STEP 1 -- Create Session and Activities

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Create Session

Creating Agenda Structure

Info Activity

Ideas Activity

Categorization Activity

Rate Activity

Select Activity

Survey Activity

Rank Activity

Create Session

Our assumption is that all of you have an active Session Leader ID that has been created for you to enable you to create and execute a Converge session For access as a session leader, simply go to the URL and then enter the userid and password that has been created for you There are several different classes of IDs in Converge and three of those ID classes can create sessions (bolded below):

• Participant

• Observer

• Reviewer

• Session Leader

• Group Leader

• Administrator


Typically there is one Administrator ID per company, perhaps 1 or 2 Group Leaders that tend to be the lead facilitators and have access to all sessions that have been created by the set of session leaders in the company, and any number of Session Leaders that have been trained and are actively facilitating sessions for your organization. For simplicity’s sake, we will assume that all you using this guide are active Session Leaders.


The base Converge URL is app.startconverge.com and will take you to the Converge sign on screen where you can enter you leader ID and password; Most of you will be Converge licensees and your URL will be customized with your company name to a branded site for sign on. The typical format for that URL is companyname.startconverge.com. Branded site examples are show below:


Once you have signed in as a leader (we’ll be using the base Converge site in our examples), you will see the following screen:

This is referred to as the Session Gallery and will display any active sessions you have access to as well as any archived sessions that you have access to. Just click on the down arrow to the right of Active and you can toggle between Active and Archived sessions. We’ll consider this your first visit to Converge as a Leader so your Gallery is blank.


Your next step is simply to click on the CREATE SESSION button. This will bring up your Session Settings panel which you will use to create your session and indicate the date of the session and some other settings that will customize the characteristics of the session. Aside from the date settings you can generally accept the setting defaults. Here is a quick reference to the settings that you will use to create your session:

This is referred to as the Session Gallery and will display any active sessions you have access to as well as any archived sessions that you have access to. Just click on the downarrow to the right of Active and you can toggle between Active and Archived sessions. We’ll consider this your first visit to Converge as a Leader so your Gallery is blank.


Your next step is simply to click on the CREATE SESSION button. This will bring up your Session Settings panel which you will use to create your session and indicate the date of the session and some other settings that will customize the characteristics of the session. Aside from the date settings you can generally accept the setting defaults.Here is a quick reference to the settings that you will use to create your session:


  • Session Title:  The title of your session—this is important as it will be used in your invitation/registration emails and will be seen by all participants/observers.  Keep it simple, a example might be:  ‘Strategy Planning Input Session for Phoenix Fire Department’.
  • Session Description:  Think of this as your welcome screen, it’s what participants will see when they join/access your session.  Include a reference to start time of the session and the context for the session. You have RTF formatting--an example is shown below:

  • Account Group: This will default to your company account, no action needed.
  • Lock Anonymity:  This defaults to ‘no’ and gives you the most flexibility in your session to use anonymous as well as attributed response modes.  If you decide to lock the anonymity of a session it just means that all responses are anonymous.  NOTE:  only your company administrator can unlock the anonymity of a session once it has been locked. Generally, you will run your session without the lock being on.
  • Mode:  This is a terrific capability of Converge.  Running in Synchronous mode is a normal real-time facilitated session.  Everyone joins at the same time and you, as the leader, will move them from activity to activity and guide them by voice.  Running is Asynchronous mode means a survey-style session where participants can access a session at any time that is convenient for them and does not require a facilitator during the session.  Sometime a session can be designed to be asynchronous and sometimes you might extend a facilitated (synchronous) session to a set of participants that were not able to join the original facilitated session.  Let’s assume here that we are created a normal facilitated session so we will leave the setting default as synchronous.
  • Session Creating Language: Converge is a globally enabled platform and we add languages as needed (right now Arabic, Bulgarian, English, French, German, Polish and Spanish are supported).  We’ll assume that you are creating your session in English so you can just accept the English default.  NOTE:  in our STEP 5 section we will cover how you can create a session in English and then download and translate the guide into other languages when you might be running one session in English and then another session in a different language.
  • Show Participants Agenda:  The default here is ‘yes’ and just means that your participants will see your actual session agenda that consists of the various activities (ideas, rates, surveys) that you will be going through.  Think of it as showing the outline of your session.  Generally, it’s fine and desirable to do this, it gives your participants a sense of what will be covered.  Selecting ‘No’ means that participants will see the session title and objective when they sign on and the set of activities will be masked.
  • Session Dates and Time Zone Settings:  This is the section where you indicate the session date, time, duration and when it is accessible:
    • Start Date/Time: Use the calendar widget to indicate your planned session start date and time (for example, 01/31/2024, 11:00am)
    • End Date/Time:  Use the calendar widget to indicate your planned session end date and time (for example, 01/31/2024, 12:00pm).  NOTE:  this is your planned end date/time…it does not stop you in the middle of your session if you are running long, for example if it is 12:15pm and you had 12:00pm marked.
    • Accessible Date/Time:  This is an important concept in Converge.  It tells the system when a participant can actually join their session and see the welcome screen.  Some participants like to login early to be ready and we always recommend that you ask your participants to join the session 5-10 minutes early so the session can get started right on time.  We generally recommend that you set the accessible time to be 30 minutes before the session start time (for example, 10:30am).  NOTE:  participants can’t go anywhere in the agenda, they can just access the session and see the welcome screen.
    • Time zone:  Click the down arrow to see your options.  Generally you are selecting the time zone where the majority of your participants are or the home location of your company/client.  Make sure you know if your session will be during standard time or daylight savings time for US sessions.  This time zone session is very important as it is used by Converge in confirmation emails and in downloading the access links to a participant’s calendar. Our settings are below:


