Dot-voting is a quick way for a group to prioritise. Each participant gets a budget of dots to spend on the elements they care about most, the dots tally up live, and you reveal the winners at the end. It is ideal for narrowing a wall of retro stickies or brainstorm ideas down to the few worth acting on.
Running a vote
Press the Vote button in the bottom bar (in Facilitate mode, on Event Storming boards, and in Plan mode) to open the vote set-up above it.
Set the Dots per person by tapping the row of dots (tap the fifth for five each; anywhere from 1 to 10, starting at 3). With more than one dot, choose whether people can stack dots under Dots per item (Any number, or One each so every dot goes on a different item). Decide the two privacy switches and, on a tab with layers, which layer takes dots. Then choose Start vote. The popover becomes the Vote panel, and each Editor's Vote button counts the dots they have left.
While the vote is open, participants click the elements they want to back. The Vote panel shows your own dots left at the top and how far through the room you are underneath. On a desktop it stays open while the vote runs, until you press the Vote button again.
Choose End vote to close casting (the tallies stay put), then Show results to start the guided results walkthrough, or Clear to skip it. During the walkthrough, Done on the last pick, or Clear vote at any point, puts the canvas back. All of these are on the Vote panel, so you never have to leave it mid-session.
Who drives a vote
A vote belongs to whoever started it. Only they can end it, and while someone holds the facilitator role, only the facilitator can. The same goes for the rest: reveal the results, clear it, or move the walkthrough; everyone else's Vote panel says so in place of the buttons. You can always run another vote, but you can't get the dots back, so an accidental End vote from a participant would cost the room the whole round.
Starting a vote needs edit access, and nobody else holding the facilitator role. Visitors on a Participant pass cast dots like editors; on a Viewer share link they can watch the counts, the reveal, and the walkthrough but cannot cast a dot, so observers see the outcome without skewing it. A tab runs one vote at a time, and each tab can run its own.
A common rule of thumb is roughly one dot per three or four options. Set the dots before you start the vote, then leave it: keeping budgets small forces real choices.
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