breakout-sessions

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sidebar_position: 38 title: "Breakout Sessions" description: "Create time-boxed collaborative spaces that external participants can join without a ProBeya account, with brainstorming, voting, and post-session export."

Breakout Sessions

Breakout Sessions are time-boxed collaborative spaces created from a ProBeya board and shared with external participants via a link. Participants join without needing a ProBeya account — they enter a nickname, optionally a password, and are placed directly into the collaborative workspace.

The feature is designed for workshops, kaizen events, cross-functional problem-solving sessions, and any situation where you need to bring people who are not ProBeya users into a structured collaboration.

Overview

Transformation programs frequently involve participants from outside the immediate team: suppliers, quality auditors, regulatory affairs specialists, temporary consultants, or shift workers who do not have named ProBeya seats. Running a brainstorming or voting session with these participants normally requires juggling external tools — whiteboards, sticky-note apps, polling services — and then manually importing results back into ProBeya.

Breakout Sessions eliminate the hand-off. The facilitator creates a session from within ProBeya, shares a link, and all activity — ideas, votes, attendance — lives in the same system as the boards and actions it feeds.

Getting Started

As a facilitator (ProBeya user):

1. Open a project board.
2. Click New Breakout Session in the board toolbar.
3. Fill in the session title, description, and optional settings:
   • Password — protects the join link so only invited participants can enter
   • Max participants — caps attendance if needed
   • Expiry — sessions default to 48 hours; set a shorter window for same-day workshops
4. Copy the join link and share it with participants (email, Teams, Slack, printed QR code).
5. Monitor the session from the board — freeze, resume, or revoke at any time.
6. When the session ends, use Export Package to download the full attendance log, ideas, and vote results.

As a participant (no account required):

1. Open the join link in any browser.
2. Enter a nickname (2–50 characters).
3. Enter the password if one is displayed.
4. Click Join Session and begin collaborating.

QR code distribution

For in-person workshops, generate a QR code from the join URL and display it on a screen or print it on tent cards. Participants scan it with their phone and are in the session within seconds — no app download, no account creation.

Key Concepts

Session token — A unique identifier embedded in the join URL. It is the primary access credential for the session. Keep it private if you are using password protection; anyone with the link can attempt to join.

Participant token — A per-participant credential generated at join time and stored in the participant's browser (localStorage). It authenticates subsequent requests from that participant during the session without requiring a ProBeya login.

Session status — Controls whether the session accepts new participants and what actions are available.

Expiry — Sessions have a defined end time (default 48 hours, configurable at creation). After expiry, no new participants can join and the session moves to expired status automatically.

Export package — A structured data bundle containing session metadata, the full attendance log, all brainstorm ideas with vote counts, and all vote session results. Used for meeting minutes, Kaizen documentation, and audit records.

How It Works

Session Lifecycle

Breakout Sessions follow a strict lifecycle with validated transitions:

Status	Description
Active	Accepting new participants; full collaboration available
Frozen	Paused — no new joins; existing participants can still view
Archived	Closed — session complete; data preserved for export
Expired	Past the expiry timestamp; no new joins accepted
Revoked	Emergency shutdown — session inaccessible; terminal state

Valid transitions: Active → Frozen, Archived, or Revoked. Frozen → Active (resume), Archived, or Revoked. Archived and Expired → Revoked only. Revoked is a terminal state with no further transitions.

Revoke vs. Archive

Use Archive to gracefully close a completed session while preserving data for export. Use Revoke only when a session must be shut down immediately and access prevented — for example, if a join link was shared accidentally. Revoked sessions cannot be reopened.

Security Model

• The session token in the URL is the primary access credential. Do not share the URL publicly if the content is sensitive.
• Password protection uses SHA-256 hashing. The plain-text password is never stored.
• Participant tokens are stored in the participant's browser and are scoped to a single session.
• The organizationId and password hash are never returned to external participants — the public endpoint returns only non-sensitive metadata.
• The revoked status completely blocks access to session data, including participant listing.

Participant Capacity

If Max participants is set at creation, the system enforces the cap in real time. Participants who leave and rejoin do not consume an additional slot — capacity tracks active participants only.

Collaboration Features Within a Session

The breakout workspace surfaces the same brainstorming and voting tools available to internal facilitation sessions:

• Brainstorm sessions — sticky-note idea boards progressing through ideate → group → vote → review phases
• Vote sessions — single choice, multi-choice, dot voting, or thumbs up/down polls

All ideas and votes are linked to the board and organization, making them available in the export package and in post-session analytics.

Export Package

After a session completes, use Export Package to retrieve:

• Session metadata (title, description, status, lifecycle timestamps)
• Attendance log (nickname, join time, last-seen time, active status for every participant)
• All brainstorm sessions and their ideas, sorted by vote count
• All vote sessions and their individual responses

This package provides the documentation trail needed for Kaizen event records, workshop minutes, and regulatory observation reports.

Configuration

Setting	Description	Default
Title	Display name shown on the join page	Required
Description	Context for participants on the join page	Optional
Password	Optional join password (SHA-256 hashed, never stored)	None
Max participants	Cap on concurrent active participants	Unlimited
Expiry	When the session automatically closes to new joins	48 hours

Permissions

Action	Required Role
Create a breakout session	Workspace member
View and manage sessions (freeze, archive, revoke)	Workspace admin
Export session package	Workspace admin
Join a session (as participant)	No ProBeya account required
List active participants (public)	No ProBeya account required

All session create, status-change, and delete operations are logged to the organization's audit trail.

Tips & Best Practices

Set an expiry that matches the workshop schedule

A kaizen event that runs from 09:00 to 17:00 does not need a 48-hour session. Set the expiry to the end of the working day to prevent the link from remaining active and joinable overnight.

Freeze before plenary review

When moving from small-group breakout work to a full-group plenary review, freeze the session first. This prevents late idea submissions from appearing mid-review and lets you present a stable view of results.

Archive — do not delete

Deletion permanently removes the session and its participant records. Archiving preserves everything for export and audit purposes. Only delete sessions that were created by mistake with no meaningful data.

Related Features

• Facilitated Meetings — structured meeting mode with agenda rail, timers, and brainstorming tools for internal teams
• Action Log — convert top-voted ideas from the export package into tracked actions
• KPI Boards — the board context that breakout sessions are created from
• Problem Solving — for structured root cause analysis that follows a breakout ideation session