  • Enable Voice Call:  The default is ‘Yes’ meaning you will use the integrated Converge audio support (VOIP).  There may be times when you are doing a hybrid session where you are beginning the session (or workshop) with Zoom or Teams and want to use their audio support during the Zoom/Teams front end, then when you tab over to the Converge portion of the session you can continue to use the Zoom/Teams audio.  In that case you would indicate ‘No’ for enabling the Converge voice call and it will mask all of the Converge audio commands and features.  Currently I’d say about 75% of our sessions are conducted with Converge audio and about 25% using a Zoom/Teams front end.
  • Force Phone Only:  This is an edge case.  Converge audio is supported by a component called ‘Twilio” which is a well-accepted audio/video plug-in.  However, there can be organizations that you might be doing a session for that will not allow a VOIP component to be used in their organization (security and bandwidth concerns).  Generally they have to enable the use of VOIP (this includes Zoom, Teams, Google Meet as well).  In the unusual case that an organization will not enable the use of Converge/Twilio via their network settings, you can use the Force Phone Only setting which means that participants can use a traditional phone (desk phone or smartphone) to call into the Converge session and mask the VOIP icons.  It actually works quite well, you just need to be clear in your welcome screen that participants will not be using VOIP (computer audio) but will be using traditional phone and to click on the VOICE INSTRUCTIONS link for the number and code to call.  Welcome to the world of network security in 2024.

While there may a number of settings for flexibility and use cases, creating a session is super easy and should take you less than 5minutes—add a title a description, set the session dates and time and use the defaults for everything else.Once you are set then click on CREATE SESSION and you now have a new session in your Gallery and can begin to build your session agenda by adding specific activities. Our session is shown below:

Creating Your Agenda/Structure and Adding Agenda Activities

Now that you have created your session (think of it as starting a project file), you are ready to build your session agenda by adding sections and activities. Converge uses a very simple agenda structure format:


SECTION 1

--Activity 1

--Activity 2

--Activity N


You can see an example of two sections and several activities in the agenda below:

You have several options to add your agenda sections and activities to yoursession:


·      Retrieve an agenda from your session library. You can use one of the Global Session Templates  that Converge is developing and providing to all of our licensees or you can retrieve a session guide from your company-specific library.  This is a terrific way of creating efficiency and re-use of session agendas;

·      Import an agenda from one of your current or archived sessions.  This would be a session that has not been reviewed or promoted to your library but has a good base agenda thatyou can edit and leverage for your new session;

·      Simply start from scratch and create a new agenda by adding sections andactivities.  We will show examples of building a new agenda for the guide, but encourage you to be familiar with allthree options.


STEPS:Click on your session name in yourGallery;you have three options:


·      Add Section:  You are starting from scratch and will add your first section

·      Import Agenda:  This where you can import a previous agenda from the Converge Global Library (templates),an agenda from your own company library or an agenda from an active or archivedsession

·      Edit Session:  Returns to you the session creating screen for an edits to your title, objectives,dates or session settings.


