facilitated-meetings

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sidebar_position: 39 title: "Facilitated Meetings" description: "Run structured meetings with a guided agenda rail, per-step countdown timers, live brainstorming, voting, presenter mode with viewport sync, and auto-generated meeting summaries."

Facilitated Meetings

Facilitated Meetings transform a ProBeya board session from a passive review into a structured, time-boxed meeting with a defined agenda, per-step countdown timers, live brainstorming and voting, and a shared presenter viewport. When the meeting ends, ProBeya generates a summary of decisions made and ideas surfaced that can be copied or downloaded as Markdown.

The feature is built for TIER meetings, Kaizen events, retrospectives, problem-solving sessions, and any recurring meeting where structure, time discipline, and documented outcomes matter.

Overview

Most operational meetings suffer from the same failure modes: no clear agenda, no time limits, no documented decisions, and action items that live only in someone's notes. The physical obeya room solved this with a standing agenda pinned to the wall, a visible timer, and a board that everyone could see. Facilitated Meetings bring the same discipline to the digital board.

The facilitator controls the pace. Participants follow along. The agenda is visible to everyone. When a brainstorm or vote is opened, participants engage in real time. When the meeting ends, the outcomes are automatically summarized — no manual minutes required.

Getting Started

1. Open a project board.
2. Click Start Facilitation in the board toolbar.
3. Select or create a meeting agenda — an ordered list of steps, each with a title, optional countdown duration, and optional facilitator notes.
4. The Agenda Rail appears, showing all steps with their status (pending, active, done).
5. Click Start Presenting to broadcast your viewport to all participants (they see your scroll position and active widget).
6. Advance through steps using Next Step. Each step's timer starts when you click Play.
7. During relevant steps, open a Brainstorm Session or Vote Session from the facilitation toolbar.
8. When all steps are complete, click End Meeting. The meeting summary dialog opens automatically.
9. Review, copy, or download the summary before closing.

Assign a co-facilitator

If you are also presenting content, assign a co-facilitator to manage the Agenda Rail and timers. This lets the presenter focus on the discussion while the co-facilitator keeps time and advances steps.

Key Concepts

Agenda Rail — The ordered list of meeting steps displayed as a vertical navigation panel. Each step shows its status (pending, active, done) with a pulsing indicator on the active step. The rail gives all participants a real-time view of meeting progress without the facilitator having to announce it.

Phase Timer — A countdown timer attached to each agenda step. The timer uses color to signal urgency: green above 50% remaining, amber between 25–50%, red below 25%, and pulsing red when expired. The facilitator starts, pauses, and resets the timer; participants see it as read-only.

Presenter Mode — When active, the facilitator's viewport position (scroll, zoom, active widget) is broadcast via WebSocket to all participants who choose to follow. A floating toolbar confirms "You are presenting" to the presenter and shows a follow/detach banner to participants. Participants can freely browse at any time by clicking Detach.

Brainstorm Session — A structured idea-generation exercise progressing through four phases:

• Ideate — participants submit ideas anonymously on a sticky-note board
• Group — ideas are clustered into themes by the facilitator or collaboratively
• Vote — participants upvote their preferred ideas
• Review — ideas are ranked by vote count; top ideas are highlighted for action

Vote Session — A lightweight poll for quick decisions. Supports four vote types: single choice, multi-choice, dot voting (distribute N votes across options), and thumbs up/down. Facilitators open a vote, participants cast their choices, and the facilitator closes it to reveal results.

Meeting Summary — A structured document auto-generated at the end of the meeting. It aggregates all closed vote sessions (decisions), completed brainstorm sessions and their top-voted ideas, and the facilitation history (who presented and for how long) within the meeting's time window.

Presenter Session — A server-side record of each presenter mode activation, including start time, end time, and presenter identity. Used by the meeting summary to generate the facilitation history section.

How It Works

Agenda Rail and Step Progression

The Agenda Rail displays all steps in order with three visual states:

State	Visual Treatment
Pending	Faded, circle outline icon
Active	Highlighted background, pulsing filled circle icon
Done	Faded, green checkmark icon, step title struck through

The facilitator clicks Next Step to advance. At the last step, the button becomes Finish. When all steps are complete, a green "All steps complete" message replaces the button. Step advancement fires a callback that the parent board layout uses to trigger the meeting summary dialog.

Each step can have a countdown duration. The timer is independent of step advancement — the facilitator can move to the next step before or after the timer expires.

Phase Timer

The Phase Timer operates per active step. It:

1. Initializes from the step's configured duration in seconds
2. Starts only when the facilitator clicks Play
3. Decrements every second using a setInterval
4. Stops and sets an expired flag when it reaches zero
5. Resets to the new step's duration when the facilitator advances

Timer state is local to the facilitator's session. It is not synchronized to participants via WebSocket — the visual timer is facilitator-side only. Participants follow the presenter's viewport and verbal cues rather than a synchronized timer display.

