Dot Voting

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

Dot-voting is controlled from the tab's menu, under Collaborate → Vote.

Casting and retracting dots

While a vote is open, every votable element carries a small − 0 + counter in its bottom-right corner. Press + to add one of your dots and − to take one back; clicking the element itself also adds a dot, which is quicker when you are working through a wall of stickies. Stacking several dots on one element is allowed, each counts separately.

The counter starts at zero, so you can always see which elements are in play and how many dots each has. − greys out at zero and + greys out once your budget is spent, rather than disappearing, so the buttons stay where your pointer expects them. Non-votable elements show no counter and behave normally, so the board stays fully editable during a vote.

Once the vote ends the buttons go and the counter becomes a plain tally, since at that point it is a result to read rather than something to change.

Votable elements are shapes, sticky notes, and images. Section backdrops (frames), text, freehand drawings, tables, arrows, and annotations are not votable, so you vote on the ideas, not the scaffolding around them.

Voting on one layer

If the tab uses layers, the Votable layer picker sits above Start vote. Pick one and only its elements take dots, which keeps a vote on the ideas rather than the scaffolding around them: a background frame, an annotation layer, last round's output.

Everything on other layers stays on the canvas, dimmed, so you can still see what you are voting against, and the elements that can take a dot are ringed so there is no guessing where to click. Both cues clear the moment you end the vote, so the results walkthrough reads against the full board.

It starts on whichever layer you are working in, and All layers is there for an ordinary whole-board vote. On a tab with a single layer the picker doesn't appear at all, since there would be nothing to choose. Like the privacy switches, the layer is fixed once the vote starts: end it and start another to vote on something else.

Voting privately

A vote is only honest if nobody can read the room before it closes. Two switches sit above Start vote, and both apply to everyone on the diagram, not just to you.

Hide cursors is on by default. While the vote is open, nobody sees anyone else's pointer or laser trail, so the group cannot watch each other drift toward a favourite. You can still see who is in the room: the avatars on the tab stay put throughout, and an element someone else has selected still shows their name, so you know why it is locked. Cursors come back the moment you choose End vote.

Hide running counts is off by default. Turn it on for a blind vote: while it runs, each tally pill shows only your own dots, so you can still see and retract what you spent, but nobody can watch a total climb and pile on. Show results reveals the real tallies and the winners together.

Both switches are fixed for the life of the vote. There is no way to turn them off halfway through, which is the point: end the vote and start another if you want different rules.

Knowing when to stop

A Vote panel appears at the top right, under the Palette, for as long as the vote is running. While voting is open it shows how far the room has got: dots cast against dots available, how many people have finished, and a row per voter with their remaining dots as hollow pips. The tally pills on the canvas tell you what is winning; this tells you whether anyone is still deciding, which is the thing that decides when to press End vote.

Voter rows aren't labelled with names. Dots aren't recorded against people in a way the app can turn back into a name, so the panel shows the shape of the room rather than a register: all-filled rows are done, part-filled rows are who you are waiting on.

Reviewing the results

Show results starts a guided walkthrough of everything that received dots, most votes first. The current pick pulses an amber highlight and the canvas centres on it, while the vote banner shows where you are ("Top result 1 of 4") with Previous and Next buttons to step through in order. The walkthrough is shared: the person who started the vote drives it, and everyone else's canvas follows to the same element. That is the point of reviewing together, and it means "everyone look at this one" actually works.

The Vote panel switches to the ranked list at the same moment: every element that got a dot, most votes first, with the winners flagged. If you started the vote, click any row to move the room straight to that element instead of stepping through in order. Everyone else sees the same list and follows along.

On the last pick, Next becomes Done. Pressing it ends the walkthrough and clears the whole vote session: the banner, the tally pills, and the highlights all go together, leaving the board clean for whatever comes next.

View-only visitors can watch the counts, the reveal, and the walkthrough but cannot cast a dot, so observers see the outcome without skewing it.

A vote belongs to whoever started it. Only they can end it, reveal the results, clear it, or move the walkthrough. 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.