If you click on import agenda you will then have options as follows:

We’ll go ahead and build an agenda from scratch, so click on Add Section and add your section.For our session we will add a section entitled The Positive Trends of 2024.Once we have added that section, we can then add an activity to that section as we begin you build out our agenda:

Simply click on ADD ACTIVITY and you can now add any of the current Converge activities:

  • Info:  The info activity is like a one page PowerPoint—it can be used to share information/context to participant sand can include images, rich text, video, etc. No responses are required from participants, it’s just something that you as a facilitator wants to share or cover.
  • Ideas:  The idea activity is your primary real-time brainstorming activity. A question is posed, a dialogue box provided, and participants can provide multiple responses and (by design) can see each other’s responses as they come in.
  • Categorization:  The categorization activity supports the Converge concept of categorization which is a summarization of a larger amount of ideas.  For example, you might have 100 ideas that were generated that could be summarized into a set of 12 categorized themes.  Once these themes are in the categorizer activity, then can then be linked to rate or select activities for participants to evaluate.
  • Rate:  The rate activity allows participants to rate via a numeric (i.e., 1-10) scale or a custom (i.e.,low impact, medium impact, high impact) scale. Results are displayed in graphic and tabular format.
  • Select:  The select activity is similar to the rate activity but participants will select a specific number of the listed items (i.e., select the three most important) or a range (i.e.,select the three to five most important). Again, results are displayed immediately in graphic and tabular format.
  • Survey:  The survey activity is a very powerful tool that allows you to have multiple questions and question types all in a single activity.  It’s a very efficient way to have participants response to a number of related questions.  The current question types supported are:
    • Open Ended
    • Rate
    • Allocate
    • Select
    • Rank
  • Rank:  The rank activity is our most recent addition and enables you to rank order a set of items outside of the survey activity.  It’s an easy drag/drop implementation and does ask participants to make discreet tradeoffs between theoptions that are presented.

This set of activity types lets you as a facilitator create a very robust agenda and allows you to use a number of facilitation techniques and styles to create a powerful experience for your participants.As you build your agenda and use these activities you find that it is very easy to edit the activities, copy an activity, move it to another section, reorder sections and even copy entire sections.As you build your experience in developing agendas you will also build your speed.


Below is an example of a section focused on the Graduate School Decision for under graduate students considering the merits of attending a graduate school:


For editing and options on an activity, you can click on the 3 dot ellipsis to the left of an activity:


For editing and options on a section, you can click on the 3 dot ellipsis tot he right of add activity option at the upper right of the section:


The six-dot ‘handles’ to the left of the activities allow you to reorder an activity within a section; the six dot ‘handles’ to the left of a section allow you to reorder sections within an agenda. You can also ‘hide’ a specific activity or an entire section by making it unavailable so that participants don’t see it when they join a session and it is automatically skipped by the facilitator as they move from section to section. You might have an activity that is available for session 1, but is made unavailable (or hidden) for session 2. It’s a bit of an advanced technique but very useful when you are running multiple sessions from a common agenda. We’ll cover the ability to have multiple groups for a common agenda in STEP 2 of our facilitation guide (running a session).


Quick Reference Guide for Converge Activities

The following settings information will provide guidance on adding each of the six current Converge activities. As you use the platform, you will find the process of adding activities to be very consistent and intuitive and you will likely not need to refer the guide. But for now, let’s assume you are just starting out and have created a session and added a section that you are ready to populate with activities:


Info Activity:

  • Click on ADD ACTIVITY to the right of your section title
  • Click on the Info activity in the set of activity options displayed
  • Add your Activity Title and click on CREATE
  • Now, click on the activity that has been created in your section
  • Add info sections that can be rich text, video link, web link or files and SAVE
  • Click on Preview Mode to see how the activity will look displayed to a participant
  • Click on Add Section if you would like to add additional content

Ideas Activity:

