Lock areas of the board that only facilitator can unlock

The idea of user access-driven locking/unlocking is a great idea @Peter Green as I’ve had similar experiences with learners accidentally unlocking content which I’d intended to remain locked!

This is really a critical feature. Without this, it makes it so much hard to even use the tool.  Being able to have confidence that people will not unlock and more things would even make it easier to design better boards. Now you really have to avoid doing what would be ideal, and build things that are less effective, to avoid the risks.

Hi all, my idea is oriented to create a role in meetings with Customers and that they (Customers) have only access to put sticky notes. Why? because I try to avoid that in our virtual meetings with customers they for a mistake erase, move o modify any canvas in our Board during the workshop.

I agree that this is a critical feature.  After using Miro for 3 workshops, I’m considering switching tools until this feature is implemented.  I’ve had participants accidentally overlay a template on a board, and unlock and move or delete things from a board.  Giving everyone view and comment access isn’t sufficient for real collaboration, yet edit access allows them to accidentally wreck havoc.

@Carlos Toso There is no way to do that, since you can’t setup levels of edit access. 

You can group things and lock them, so you would want to do that for all items other than the notes, but anyone with edit access (to add notes) could still unlock things. I’ve built some transparent svg files for some items, so I lock that, and even if they unlock it, they can’t change the image at all… but.. that does take WAY more time.

I also tend to only send the board out when the meeting starts, so it is not just sitting out there for a long time.

Hope that helps a bit… no solution though.

• jake

User right between "comment" and "edit"

I’m new in Miro and as a facilitator for workshop, I have a question relative to the user rights.

Actually, if we want that the participants car move items on the board, they must have the “edit” user rights.

However, with these rights, they can do everything on the board. But sometime, we just want they can move the visible items on the board and no more (no item creation for example).

Is there any feature for that ? If not, I think it would be a good idea.

Best Regards,

Thomas.

This would be the best improvement ever ;). Then I wil use the concultantplan without a doubt. Now I don't use Miro with my colleague trainers. It is unprofessional if your training or coaching session is disturbed by one of your participants by accidently deleting parts of your board.

For this fantastic online tool Miro: How could you forget this part in the Consultant Plan!!!
 

Please build this option!! Let participants only use sticky notes, drawing, icons. etc, but not change the design of the board. Maybe you can create something like a master background/design (non edditable by participants). 

Hi @CoachR could you tell me more about your use-case? How do you usually add your participants to the board for the session, do you use Anonymous guest link? 

Come on Miro! Mural already has a feature where the “owner” of the board can lock all items and only him can unlock them. 
 

Miro Devs - Implementing great facilitator and participant permissions is the most important idea on the Wishlist right now!

There is one BIG problem for those of us using Miro for live online workshops and events with new users. New anonymous participants are presented with a completely bewildering array of tools, most of which they will not need right away. They get overwhelmed and give up, they get frustrated, and they mess up the boards while innocently trying to learn how to use them. New anonymous users on a board are presented with dozens of pop up windows, toolbar icons, and requests they can click on, and they don’t know what any of them mean!

Then, when they finally fight through all that stuff to get to the board, half of the onboarding process consists of teaching them what NOT to do so they don’t screw things up. They are constantly unlocking things, creating accidental connector arrows, moving items when they are trying to move themselves, and creating a text box or a shape when they are trying to create a sticky note. Maybe this onboarding process is not a big problem for a team of techies who will be working together on a board for months, but it is VERY big problem for the non-technical general public participants in an interactive workshop that is only two hours long.

Please allow us to make it smooth and easy for our participants, by letting us only give them the permissions, toolbar options, and arrival welcome messages they need at the beginning, then adding them gradually as they learn and as they need them.

When my Miro-naive participants first arrive on my board, I want it to be simpler than Google Jamboard. 

I am testing out Miro for work because the interface is more friendly than Mural, but I have been flabbergasted that they don't allow tool permissions for guests. I don’t want my participants starting a vote, or stoping the timer. Why is there not a ‘facilitator’ role that is the only one allowed to do that?

I fully agree.

I would like to add to this even further.

I want to be able to limit what a participant can do. For example, lock the size of postits. Seemingly every user that sits on a MacBook cannot to save their own lives refrain from making a pre-set postits 

So I want to be able to limit participants to only a) create a postit b) copy+paste and c) move a postit.

I work with digital analphabets. They can use their email but using Miro as a canvas is over the top usefulness for them.

My biggest challenge is for my participants, often I work with 20-50 participants at a time, not to do a lot of weird stuff that they shouldnt be able.

Why on gods green earth is it needed for them to create arrows and connectors?

Also, please remove double-click to create a textbox. This happens all the time and they get confused as hell. 

Also, it would be nice if you for example could press a certain key which changed the cursor from a select to a move cursor. This for macbook users and their touchpads. PC users with a regular mouse has no issues.

Having macbook users who are regular people is a pain in the ass. I spend a lot of time onboarding to the technology. 

You need to start to implement solutions that make the assumption that the participant using miro is a 55 year “im too old to learn new things” type of user. 

Please, add more limitation features. All they need is to create postits, write on postits and move them.

Nothing else. 

No moving of templates, no creation of arrows, no texboxes, nothing else.

Postit.

Write on postit.

Move postit.

Please let me limit participants to those three actions.

