Facilitator

A board full of workshop tools has no idea who is running the workshop. Two people start countdowns over each other, somebody reveals the estimates while a third is still typing one, a poll ends mid-answer. Making one person the facilitator settles it: the tools that run the room answer to them, and everyone else gets on with the work.

Nobody is the facilitator until somebody takes the role, and a session that never uses it behaves exactly as it always has.

Making someone the facilitator

Click any avatar on a tab to open Collaborators, then use the button on the person's row:

• Make Facilitator on somebody else's row.
• Take Facilitation on your own row, when nobody is running the session.
• Step Down when you're the facilitator and you're done.
• Take Over on your own row, if you own the diagram and somebody else is facilitating. The owner can always take the session back.

Whoever is running it wears a Facilitating badge in that list. A view-only visitor can't hold the role, because the tools it governs write to the diagram; their button says so.

Everyone in the room gets a short notification when the role moves, so nobody has to guess. If you've turned notifications off in Settings, you won't see those, and the badge still tells you who has it.

What the facilitator runs

While somebody holds the role, these are theirs:

• The timer: start, pause, extend, reset, clear.
• Dot voting: starting a round, revealing it, ending it, stepping through the results.
• Polls: asking a question and ending it.
• Session buttons, both pressing one and changing what it does.
• Agenda items, which start that item's countdown.
• Revealing and clearing an estimate, a temperature check or an idea box, and scattering ideas onto the canvas.
• Resetting a done check for a new round, taking a roll call, spinning a picker, lifting a reveal zone cover, and pressing Bring Focus.

Everything else is unchanged for everyone: answering a poll, casting your dots, adding an idea, marking yourself done, commenting, drawing, following somebody, and every part of editing the diagram. A tool only the facilitator can answer wouldn't be a tool.

When somebody else is facilitating, the session panel says who, and its controls are greyed until they hand it on or step down.

If they leave or refresh

Refreshing changes nothing: the role comes straight back to them, usually before the page has finished loading. Same for a dropped connection or a closed laptop lid.

If they leave for good, the role is released about a minute and a half later and everyone is told, so the tools open up again rather than staying locked behind somebody who has gone. The diagram's owner can also take it back at any moment, and when everyone leaves the diagram the role is simply over: the next session starts with nobody facilitating.