  • Click on ADD ACTIVITY to the right of your section title
  • Click on the Ideas activity in the set of activity options displayed
  • Add your Activity Title and your question text in the Instructions area
  • Review the settings, the defaults are set to what we generally use and see in a typical Ideas Activity for open brainstorming and is set in anonymous mode and allows for participants to add comments to other participant’s ideas
  • Click on CREATE and you have added your ideas activity
  • Special Settings
    • Anonymity toggles between anonymous input and attributed input
    • Idea Anchoring toggles between no scrolling and auto scrolling of ideas
    • Disable Commenting (on existing ideas) and Disable Entries (new ideas) are pretty self-explanatory, just gives you options on controlling idea flow as needed
    • Advance on Submit is an option for all interactive activities that moves the individual participant to the next activity when they enter an idea (in this case) or submit their response for a rate/select/survey.  We generally use it when we are pressed for time in a session and have a survey activity that might be the next to last activity in the session so that the participant submits their survey and then automatically moves to the final activity
    • Copy Ideas on Duplication just means that you would copy the ideas in this activity when and if you copied(duplicated) the activity in your agenda
    • Show Media allows you to attach media to the activity that the participant could review prior to or during the activity.  We provide this option to all activities in an agenda, here you might attach a PDF document for review

An example of a production ideas activity/settings is shown below:

Categorization Activity

  • Click on ADD ACTIVITY to the right of your section title
  • Click on the Categorization activity in the set of activity options displayed
  • Add your Activity Title and Instructions
  • Review the settings, the defaults are very straight forward and generally what we use and recommend for this activity
  • Click on CREATE and you have added your categorization activity

• Special Settings

    • Availability allows you to hide the activity on the agenda if needed
    • Disable Commenting is defaulted to ‘no’, you can toggle it if you want to allow participants to add comments to ideas you have added. Note that we do not allow participants to add ideas (themes) to the categorization activity, this is reserved for leaders
    • Copy Ideas on Duplication allows you to have the ideas duplicated when you copy this activity. Note that we default this to yes for a categorization
    • Show Media allows you to add media for review if needed, i.e., a video or PDF

• NOTE ON THE CATEGORIZATION ACTIVITY: We will cover more on how you populate the categorization activity when you are summarizing data from a preceding ideas activity in STEP 2 on running a session. Generally you are using the categorization activity when you are linking the themes in the categorization to a subsequent rate or select activity (and sometimes linking the same categorization to multiple rates or selects). In this regard a categorization is treated by Converge as a ‘source activity’ which can then be paired with a target or ‘destination activity’ so that the themes in the categorization are automatically linked to that destination rate/select activity. To link a categorization to a rate or select (that has been already added to your agenda) just click on the three dot ellipse to the left of the categorization activity. Click on Link Activity and Converge will display any rate or select activities that have not yet been linked. The example below links the Categorization to the Rate that immediately follows it:

NOTE: Once you link a categorization activity a note will be placed in your agenda (for leaders to see only) that the activity has been linked. An example is shown below:

Rate Activity

  • Click on ADD ACTIVITY to the right of your section title
  • Click on the Rate activity in the set of activity options displayed
  • Add your Activity Title and Instructions. The activity instructions are very important as they instruct the participant on the rating scale and context for their assessment
  • Review the settings, the defaults are very straight forward and generally what we use and recommend for this activity. There are some different settings for this activity that are covered below
  • Scroll down to the Scale Designer as this is where you will indicate the kind of rating criteria you will use for your assessment. Click on the plus sign to the right
  • The Scale Title is the column title that will be shown to the participant for this rate. For example, ‘Importance for the Future of the Organization’
  • Use Custom Scales is when you want to create your own rating scale and not use a typical numeric scale (like a 1-10 assessment). If you use custom scales you will add your rating text (for example ‘low importance’, ‘medium importance’ and ‘high importance’ one option at a time. Converge assigns numeric values from low to high so in this example ‘low importance’ has a value of ‘1’, ‘medium importance’ has a value of ‘2’ and ‘high importance’ has a value of ‘3’. Hence, you are using a 1-3 point scale for importance. Custom scales are useful, but 90% of the time you can use the standard numeric scales provided by Converge
  • Assuming a points-only scale in your Rating Type you can then select the Number of Scales and Converge provides 3, 5, 7 and 10 as options
  • Predefined Scale Language is available in the rating type where we provide language for Importance and Agreement that can be applied to your rating scale. We use this most frequently for a 1-5 statement agreement approach where we use the agreement language along with the 1-5 rating scale where ‘1’ means Strongly Disagree, ‘2’ means ‘Somewhat Disagree, ‘3’ means ‘Neither Agree nor Disagree’, ‘4’ means ‘Somewhat Agree and ‘5’ means Strongly Agree
  • NOTE: The Converge rate activity allows you to have multiple criteria so you could add a second criteria and follow the same process above. This means you would have two rating columns (for example ‘Impact’ and ‘Likelihood’ for each item your participants are rating. Really useful in certain cases, we recommend that you use the same scaling (i.e., 1-10) for each criteria as it will equally weight the two criteria in the composite results
  • Click on CREATE and you have added your categorization activity
  • Special Settings
    • Availability allows you to hide the activity on the agenda if needed
    • Abstentions provides an abstain option in your rate scale so a participant can mark abstain to bypass the numeric rate on an item (meaning that may not be familiar with the item and can bypass it). I personally use the abstain setting for nearly all of my rates
    • Randomize Options takes the set of rate items and randomized their order to the participants to avoid order bias. Everyone gets the same list but in a different order
    • Allow Changes after Contributing allows a participant to Return to Activity while it is active in case they need to change their rating. Be careful with this, it is useful if someone had inadvertently reversed a scale (though a ‘1’ was most important when it really was least important) but you don’t want participants to be influenced by the group assessment and go back and modify theirs. Generally choose ‘no’ on this option
    • Hide Results from Participants means that you are choosing to not show the results after participants have submitted their rating. Participants go to a holding screen until the leader moves everyone to the next activity. Can be useful in a research session where you want this to be a blind activity, but 99% of the time we show results (graphic and tabular) of rates to talk about the results and engage participants in the process
    • Advance on Submit means the participant moves to the next sequential activity after they submit their ratings. A bit of an edge case in a facilitated session, you might use this of the rate is the next to last activity in your agenda and you are pressed for time
    • Show Media is available for all activities and allows you to attach media such as a video or PDF. Typically not used for a rate activity

