The Collaborate category (under Dynamic in the palette's category picker) holds every element whose content arrives at runtime. Everywhere else in the palette you are placing a picture; here you are placing something that does a job when somebody presses it, or collects an answer from everybody in the room.
This page is the map. Each element has its own short article, so you can link somebody straight to the one they need.
Where to find it
Collaborate is in the palette in Diagram and Draw mode. Illustrate mode has no Collaborate category, and Plan mode has a smaller Tools category instead, holding the temperature check, estimate card, idea box, Picker, Timer and Stopwatch.
What the category contains
The category browses by group the way Icons and Technology do: a grid of group tiles that you click to open, with a breadcrumb back to the grid and a Search collaboration box above that cuts across all of them at once.
Inside a group, each element is a row with its name and a one-line description of what it does, because a glyph cannot say what a Picker picks or where a Portal goes.
The groups, room-first:
- Ask: the quiz, estimate cards, the temperature check, the idea box, the Q&A board, and the Dot Vote and Poll session buttons.
- Tools: the Timer and Stopwatch session buttons, the Reveal zone, the Done check and the Picker.
- Record: comment panels, action panels, the agenda, the decision record and the roll call.
- React: the five Reaction pads.
- Selection Mode: Selection Mode buttons, one per mode, that hand whoever presses them a different tool.
- Navigate: the Portal, Bring Focus, the Chair and the Link card.
They are grouped by what the element does with the room rather than by what it looks like. That is why the Portal sits beside the Chair, Bring Focus and the Link card (each takes somebody somewhere: another tab, a seat, one spot on the canvas, or the page the card points at), and why the poll and dot vote sit with the estimate card rather than in a group of their own: putting a question to everybody is one job however it is asked.
Collaborate used to be two categories: Behaviour (elements that do something when pressed) and Collaborate (elements that collect an answer). The split was real, but it was no help to navigate by: you reach for both while running a session, and nothing told you why the Done check lived apart from the estimate card.
Changing one
Most elements here carry a … in their top corner, which opens that element's own menu beside it. It is the same menu a right-click gives you, in the place you are already looking. The Chair and Bring Focus have no …, because they hold nothing to set beyond a label and colours: right-click them instead.
A few draw a richer … of their own, with the settings you change mid-session right in it: a Timer's length, a dot vote's dots, a poll's question, a Done check's reset. Those end with All Settings…, which takes you to the full menu.
Working with them
Each behaves like any other element once placed: select, restyle, and move it freely. A click presses it and a drag moves it, so you can arrange a row of them without setting one off. They keep working while you are in a selection mode that makes the rest of the canvas read-only (Avatar, Spotlight or Isometric), which is the point of a control bar made of them.
On a view-only link, the elements that change what everyone sees (Session buttons, Done checks, Reaction pads and the answer cards) are read-only. Selection Mode buttons, Bring Focus and uncovering a Reveal zone for yourself still work, a Picker rolls on your own screen only, and you can still answer a poll somebody with edit access has started.
Put a row of these along the top of a canvas and it carries its own running order: a Timer for the writing block, a Reveal zone over the answers, and a Picker for who goes next.
Was this article helpful?