Presenter Mode and Viewport Sync

When the facilitator clicks Start Presenting:

1. A presenterSessions record is created server-side via startPresenterMode
2. The facilitator's browser begins broadcasting viewport coordinates (scroll position, zoom level, active board section) over WebSocket
3. A floating toolbar appears at the top of the facilitator's screen with a pulsing red dot indicating live broadcast
4. Participants who choose Follow have their viewport synchronized to the facilitator's position in real time
5. Participants who click Detach (or dismiss the banner) browse freely without losing the option to re-follow
6. When the facilitator clicks Stop Presenting, the presenter session is closed server-side and the broadcast stops

Only one presenter can be active per board at a time. If another user clicks Start Presenting while someone is already presenting, the system blocks the action.

Brainstorming

The Brainstorm Board renders ideas as sticky-note-style cards in a masonry grid. The experience adapts to the current phase:

• Ideate phase — an input field at the top; submitted ideas appear immediately for all participants; ideas are anonymous during this phase to prevent anchoring bias
• Group phase — ideas can be assigned to named theme clusters; ungrouped ideas appear in a separate section; the facilitator creates groups with meaningful labels
• Vote phase — each card shows an upvote button; vote counts are visible; participants click once to upvote (no downvotes, no vote limits by default)
• Review phase — read-only; ideas sorted by descending vote count; top ideas are visually emphasized for action item conversion

The facilitator advances phases using advancePhase. Phases follow a strict progression: ideate → group → vote → review (terminal).

Voting

Vote sessions are created by the facilitator with a title, vote type, and a list of options. Participants cast their vote using castVote, which upserts — a participant can change their vote while the session is open. The facilitator closes the session with closeVote, which locks further voting and makes results visible to all. Vote results are aggregated server-side and include per-option counts.

Meeting Summary

The meeting summary is generated by the generateMeetingSummary procedure, which queries:

• All closed vote sessions for the board within the meeting's time window (decisions)
• All brainstorm sessions for the board within the time window, with their top-voted ideas
• All presenter sessions for the board within the time window (facilitation history)

The summary can be:

• Reviewed in the dialog before dismissing
• Copied to clipboard as formatted Markdown
• Downloaded as a .md file named meeting-summary-YYYY-MM-DD.md

Configuration

Meeting agendas are stored as meetingAgendas records linked to a board. Each agenda contains an ordered array of steps (AgendaStep[]), where each step has:

Property	Type	Description
title	string	Display name for the step
durationSeconds	number or null	Countdown duration; null means no timer
notes	string or null	Facilitator-only notes shown during the step

Vote session options and brainstorm session topics are configured at creation time and can be adjusted before the relevant meeting phase begins.

Permissions

Action	Required Role
View board in facilitation mode	Workspace member
Follow presenter viewport	Workspace member
Participate in brainstorms and votes	Workspace member
Start presenter mode	Workspace member
Advance agenda steps and timers	Facilitator (member)
Create brainstorm and vote sessions	Workspace member
Close vote sessions	Session creator or admin
Generate and export meeting summary	Workspace member

Tips & Best Practices

Design agenda steps around outcomes, not topics

Each step title should describe what will be decided or produced, not just what will be discussed. "Agree on root cause hypothesis" is a better step title than "Root cause discussion." Outcome-framed steps keep the meeting moving and give the facilitator a clear test for when to advance.

Use dot voting for prioritization, thumbs for decisions

Dot voting distributes attention across many options and works well for prioritizing improvement ideas or backlog items. Thumbs up/down is faster and clearer for binary approval decisions. Use the right vote type for the question being asked.

Run ideation anonymously before revealing authorship

The brainstorm board keeps ideas anonymous during the ideate phase by design. Do not announce who submitted which idea until after grouping and voting are complete. Anonymity reduces social pressure and produces a more honest set of ideas.

Presenter mode requires stable connectivity

Viewport sync is delivered over WebSocket. If the facilitator's connection drops during presenter mode, participants will stop receiving updates. The follow banner will remain visible on participant screens until the WebSocket reconnects or the presenter session expires.

Related Features

• Breakout Sessions — extend facilitation to external participants without ProBeya accounts
• TIER Meetings — the Routines-based TIER 1 daily meeting format for SQCDP review
• Action Log — convert top-voted ideas and decisions into tracked action items
• KPI Boards — the board context within which facilitation sessions are run
• Routines — structured step-by-step execution for meetings that require data capture and sign-off