An example of a production rate activity is show below. The actual list is 12 items to rate on a 1-10 basis that is described in the instructions:

ONE FINAL NOTE ON THE RATE ACTIVITY: While we typically populate a rate activity from a preceding categorization, you can also simply add the ballot items while you are developing your agenda (you might have a list of the current 8 organization values that you want participants to assess). Just click on the plus sign that is displayed to you after you have created the rate and you can add ballot items one at a time or you can bulk add a list via copy/paste, usually you will specify a line break as the option to make sure your imported list is add as separate items:

Select Activity

  • Click on ADD ACTIVITY to the right of your section title
  • Click on the Select activity in the set of activity options displayed
  • Add your Activity Title and Instructions.  The activity instructions are very important as they instruct the participant on the rating scale and context for their assessment
  • Review the settings, the defaults are very straight forward and generally what we use and recommend for this activity.  There are some different settings for this activity that are covered below, most importantly the number of items to select.  It will allow you select a specific number (select 5) or a range (select the 3-5 that are most important)
  • Click on CREATE and you have added your Select activity
  • Special Settings
    • Availability allows you to hide the activity on the agendaif needed
    • Allow Changes after Contributing allows a participant to Return to Activity while it is active in case they need to change their rating.  Be careful with this, you don’t want participants to be influenced by the group assessment and go back and modify theirs.  Generally choose ‘no’ on this option
    • Min Select Count is the minimum number of items that need to be selected by the participant; Max Select Count is the maximum number of items that need to be selected by the participant. Let’s say you want participants to select the 3 most important strategies that are listed out of 10 that are shown.  Simply mark ‘3’ for min select and max select.  If you want participants to select the 3-5 strategies that they feel are most important, then make the min select ‘3’ and the max select ‘5’.  Completely up to you and your engagement, I generally like a discreet number better, everyone choosing the same number.  A useful rule of thumb is N/3 where N is the total number of ballot items (say 15) so you might ask participants to select the 5 ballot items out of the 15 that are available.
    • Randomize Options takes the set of rate items and randomized their order to the participants to avoid order bias.  Everyone gets the same list but in a different order
    • Hide Results from Participants means that you are choosing to not show the results after participants have submitted their rating.  Participants go to a holding screen until the leader moves everyone to the next activity.  Can be useful in a research session where you want this to be a blind activity, but 99% of the time we show results (graphic and tabular) of selects to talk about the results and engage participants in the process
    • Advance on Submit  means the participant moves to the next sequential activity after they submit their ratings.  A bit of an edge case in a facilitated session, you might use this of the select is the next to last activity in your agenda and you are pressed for time
    • Show Media is available for all activities and allows you to attach media such as a video or PDF. Typically not used for a select activity.

