Run a workshop

Workshop mode turns a private board into a guided session with a lasting result. You decide when the board opens, what everyone is working on, when ideas become visible and when the result is final. People can take part without an account, from a phone, by scanning a code.

Workshop mode is available with Club Facilitator and Chosen Few. Everyone you invite takes part for free — there is nothing for them to buy or install.

What you’ll learn

How to turn a board into a workshop.
How to start from a session format that fills in your preparation.
How to let people take part without an account.
How to guide a session with an instruction and a timer.
How to collect ideas silently and reveal them together.
How to guide discussion, arrange ideas and make decisions.
How to finish, share, export as PDF, Markdown or CSV, and reuse a session.

Turn a board into a workshop

Open the board and select Workshop. The panel walks through a session in the order you run it: set it up, get people in, then start.

Under Set up the session, fill in:

Facilitator name — how you are introduced to participants. This can differ from your display name.
Instruction — the central question of the session, for example “What slowed us down this sprint? One idea per note.”
Hide author names on notes — optional, and reversible. Author names are removed from notes, comments and the results, for everyone including you. People can still edit their own contributions and you can still moderate. The participant list continues to show names so you can see who is present and remove a guest if necessary.

You can switch Hide author names on notes on and off at any time, before or during a session. Switching it on also hides the names on notes that are already there; switching it off shows them again. Anonymity therefore lasts exactly as long as you leave the setting on — the board does not lock it. If you tell a room that names are hidden, that promise is yours to keep, so say what you intend to do rather than describing the setting.

Select Turn on workshop mode. The board is now in Preparing. Anyone opening the link at this point sees a waiting room, not your board, so you can add example notes, create columns and arrange things at your own pace.

Any existing board can become a workshop, and a workshop board stays a normal board. Nothing about your notes, columns or layout changes.

Start from a session format

You can also start the other way round and create the board for the session. On your boards page, choose Start a workshop: the starting points then become session formats — a retrospective, Start / Stop / Continue, a brainstorm, prioritising or a feedback session.

A format fills in the question, the columns, a suggested number of votes and a run sheet with a suggested timing. The board opens with the workshop panel ready, so the only things left are the ones that need you.

None of it is permanent. Rewrite the question, rename a column, change the timing — see choose a session format for what each format is for.

Get people in

Under Get people in, choose how long the link should stay valid and select Create workshop link.

Your email address must be confirmed before you can create or replace a workshop link. You can prepare the board before confirming it.

Anyone with that link can take part, so it always expires. Four hours suits a morning session; seven days is the maximum.

For each link you can:

Copy link — paste it into a chat message or calendar invitation.
Show QR code — a small code, handy to check.
Show on screen — a full-screen code with the address written out underneath, for the screen in the room. Not everyone’s camera scans, so the address is there to type.
New link — creates a replacement and kills the current one immediately. Use this when a code ends up in a photo or the link travels further than you intended.
Revoke — ends access without creating a replacement.

A board holds up to 50 participants.

Participants who do have an account can also be invited by email in the usual way. They do not need a paid plan.

Open the room

The bar at the top of the board is where you run the session. Move it forward with the buttons there, or from Run the session in the Workshop panel.

Preparing — only you can work on the board; participants see the waiting room.
Open the waiting room — keeps the board hidden while people arrive.
Start the workshop — opens the board and lets participants add notes.
Finish the workshop — freezes the session and makes the results available.

You can also move a session back with Back to the waiting room, or use Reopen the workshop after finishing. Nobody needs to refresh — a participant’s screen follows within a few seconds.

Guide the session

The instruction, timer and room controls stay in the bar. Use a note menu to guide the discussion, and open People on this board when you need the full participant list.

Instruction

The Instruction for participants field saves as you type. Everyone sees the new text within a few seconds. Use it to narrow the focus halfway through: “Two more minutes — stick to causes, not solutions.”

Timer

Select 2, 5, 10 or 15 min, or type your own number of minutes and select Set timer. Everyone sees the same countdown, whatever their device clock says.

Pause and Resume hold and continue the remaining time, and +1 min adds a minute — also when the timer has already reached zero.

At zero the timer stops and stays at 0:00. It does not close the board: you decide when the room is done. That way you can give somebody the ten seconds they need to finish a sentence.