A critical error with unlocking items is that it is done with a “long-click”, which participants often do when trying to navigate the screen. if it’s not possible to take away lock/unlock from guests, then developers should consider a new way to unlock a box [perhaps shift+click] 

Part of the issue is that the user interface behaviours change depending on whether items are selected, stuff is locked etc but th echanges are not sign-posted - net result - people DON’T see action cues and don’t learn behaviour patterns quickly and easily

There is a load more than just locking that needs sorting but this is DEFINITELY up there towards or at the top

I agree @Becky Roberts concern - Becky did you move to something else? So far im unconvinced by ConceptBoard, Deskle, Awwwapp, Mindmiester and a ton of others as work-time-asset-creation investment in miro isn’t yet a lock-in - Haven’t really tried mural as no iframe 

@Simon.Harris  The original request has been implemented - when I lock something no one else can unlock it anymore. 

@andyvdg do you mean the recent change to access by anonymous guest editor ability to lock-unlock? Because otherwise I’ve missed the bit that says if User-A locks then User-B cannot unlock

My thought is / was locking needs to be more refined than I understand it to be and that locking isn’t th e start and end of the need 

:)

No you are right - this is just board-owner vs others. Not if random user A locks then user B shouldn’t. 

It’s a HUGE step in the right direction but might not cover all use cases. 

This is the currently our SINGLE BIGGEST PAINPOINT in Miro. The ability for a facilitator to lock objects such that participants cannot unlock them is the biggest barrier between our team and facilitating flawless online workshops.

@Johannes has it right as well - it would be a game-changer if there was a lower-level of access that you could provide to participants that would stop them from creating text boxes and connectors. As a facilitator the wide variety of functionality is fabulous, but for our participants it makes the platform difficult to use, with unexpected “functionality” tripping them up at every turn. 

These are excellent ideas!

As I read through these comments and other, similar posts, along with my personal facilitation/presentation experiences using Miro, I keep coming back to the idea of a larger theme of features in Miro to support it being used for facilitation (leading webinars, training, presentations, workshops, etc.) This post is capturing many of the ideas that have been coming to mind.

As I really stop and think about it, the fact that we’re all here on this community and spewing out these awesome ideas, highlights perfectly the endless possibilities for this tool and how much we like it.

I do have a post already for the idea of Only viewing the cursor of the person I am following (please vote for it if you agree!), but even today as I was being led through a workshop in Miro, I found myself daydreaming of features in Miro that could have made the experience even better - some of those ideas included:

• The role of Facilitator could be assigned  to a board by the board Owner.
• The facilitator could then define an Agenda for the session (webinar, training, workshop, retrospective, etc.).
• The overall session could have a time assigned to it, e.g., 60 minutes.
• Each agenda item could have the following attributes:
  • Length of time, e.g., Icebreaker = 10 minutes.
  • Starting location (object, position, etc.) on the board.
  • Presenter for that Agenda item.
• The Facilitator would have configured the agenda in advance and with the click of a button, the session would kick off.
•  Somewhere on the screen at all times (with the ability for anyone to show/hide) would be a small, unobtrusive modal/window showing the current status of the agenda item, e.g. “Item # 2/6 - Icebreaker (4:56 remaining)”

The role of Facilitator for a board is important as it would do a number of things:

• Back to my previously stated idea, the participants could chose to turn off seeing all cursors EXCEPT for the current Presenter (being the Facilitator default)
• And, of course, if the Facilitator wants to hand over the title of Presenter to another participant, now all of the board participants will see only that user’s cursor.

Anyway… those are just a few ideas. I need to stop and eat before I get hangry!

Oh, and while I hope and wait for these features, I will use the boards Notes pane with checklists to keep track of the agenda.

Great looking thread this - I’ve NOT read it all yet- apologies if th epoint was made above - @Adelaide Denison I built some training stuff where the first board is accessd via a link that is comment only and the exercises are on a board that is linked from the comment only board.

There are 2 down sides - the comment board doesn’t enable me to call people to me and students get a pop-up by miro attempting to sell to them :(

I’ve not tried it in a live setting yet but it looks like a potential way forward - I think Kieran posted somewhere about putting a 99% transparent shape over everything that stops some problems

I created this, as as stop gap - maybe it can be done soon??  Please upvote it if you like it: https://community.miro.com/wish-list-32/add-option-to-increase-unlock-timing-long-press-to-unlock-timing-short-term-solution-to-lock-issues-1680?postid=6713#post6713

Adding this little bit of functionality to this larger feature set: The ability for the board owner or facilitator to turn off Show collaborators' cursors for all participants.

It seems that Show cursors is on be default for anyone entering a new board.

Idea sparked from this post:

https://community.miro.com/got-a-question-ask-the-community-45/hide-cursors-1695

Great idea! I think it will help too if the facilitator has control over the buttons the participants see. I made a topic about this on https://community.miro.com/wish-list-32/hide-buttons-for-workshop-participants-1913?postid=7793#post7793

While we are on this topic - a paradigm shift would be useful -

Instead of the single guest link having a permission level set between Edit etc each board should have a set of links - one that is Owner - Can unlock etc - One that is Add/ Edit content not structure, One that is able to comment, one that is view

The concept of permission given out being dependant on ROLE not on the board is already ½ there in that there is an owner role - Seems to me generally miro’s conceptual footings are confused and that will lead to more and more rats-nest code & UI complexity unless its rationalised as facilities are built

@Eduardo Gomez Ruiz - whats the path?

Thanks for sharing this context. I will circle back with the team on what is possible