Converge Overview Hub

Getting Started with Converge

Everything you need to set up your first session, engage participants, and get actionable insights.

Explore the Detailed Facilitator Guide

Facilitator Guide

Quick Start Videos

Short walkthroughs covering the essentials. Each one is under 5 minutes

Creating Your First Session — Choose your study type, configure settings, and set your schedule

Building Your Agenda — Add topics and activities: surveys, idea generation, rating, and more.

Managing Invitees & Roster Groups — Add participants, send invites, set up groups and access links

Launching a Recruit — Define criteria, build a screener, set incentives, and manage candidates

Running a Live Session — Facilitate in real-time: launch activities, manage participants, use chat.

Executing a 'Categorization' — Go from ideas to themes to an assessment in minutes

Results & AI Insights — View responses, heatmaps, and AI-generated synthesis after your session.

What is Converge?

Converge is a research and facilitation platform that lets you run interactive group sessions with participants online, by phone, or in hybrid formats. Create surveys, idea generation exercises, rating and ranking activities, and more — then collect responses in real-time and analyze results with AI-powered synthesis.

Who uses Converge?

Facilitators / Session Leaders — Create sessions, build agendas, run live sessions, and review results.
Group Leaders — Manage users within their assigned group.
Company Admins — Oversee all groups and users within their organization.
Participants — Join sessions via a link and respond to activities.
Observers — Watch sessions in real-time without submitting responses.

Session Types at a Glance

Moderated Group — Best for large-scale content-focused sessions. Supports 10–1,000+ participants. Participants are muted by default and engage via activities and chat.
Focus Group — Best for small video-based discussions. Supports 2–10 participants per group. Video-first with transcripts and notes.
IDI (In-Depth Interview) — Best for 1-on-1 interviews. Scheduled video interviews with recording and transcripts.

Key Concepts

Quick definitions for the terms you'll see throughout Converge.

Session — A scheduled research event where a facilitator guides participants through a set of activities.
Topic — A section of your agenda that groups related activities together under a single theme.
Activity — An interactive exercise within a topic — surveys, idea generation, rating, ranking, or info decks.
Roster — The list of people invited to a session. Participants can be grouped and assigned roles.
Group — A reusable collection of participants. Assign a group to multiple sessions without re-entering contacts.
AI Synthesis — Converge's AI engine that analyzes open-ended responses and generates categorized summaries.
Deliverable — An exported report or data package generated from your session results

Activity Types

What each activity type does and when to use it.

Info — Share content with participants (text, videos, slide decks) without

collecting responses. Use for introductions, instructions, or stimulus

material.
Ideas — Collaborative brainstorming where participants submit ideas in

real-time. Supports commenting, likes, AI categorization, and transferring

ideas to other activities.
Categorization — Organize ideas from an Ideas activity into themed

categories. Supports AI-powered auto-categorization.
Rate — Participants evaluate items on one or more rating scales (3, 5, 7, or

10 points). Results display as heatmaps, high-low summaries, and rank sum

charts.
Select — Single or multiple choice from a list of options. Set min/max

selection counts.
Rank — Participants drag items into preferred order by importance or

preference.
Survey — A mixed-format questionnaire combining multiple question types in

one activity: Open Ended, Select, Rate, Rank, Allocate (distribute points),

and Media Submission (upload images/video).

Common Questions

How do participants join a session? Each session generates a unique participant link. Share it via email (Converge can send invitations for you) or copy the link and distribute it however you'd like. Participants click the link, enter their name, and they're in.

Can I test a session before going live with real participants? Yes. Add yourself (or teammates) as test participants, run through the session, and review how activities look from the participant side. You can reset responses before going live.

What's the difference between an observer and a participant? Participants actively respond to activities. Observers can watch the session in real-time and see responses as they come in, but they don't submit answers themselves. This is useful for stakeholders who want to watch without influencing results.

Can I run a session with participants in different time zones? Absolutely. Online sessions work for any time zone. For asynchronous participation, you can keep a session open over a longer window so participants complete activities on their own schedule.

Can I reuse a session as a template? Yes. Once you create a new session shell just import a previous agenda.

What browsers and devices are supported? Converge works in all modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge). Participants can join from desktop or mobile devices. For the best facilitator experience, we recommend a desktop browser.