Session tools make a shared document interactive for live workshops. There are three: a timer for time-boxing an activity, dot-voting for prioritising as a group, and polls for asking the room a question. Anyone who can edit the document can run them (or only the facilitator, once someone takes that role), and they sync to everyone in real time, so they pair naturally with collaborative boards like retros, brainstorms, and planning sessions.
Built for facilitating live
The tools live in the bottom bar: Timer, Vote, and Poll sit together in one group, right after Undo and Redo. Facilitate mode has all three, and so does an Event Storming board; Plan mode has Timer and Vote on a tab with a board made for voting, such as a Retro, whose cards have a Votes field (never on a dashboard); Diagram, Draw and Illustrate mode have none, even while a tool runs, so switch to Facilitate to run a session.
Each button opens its tool in a popover above it. While a tool is idle its button is just an icon, and pressing it opens the set-up. Once it is going the button shows what is happening: the Timer shows its clock, the Vote button shows how many dots you have left, and a green dot marks a running poll once you have answered it (or if you started it). Visitors on a Participant or Viewer pass see the Timer and Vote buttons only while those tools are running; a Participant gets the Poll button once they have answered, and a Viewer never gets it.
On a desktop, a running vote's or poll's popover stays open while you work on the canvas: only pressing its button again puts it away, and it closes by itself when the activity ends. The timer's popover, and any set-up popover, closes as soon as you click elsewhere: the clock stays on the Timer button.
You can also put a session tool on the canvas as a session button, so a template can carry its own facilitation.
While someone else is facilitating, the set-up, and a running timer's controls, say who at the top and are greyed out.
The timer and the vote are scoped to a single tab, so different tabs can run different activities, and they ride the same live sync as everything else on the canvas. That means people who join late or reload simply see what is happening now: a timer mid-countdown, or the votes cast so far, with nothing to set up again. Polls are the exception: they are never saved to the document, and vanish completely when you end one. While a poll runs, anyone who joins late or reloads is still asked.
- Timer time-boxes an activity, as a countdown or a stopwatch counting up from zero (one runs at a time), shown on its button in the bottom bar. See The Timer.
- Dot-voting lets each participant spend a budget of dots on the elements they care about, with live tallies and a results reveal. See Dot Voting.
- Polls ask everyone a question (yes/no, a rating, a choice, a person in the room, or free text) and tally the answers live, saving nothing unless you keep the results as a chart. See Polls.
You can also put a timer, a vote or a poll on the canvas as a session button, so a template can carry its own running order.
Who can do what
Session tools follow the document's roles automatically. Anyone with an Editor pass (and the owner, and team members) can run the controls and take part: starting the timer, casting votes. Visitors on a Participant pass take part but never run anything: they cast dots and answer estimates, temperature checks, the Done check, quizzes and the idea box, while starting, revealing and clearing stay with editors. Visitors on a Viewer pass can still watch, they see the timer ticking and the tallies, but they cannot control the session or cast a dot, and they only get a tool's button in the bottom bar while it is running (never the Poll button). Typically the facilitator holds an Editor pass, the team shares a Participant pass, and observers follow a Viewer pass.
A vote is narrower still. Anyone who can take part (an Editor or a Participant) can cast dots, but only the person who started the vote (or the facilitator) can end it, reveal the results, clear it, or drive the results walkthrough. Ending a vote can't be undone, so it isn't something a participant should be able to do by accident. See Dot Voting.
What a viewer actually sees during a vote also depends on its privacy settings: with Hide running counts on, nobody sees anyone else's dots until the results are revealed.
Polls follow the same rule: Participants and editors are asked and can answer; a Viewer isn't asked and sees neither the question nor the results. To hear back from an audience, share a Participant pass. Starting and ending a poll still needs edit access.
What does and does not get recorded
None of the tools adds to Undo: starting a timer, placing a dot or answering a poll is not the kind of thing you would want to Ctrl+Z. An offline document has no live room to share them with.
Share a Participant pass with everyone who should vote, answer polls and add stickies, and a Viewer pass with anyone who only needs to watch. The roles do the gating for you, with no extra setup.
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