Close input

Close input stops new notes, including your own. Comments, hearts and dot voting keep working, because that is exactly what happens after collecting: you discuss and prioritise what is already there. Open input lets ideas in again.

Use Lock arranging when the board has the structure you want for the discussion. Participants can no longer move notes, but you can still arrange them. Allow arranging opens movement again.

Silent brainstorm

Start silent brainstorm hides everyone’s notes from everyone else. Each participant only sees their own, so nobody is anchored by the first idea on the board. You see everything, so you can follow how it is going.

While notes are hidden, participants cannot drag notes around — a single drag would reorder notes they cannot see. Select Reveal all notes and everything appears at once, for everyone, without a refresh.

Discuss and decide

Open a note’s menu while you facilitate to:

Spotlight one note for everyone, or remove the spotlight;
Mark as discussed and optionally hide discussed notes on your own screen; and
add or remove the labels Decision, Action item, Open question and Parking lot.

The labels are separate from ordinary tags. They organise the results after the session and can be added to somebody else’s note without changing that person’s words.

If Dot-voting on this board is enabled in Board settings, start a round with 1, 3, 5 or 10 votes per person. Each person sees how many votes remain and can withdraw a vote while the round is open. Results stay hidden until you select Close voting.

The bar shows how many people are active now and how many have joined in total. Open People on this board for names and last-seen times. You can remove a guest immediately; their existing contributions stay on the board.

See what the room sees

Select Preview as a participant under Run the session. You then see your own board exactly as the room sees it: no controls, the waiting room when there is one, and only your own notes during a silent brainstorm.

Nothing changes about what you are allowed to do — your controls are hidden, not gone. Select Back to facilitator view to leave the preview.

Finish a session

Before finishing, add the result labels that matter and close voting if you want to discuss the outcome first. Then select Finish the workshop and confirm.

Finishing has a stronger effect than Close input:

nobody can add, edit, move, comment, use hearts or vote, including you;
hidden notes are revealed;
an open voting round is closed and its results become visible;
the arrangement is locked; and
View results becomes available to everyone who can still open the board.

The results page brings together the workshop question, date, facilitator, participant and note counts, top-voted notes, Decisions, Action items, Open questions, the Parking lot and all notes in their final columns. Anonymous workshops keep note and comment authors anonymous here too.

On the results page:

select Print or save as PDF to use your browser’s print or PDF option;
select Copy as Markdown to paste the structured result into another tool; or
select Download as CSV to open the notes as a table in a spreadsheet.

The CSV has one row per note, with its column, author, number of votes, position in the result, labels and due date. It contains the notes only — the question, the date and the participant count stay on the page and in the Markdown — so a spreadsheet reads it as a clean table you can sort and filter. Anyone who can open the results page can download it, including participants without an account.

Participants can open View results through the same workshop link while it remains active. For longer-lived read-only sharing, create a View link under Share this board and send that link. A View link can show the finished result without requiring an account.

Use Reopen the workshop if the group genuinely needs to continue. Input and arranging open again, but a closed voting round stays closed; start a new round if you need another vote. Finish again when the new result is ready.

Use Archive this session to mark a finished session as archived. Its board and results remain available. Use Restore this session to return to the finished state.

To run the same format again, open Board settings and use Duplicate this board. A workshop copy starts in Preparing with the columns, layout, background, instruction and workshop settings. Notes, comments, votes, participants, links and invitations do not come along. The copy is a new board and counts towards your board limit.

Good to know

Participants only need the link. No account, no install, no app.
A workshop link always expires, and you can replace or revoke it at any moment.
Everyone edits and deletes only their own notes. You can delete anyone’s note as the Owner, but never rewrite someone else’s words.
Closing input keeps comments, hearts and voting available; finishing the workshop switches all participation off.
Moderation remains available after finishing: the Owner can remove an inappropriate note, but cannot rewrite it. The results update when a note is removed.
Deleting a board note shows Undo briefly and restores its comments, hearts and votes too.
Participants whose browser data is cleared return as a new participant. Earlier notes stay on the board under the name they used at the time.
The nickname of a participant without an account is removed 30 days after their last activity. Their contributions stay.