Dot Voting

Run a live dot-voting round on the canvas to prioritise as a group.

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.

Set the dots per person with the stepper, decide the two privacy switches and, on a tab with layers, which layer takes dots. Then choose Start vote. A banner tells each participant how many dots they have left.

While the vote is open, participants click the elements they want to back. A live "N cast" readout tracks the total, and the Vote panel shows how far through the room you are.

Choose End vote to close casting (the tallies stay put), then Show results to start the guided results walkthrough, then Clear vote to put the board back. All three are on the Vote panel, so you never have to go back into the menu mid-session.

SESSION · VOTEDots per person3+Hide cursorsHide running countsStart vote
The vote is set up before it starts: the dots each person gets, and the rules it runs under.

Who drives a vote

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.

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 common rule of thumb is roughly one dot per three or four options. Set the stepper before you start the vote, then leave it: keeping budgets small forces real choices.

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