Async sessions

An asynchronous session is the same session guide, completed by each participant on their own time inside a window you set. There’s no live moderator and no voice call. It suits geographically spread groups, executives who can’t make a fixed time, and recruited panels who complete it as a task.

Just collecting answers?

If participants don’t need to see or build on each other’s responses, a Survey is the simpler choice. It’s self-paced by design and its builder is trimmed down to questions, ratings, rankings, and selections. See Creating a survey.

Setting it up

On the session form, set Mode to Asynchronous. One extra option appears:

Show activity results to participants. Off by default. When off, submitting an activity moves the participant straight to the next one, which is the streamlined self-paced flow. When on, they see the results screen after each submit, which suits an in-person round table where a group works through activities together without a moderator driving.

The open and close window is the roster group’s start and end date and time, plus its “accessible” time. Edit them with Edit Group on the session settings page. Each activity also has an Available toggle in its setup, so you can hold some activities back and release them later.

What participants see

The agenda page opens with instructions to click into the first activity and use the arrows at the top of each one to move through the session. A progress bar and a check mark per activity show how far they’ve got. When they’ve submitted everything they can simply log out or close the window.

Info screens and categorization results count as complete once viewed. Everything else completes on submit. Ideas activities, which have no single “done” moment, can be returned to as often as the participant likes.

Tracking progress

The agenda page for an async session has a Progress button. The Participant Progress page shows four tiles, Not Started, In Progress, Complete, and Avg. Completion, and a grid of everyone who has joined with their group, a progress count such as 3 of 7, their status, and when they were last nudged. Expand a row to see which activities they’ve done. Filter by group or status, search by name or email, and Export to Excel.

The list only includes people who have actually opened the session. Invitees who never joined are still on the invitee list, and they still get the automatic reminders.

Progress updates when you open the page or click Refresh. It doesn’t stream live.

Reminders and nudges

Nudge All Incomplete emails everyone in the current view who hasn’t finished. Selecting rows and choosing Send Reminder does the same for just those people. The confirmation tells you how many will be emailed, how many will be messaged through the recruiting panel instead, and how many can’t be reached because there’s no email on file. Tick Include Message to add a personal note at the top.

The reminder says how many activities remain and when the session closes, and contains the participant’s join link.

Two reminders go out on their own, each morning at 7:00 AM Eastern, as long as the session has reminder emails on:

• A start reminder to anyone whose group begins within the next fifteen hours.
• A closing-soon reminder to anyone who hasn’t finished and whose group ends within the next twenty-four hours.

The end time is a deadline, not a lock

Reaching the group’s end time drives the reminders and the recruiting deadline, but it doesn’t stop a participant who still has the link. When you want the session closed, deactivate the group from the session settings page or archive the session.