A Space full of people has no idea who is running the meeting. Two people start countdowns over each other, somebody ends a vote while a third is still placing dots. Making one person the facilitator settles it: the tools that run the room answer to them, and everyone else gets on with the work.
Nobody is the facilitator until somebody takes the role, and a session that never uses it behaves exactly as it always has.
Making someone the facilitator
Click any avatar on a tab (or the +N badge) to open Collaborators, then use the button on the person's row:
- Make Facilitator on somebody else's row. It is offered while nobody is facilitating, to the current facilitator (to hand it on), and always to the space's owner.
- Take Facilitation on your own row, when nobody is running the session.
- Step Down on your own row when you're the facilitator and you're done.
- Take Over on your own row, if you own the space and somebody else is facilitating. The owner can always take the session back.
Whoever is running it wears a Facilitating badge on their row in Collaborators. A visitor on a Participant or Viewer share link can't hold the role, because running a session is an editor's job: Make Facilitator on their row is greyed out, and its hover card says why. There is one facilitator for the whole space, not one per tab.
Everyone in the room gets a short notification when the role moves, like "Alex is now facilitating" or "Nobody is facilitating now", so nobody has to guess. If you've turned off In-Editor Notifications in Settings › Notifications, you won't see those, and the badge still tells you who has it.
What the facilitator runs
While somebody holds the role, these are theirs:
- The timer: start, pause, extend, reset, clear.
- Dot voting: starting a round, revealing it, ending it, stepping through the results.
- Pressing Bring Focus.
- Freeing an element somebody has wandered off with selected: right-click it and choose their Release row in the In use menu. While nobody facilitates, any Editor can do this.
Bring Focus, which any editor can normally press, becomes the facilitator's to press.
Everything else is unchanged for everyone: casting your dots, commenting, walking, sitting, talking, pointing with the laser, following somebody, and every part of editing the canvas. A tool only the facilitator can answer wouldn't be a tool.
When somebody else is facilitating, the Timer and Vote set-up popovers in the session tools strip say so at the top, naming who, and their controls are greyed until they hand it on or step down.
If they leave or refresh
Refreshing changes nothing: the role comes straight back to them, usually before the page has finished loading. Same for a dropped connection or a closed laptop lid.
If they leave for good, the role is released about a minute and a half later and everyone is told, so the tools open up again rather than staying locked behind somebody who has gone. The space's owner can also take it back at any moment, and when everyone leaves the space the role is simply over: the next session starts with nobody facilitating.
The facilitator role is about who is driving, not a permission: it keeps two well-meaning people from starting timers at once rather than defending the space from anyone. A space in This Browser has no live room, so it has no facilitator.
Building the space and running the session are different jobs. Make the space, then hand the facilitator role to whoever is running the meeting; as the owner you keep the ability to take it back.
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