A canvas 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 (or the +N badge) to open Collaborators, then use the button on the person's row:
- Make Facilitator on somebody else's row. It is offered while nobody is facilitating, to the current facilitator (to hand it on), and always to the document's owner.
- Take Facilitation on your own row, when nobody is running the session.
- Step Down on your own row when you're the facilitator and you're done.
- Take Over on your own row, if you own the document and somebody else is facilitating. The owner can always take the session back.
Whoever is running it wears a Facilitating badge on their row in Collaborators. A visitor on a Participant or Viewer share link can't hold the role, because running a session is an editor's job: Make Facilitator on their row is greyed out, and its hover card says why. There is one facilitator for the whole document, not one per tab.
Everyone in the room gets a short notification when the role moves, like "Alex is now facilitating" or "Nobody is facilitating now", so nobody has to guess. If you've turned off In-Editor Notifications in Settings › Notifications, 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, and resetting the agenda.
- Running a Q&A board: discussing, closing, reopening and removing questions, and clearing the board.
- Revealing and clearing an estimate, a temperature check or an idea box, and scattering ideas onto the canvas.
- Running a quiz: editing its question, starting, locking, revealing and running it again.
- Resetting a done check for a new round, taking a roll call, spinning a picker, lifting a reveal zone cover, and pressing Bring Focus.
- Freeing an element somebody has wandered off with selected: right-click it and choose their Release row in the In use menu. While nobody facilitates, any Editor can do this.
Two of these change shape while someone facilitates. Lifting a reveal zone's cover normally shows what is behind it to you alone; while someone facilitates, only they can lift a cover, still on their own screen, and they show it to everyone with Reveal for All in the element's menu. And Bring Focus, which any editor can normally press, becomes the facilitator's to press.
Everything else is unchanged for everyone: answering a poll, casting your dots, responding to an estimate or temperature check, adding an idea, marking yourself done, commenting, drawing, pointing with the laser, following somebody, presenting a slide deck on your own screen, and every part of editing the document. A tool only the facilitator can answer wouldn't be a tool.
When somebody else is facilitating, the Timer, Vote and Poll set-up popovers in the session tools strip (in Facilitate mode) say so at the top ("Alex is facilitating this session. Ask them to start the timer, the vote or a poll.") and their controls are greyed until they hand it on or step down. On cards like an idea box or an estimate, the facilitator-only buttons are simply not shown to anyone else.
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 document's owner can also take it back at any moment, and when everyone leaves the document the role is simply over: the next session starts with nobody facilitating.
The facilitator role is about who is driving, not a permission: it keeps two well-meaning people from starting timers at once rather than defending the document from anyone. An offline document has no live room, so it has no facilitator.
Building the canvas and running the session are different jobs. Make the document, then hand the facilitator role to whoever is running the meeting; as the owner you keep the ability to take it back.
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