An example of a select is shown below, in this case selecting the ONE most important theme:

Survey Activity

NOTE: The Converge Survey activity is very robust and can be used as a short activity in a facilitated session or can be set up as a comprehensive stand-alone survey in an asynchronous session. We will cover the highlights here, but additional training can be provided for any leaders that want to go further about the use of the survey tool.

  • Click on ADD ACTIVITY to the right of your section title
  • Click on the Survey activity in the set of activity options displayed. NOTE: You will create the survey activity before you add specific survey questions…this is very similar to creating a session before you add agenda activities
  • Add your Activity Title and Instructions. The activity instructions are very important as they instruct the participant on the rating scale and context for their assessment
  • Review the settings, the defaults are very straight forward and generally what we use and recommend for this activity
  • Click on CREATE and you have added your survey activity
  • Special Settings
    • Anonymous is a toggle on surveys to have your open text responses be anonymous or attributed. We generally run our surveys in anonymous mode but there may be occasions where you want a specific survey to be attributed, for example a strong opinion view on a key issue where you might then go around the table and the participant talk further about that view (verbally)
    • Availability allows you to hide the activity on the agenda if needed
    • Allow Changes after Contributing allows a participant to Return to Activity while it is active in case they need to change their rating. Be careful with this, you don’t want participants to be influenced by the group assessment and go back and modify theirs. NOTE: I generally allow this in survey in case participants are giving responses on text questions that are too short or seem superficial—I can ask them to return to the question and ‘tell me more’. We still leave the default as no, so entirely up to you
    • Hide Results from Participants means that you are choosing to not show the results after participants have submitted their rating. Participants go to a holding screen until the leader moves everyone to the next activity. Can be useful in a research session where you want this to be a blind activity, but 99% of the time we show results (graphic and tabular) of surveys to talk about the results and engage participants in the process
    • Advance on Submit means the participant moves to the next sequential activity after they submit their ratings. A bit of an edge case in a facilitated session, you might use this if the survey is the next to last activity in your agenda and you are pressed for time
    • Show Media is available for all activities and allows you to attach media such as a video or PDF. This is OFTEN used in surveys either at the survey level to set the stage for the survey or at a specific question level.

Adding Survey Sections and Questions: The survey activity is similar to how you created your session at the start—you create your survey, then click on it to begin to add sections and questions. To get started, add an initial section by clicking on Add Section. Once you have added your section title you can also add media (a video or PDF) and then click on add to add you section into the survey. You can then add additional sections or just start to work with the section you have added. NOTE: We have added a special feature to the Section once you have added it that allows you to add additional information about the Section as an introduction to the questions that will be asked. Think of this as an imbedded ‘info’ activity into the header. It can be extremely useful to add context information and visual elements. To add additional information immediately below the section title click on the 3 dot ellipse to the right of the ADD QUESTION option and click on Survey Activity

NOTE:The Converge Survey activity is very robustand can be used as a short activity in a facilitated session or can be set up asa comprehensive stand-alone survey in an asynchronous session.We will cover the highlights here, butadditional training can be provided for any leaders that want to go furtherabout the use of the survey tool.

·      Clickon ADD ACTIVITY to the right of your section title

·      Clickon the Survey activity in the set of activity options displayed.  NOTE: You will create the survey activity before you add specific survey questions…thisis very similar to creating a session before you add agenda activities

·      Addyour Activity Title and Instructions.  The activity instructions are very importantas they instruct the participant on the rating scale and context for theirassessment

·       Review the settings,the defaults are very straight forward and generally what we use and recommendfor this activity

·     Clickon CREATE and you have added your survey activity

·     Special Settings

o   Anonymous is a toggle on surveysto have your open text responses be anonymous or attributed.  We generally run our surveys in anonymousmode but there may be occasions where you want a specific survey to beattributed, for example a strong opinion view on a key issue where you mightthen go around the table and the participant talk further about that view(verbally)

o  Availability allows you to hide the activity on the agendaif needed

o  Allow Changes after Contributing allows a participant toReturn to Activity while it is active in case they need to change theirrating.  Be careful with this, you don’twant participants to be influenced by the group assessment and go back andmodify theirs.  NOTE:  I generally allow this in survey in caseparticipants are giving responses on text questions that are too short or seemsuperficial—I can ask them to return to the question and ‘tell me more’.  We still leave the default as no, so entirelyup to you

o  Hide Results from Participants means that you arechoosing to not show the results after participants have submitted theirrating.  Participants go to a holdingscreen until the leader moves everyone to the next activity.  Can be useful in a research session where youwant this to be a blind activity, but 99% of the time we show results (graphicand tabular) of surveys to talk about the results and engage participants in theprocess

o  Advance on Submit  meansthe participant moves to the next sequential activity after they submit theirratings.  A bit of an edge case in afacilitated session, you might use this if the survey is the next to last activityin your agenda and you are pressed for time

·     Show Media is available for all activities and allows youto attach media such as a video or PDF. This is OFTEN used in surveys either atthe survey level to set the stage for the survey or at a specific questionlevel.


