How It Works
Participants type their ideas from their phones or devices, watch as ideas get organised into groups, vote on what matters most, and discuss patterns as they appear.Setting Up an Idea Board Slide
1
Add a new slide
Click New Slide and choose Idea Board.
2
Type your question
Enter your question or prompt in the Your question field.
3
Choose your grouping method
Enable the Groups option to add predefined groups upfront (best when you know your structure), or leave it off to let ideas cluster with AI grouping after you’ve collected them (best for discovery). See below for details on both.
4
Add an image (optional)
Click the image icon next to your question to attach an image.
Settings
Collect Audience Info
Collect Audience Info
Gather participant details (name, email, etc) before they submit ideas. Skip this if you’ve already enabled Collecting Audience Information in your presentation settings.
Groups
Groups
Create groups in advance for participants to submit into. See “How Grouping Works” below.
Vote
Vote
Enable or disable idea voting. When enabled, set the number of votes each participant can use, from 1 to 20. This is an allowance per participant, not a total for the whole audience.
Time Limit
Time Limit
Apply a time limit to submissions. When enabled, choose between 5 seconds and 20 minutes (1200 seconds).
Close Submission
Close Submission
Close submissions if you need to clarify the question or pause before participants submit.
Show Results Manually
Show Results Manually
Hide submitted responses from the presenter’s screen as they come in. A button in the middle lets you reveal responses when ready.
Show on Audience's Devices
Show on Audience's Devices
Allow your audience to see the vote count on their own devices. Leave unchecked to prevent voting bias.
Allow Multiple Submissions
Allow Multiple Submissions
Let participants submit more than one idea.
Allow Image Submissions
Allow Image Submissions
Let participants submit images alongside their answers.
Filter Profanity
Filter Profanity
Hide swear words from the audience (English only).
Video Tutorial
How Grouping Works
Predefined groups — when Groups is enabled, participants choose from groups you’ve created in advance when they submit. Useful when you have a clear structure, such as “What went well / What didn’t” or “Strategic / Operational / Tactical”. AI grouping — when Groups is disabled, answers appear one after another on the canvas as they arrive. When you’re ready to organise, click Summarise to have the system analyse submissions and suggest groupings based on similar themes and language, then click Group responses into themes to enable Groups with the suggested groupings. Refining groups — drag and drop answers between groups, or use an answer’s 3-dot menu to move it. Click a group’s name to rename it, click the + button next to the last group (or press G) to create a new one, and use a group’s 3-dot menu to delete it once it’s empty.Using the Vote Function
If Vote is enabled, move to the Vote stage by clicking Vote above the submissions, clicking Next: Vote at the bottom of the canvas, or pressing Enter. Participants then click the Thumbs up button under an answer to vote for it — if the answer sits inside a group, they open the group first to find it. Once everyone has voted, move to the Result stage the same way; the most-voted answers appear at the top.Two different figures on an Idea Board are both called votes, so it helps to keep them apart. The Vote setting is the allowance each participant gets to spend — 1 to 20 votes per person. The number shown under a submission on the board is the total that submission received from everyone who voted, not what any single participant has left.
Moving Between the Voting Stages
The Idea Board runs through three stages — Submit, Vote, and Result — and you stay in control of them throughout. You can switch to any stage, in either direction, at any point in your presentation: go back to Submit to collect more ideas, forward to Result to show what won, or back to Vote to reopen voting after the results are already on screen. There are two ways to do it:- Click the stage you want in the stage bar above the board to go straight to it. This becomes available once at least one idea has been submitted.
- Or step through one stage at a time with the Next: Vote / Next: Result and Previous buttons at the bottom of the canvas, or with Enter and Shift + Enter.
On the participant side, because the earlier votes are kept, participants who have already used all of their votes do not get new ones when you reopen voting. They can still change their mind: clicking the Thumbs up button on an answer they already voted for takes that vote back, freeing it to be used on a different answer.
On the Participant’s Side
1
Join the presentation
Join via link or QR code.
2
Select a group (if enabled)
Select a group for their response under Submit into.
3
Type their idea
Type their idea or response in the Your Response field.
4
Add an image (if enabled)
Include an image if necessary, using the Upload image button.
5
Submit
Hit Submit, then watch as ideas appear on the board and get organized into groups.
6
Vote (if enabled)
Vote on ideas they find important when the presenter moves to the Vote stage.
Common Use Cases
Idea Boards work anytime you need to collect, organize, and discuss group thinking. Here are the most common ways to use them:Feedback Collection
Ask what people thought after an event, training, or meeting — get themed feedback instantly instead of reading dozens of scattered comments. Perfect for conference session feedback, training evaluations, post-event feedback, customer feedback, and employee pulse checks.
Teaching Through Categorisation
Have students categorise examples into predefined groups, forcing them to understand what defines each category rather than just memorise labels. Perfect for business courses, medical training, and leadership development.
Retrospectives
Identify what went well and what didn’t after a sprint, project, or quarter. AI groups submissions into themes, revealing systemic issues instead of one-off complaints. Perfect for sprint retrospectives, project post-mortems, and quarterly team reviews.
Brainstorming and Problem-Solving
Separate divergent thinking (generating ideas freely) from convergent thinking (organising and prioritising raw ideas into themes). Perfect for design sprints, innovation workshops, and strategic planning.
User Research and Needs Assessment
Discover what patterns exist without biasing responses with predefined categories — collect 200 responses and organize them into 8 themes instead of overwhelming individual feedback. Perfect for product discovery research and customer pain point identification.
Requirements Gathering and Roadmap Planning
Collect stakeholder needs and organize them into a prioritized roadmap. Similar requests cluster together, showing true demand versus one-off requests. Perfect for product roadmap planning and feature prioritization sessions.
Commitment Board
Ask participants to post a personal commitment or pledge as an idea card — like a digital sticky note — at the end of a workshop, training session, or team offsite. Grouping isn’t required; the goal is a visible, shared record of what people committed to.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the vote count on a submission the total, or the votes per participant?
Is the vote count on a submission the total, or the votes per participant?
It is the total. The number shown under a submission is how many votes that idea received from everyone who voted, added together. The 1-to-20 figure in the Vote setting is something different — it is the allowance each participant gets to spend. So a board with 20 participants on 3 votes each has up to 60 votes to distribute across all the submissions.
Can participants change their mind after voting?
Can participants change their mind after voting?
Yes. Clicking the Thumbs up button on an answer they have already voted for takes that vote back, freeing it to be spent on a different answer.
Can I reopen voting after showing the results?
Can I reopen voting after showing the results?
Yes. Switch back to the Vote stage at any time. Ideas and votes already in are kept, so voting continues the same round rather than starting a new one — which also means participants who have already spent all of their votes do not receive new ones.
Why can't my audience see the vote counts on their phones?
Why can't my audience see the vote counts on their phones?
That is controlled by the Show on Audience’s Devices setting. Leave it unchecked to hide the counts from participants and prevent voting bias; check it to let them follow the totals on their own devices.
Do I have to use voting at all?
Do I have to use voting at all?
No. Voting is optional — turn the Vote setting off and the Idea Board runs as a submit-and-group board. Skip voting when open discussion will be more valuable than a ranked list.