses every day

"Just test it. The only way you would know if something will add value to your processes is just testing it. We joined the beta and stayed because we loved it."

Build a feedback workspace that matches how your product team already works. Try Canny Ideas free and turn customer feedback into structured product decisions.