Adding Survey Sections and Questions:The survey activity is similar to how you createdyour session at the start—you create your survey, then click on it to begin toadd sections and questions.  To get started,add an initial section by clicking on Add Section.  Once you have added your section title youcan also add media (a video or PDF) and then click on add to add yousection into the survey.  You can thenadd additional sections or just start to work with the section you haveadded.  NOTE:  We have added a special feature tothe Section once you have added it that allows you to add additional informationabout the Section as an introduction to the questions that will be asked.  Think of this as an imbedded ‘info’ activityinto the header.  It can be extremelyuseful to add context information and visual elements.  To add additional information immediatelybelow the section title click on the 3 dot ellipse to the right of the ADDQUESTION option and click on edit:

NOTE: In a section when you click on the three dot ellipse you also have the options of duplicating a section, making a section unavailable or deleting a section in addition to the edit option show above. We’ll use the edit option now.

  • After selecting edit for editing your section, choose the option to show media. Scroll down and you will see options for adding media below the section title. This can be rich text format where you might have a bulleted list, or a logo image using a file or web link or video. The options are shown below:

  • Then just click on Update and your header media is added. An example of a production header that has been edited with media is shown below:


Adding Survey Questions: The Converge Survey activity currently supports five question types. You will be adding these to a specific section in the survey so just click on ADD QUESTION to the right of your survey section and you will see the set of question types that can be added:


Survey Question Types and Comments on Settings

  • Open Ended: Simple open ended text question, add the question test and you can select whether the question response is Required or not. Generally accept the required default, it’s a good standard practice (you want the response from all participants). You can also add media if desired. If you choose to display the media inline it will show to the right of the question so the participant can look at the image or video and have the open text window available at the same time. The setting of max entry length is defaulted to 1000 characters which find to be quite adequate.
  • Rate: Similar to the stand-alone rate activity, you will add the rate question (you are just rating one question or option, not a series of options) and can indicate if you are using custom scales or points only scale. If custom scales, you can add the text of the custom scales that will be in a low to high sequence and assigned point values from ‘1’ for the first text option and then increments by 1 for each option. 5 custom text options creates a 1-5 scale of values. If a points-only scale (which tends to be most frequently used) then you can use 3,5,7 or 10 for your options and can use preset language if desired for importance or level of agreement. A 1-5 scale using level of agreement is a great way to handle a statement agreement type of question. As with all question types you can add media if desired for the question type.
  • Allocate: This allows you to allocate a number across a number of alternatives. For example 100 points of discretionary resource across 5 different alternatives. You can also use allocate with a single alternative to ask for a number response on that alternative. For example, what is the target age in years for a consumer that might be our target consumer for this product. You will use some specific settings to tell Converge about your allocation question:
    • Amount to Allocate The value you want to allocate—min/max to allocate, so if min/max are the same (example 100) then you are allocating 100 points. If you are setting them different it creates a range, for example min or 100 to max of 1000 might be used for a question about a price for a product between $100 and $1000
    • Units Label is simply the column header for your allocation
    • Allocation Range would be all options if you are allocating a single value across as set of options and per option means that your value can be used for each and every option
    • Options are your options for the allocation. Note that these can be entered one at a time or you can also use the bulk add option if you have a source list to cut and paste
  • Select: Very useful, similar to the standalone select activity you might use in your agenda but different in the support of skip logic and explanation headers. Add your question text/context and then use the min select and max select to tell Converge how many line items the participant should select (example, select the 3 most important or select 3-5 restaurants that sound appealing from the list below). Note that you also have the setting to randomize options to the participants if desired so everyone has the same list of options but in a different order to avoid order bias. Then you have the following options to customize your select question:
    • Allow ‘Other’ Option: This places an option at the end of your list that allows a participant to add text that describes an option not provided in the list
    • Include Option Headers: Very powerful, this allows you to associate a short header that will be linked to a subsequent explanation of your selection. Converge places that header at the start of the explanation which greatly adds to the understanding and context of the response when viewing results. When you mark the option headers option it provides you with an additional text area to add your header. An example is shown below:

