ThemeTech & the online room
CardCard 59 of 63
Questions5 to explore
StepSet up the tech

Workshop Dashboard

A place collecting all information about the event

A workshop dashboard is the single place where everything about the session lives, and building it before the day is one of the highest-leverage things a remote facilitator can do.

A workshop dashboard is a page, doc, or board section that collects the session link, the agenda, the tool links, the pre-work, any shared resources, and the outcome document in one place. Before the session it is what participants check when they want to know what they need. During the session it is where they find what they need. After the session it is where the output lives.

Without a dashboard, information scatters across invite emails, chat messages, and separate documents. Participants ask the same questions repeatedly, miss links, and cannot find the output after the session is over. It is a simple structural choice that removes a lot of low-level friction.

Online, specificallyIn a physical room, the room itself is the context container: people see the flip charts on the wall, the agenda on the projector, and the materials on the table; online that shared context has to be deliberately built in one findable place because there is no room for it to exist in naturally.

In a remote session

The same building block as it plays out online: how experienced facilitators tend to handle it when the room is a screen. Illustrations to react to, not rules to follow.

Build it before the welcome package goes out

Good facilitators build the dashboard before they send any participant communication, so the dashboard link is the first thing participants click rather than something they receive later.

Collect everything in one URL

They put the video call link, the shared board link, all agenda items, and all resource links in the same document, so participants never have to search an inbox for a link during the session.

Keep it live after the session

They use the dashboard as the output home as well: add the documentation, the decisions, and the next steps there after the session closes, so it becomes the persistent record of what happened.

Share it at the top of the session

They open the session by showing the dashboard, briefly orienting the group to where everything is, so every participant knows what to look for and where to find it when they need it.

Questions to plan around

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

Do you have one central place with all the information and links a participant needs, before, during, and after?
Is the dashboard link the first thing in the invite, so participants can find it without searching?
After the session ends, will the output live somewhere that participants can access without asking you?
Have you tested that every link in the dashboard works and takes participants exactly where they need to go?
Who is responsible for maintaining and updating the dashboard before, during, and after the session?

What trips people up online

Sending the dashboard link only in the final reminder email means anyone who misses that email arrives at the session without context or access.
A dashboard that is updated during the session by the facilitator is a useful tool; one that is built and then forgotten is just another document that participants cannot find later.
It is tempting to use the video platform's own in-session notes or chat for all links; these disappear or become hard to access the moment the call ends.