    • Once you have added the headers, you then link you selection question to a subsequent open text question such as ‘Please explain your response to the above question’. Click the 3 dot ellipse to the left of the selection question after you have created it and your open text question and it will provide a link option and list any open text questions in your survey that have not been previously linked.
    • Include Skip Login: This option allows you to use simple skip logic in your survey based on the response to a selection question. For example, if you indicate ‘No’ on your option, you can ask Converge to skip a certain number of questions for that participant. Once you enable skip logic, you can then indicate the number of questions that would be skipped based on the response. An example is shown below:


    • Show Media: As with all question types you can add media if desired for the question type.
    • Bulk Add: This option will allow you to import a longer list of options for the selection question type from an external list using cut/paste techniques.
  • Rank: The Rank activity allows you to create a list of options and have participants to reorder (or rank) the list, for example the most preferred option through the least preferred option. After adding your question text/context you have additional options to randomize options to the participants if desired so everyone has the same list of options but in a different order to avoid order bias and also the ability to add media if desired. Similar to the selection question type you can use the Bulk Add option to import a longer list from an external source/document using cut/paste techniques. NOTE: Rank Order is effective to force discreet ordering when it is a reasonable list of options, say 3-7. When you get to longer lists, it really gets hard for any of us to make the order trade-offs.
    • To reorder your list as participant you will use the six dot ‘handles’ to the left of each option to drag and drop.
    • If the order is exactly the way you want it when it is presented, the participant can select the accept original order option so that Converge knows they have taken action.
    • Results are displayed in graphic and tabular format and shown as a new ordered list and values assigned based on the ordering. If you have a list of 5 items the top item (for a participant reordering) is in the first position and receives a value of ‘1’ and the bottom item received a value of ‘5’.

An example of a Rank question is shown below:

Rank Activity:

  • Click on ADD ACTIVITY to the right of your section title
  • Click on the Rank activity in the set of activity options displayed
  • Add your Activity Title and Instructions.  The activity instructions are very important as they instruct the participant on the ranking scale and context for their assessment
  • Review the settings, the defaults arevery straight forward and generally what we use and recommend for this activity.  There are some different settings for this activity as noted below
  • Click on CREATE and you have added your Rank activity
  • Special Settings
    • Availability allows you to hide the activity on the agenda if needed
    • Allow Changes after Contributing allows a participant to Return to Activity while itis active in case they need to change their ranking.  Be careful with this, you don’t want participants to be influenced by the group assessment and go back and modify theirs.  Generally choose ‘no’ on this option
    • Randomize Options takes the set of rank items and randomized their order to the participants to avoid order bias.  Everyone gets the same list but in a different order
    • Hide Results from Participants means that you are choosing to not show the results after participants have submitted their rating. Participants go to a holding screen until the leader moves everyone tothe next activity.  Can be useful in are search session where you want this to be a blind activity, but 99% of the time we show results (graphic and tabular) of selects to talk about the results and engage participants in the process
    • Advance on Submit  means the participant moves to the next sequential activity after they submit their ratings.  A bit of an edge case in a facilitated session, you might use this of the select is the next to last activity in your agenda and you are pressed for time
    • Show Media is available for all activities and allows you to attach media such as a video or PDF. Typically not used for a rank activity.

Final Comments—Session Creating/Agenda Activities: This probably feels like a lot to cover in looking at the various activities and settings—there is a lot of capability to the platform and we are adding more every month as our community and usage grows. The most important factor in a successful Converge session and facilitation is the development of a well thought-out and high quality session guide. As you wrap up your session guide, whether the first guide or your 100th guide, we encourage you to do three things to check on your guide:

  1. Take the time to review the guide from start to finish yourself, put yourself in the shoes of a participant. Does it flow well? Are the questions clear? Will it tell a story?
  2. Have a trusted colleague review the guide. Ask them to consider it from the view of a facilitator, observer and participant. Same questions as above.
  3. Export the guide to Word in session guide format, spellcheck but also share with your end client. External feedback after your internal feedback. Guide development is an iterative activity, each iteration makes it just a little better.

Continue to STEP 2 — Inviting and Registering Participants

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