Sessions

Sessions is a collaborative workflow for collecting feedback, and prioritizing your most important work, and socializing new information with the team.

Note: Sessions is in private beta. To request access, email us at support@vistaly.com with the subject “Sessions Beta”.

What are Sessions?

Sessions simplify prioritization and decision-making by sharing insights and discovery data in a simple format that encourages collaboration. They bring evidence into conversations and make it easy to track decisions, especially for teams working in remote or asynchronous environments.

Sessions consolidates information in an easy-to-follow format by using existing data within your workspace. They contain what’s needed to understand why the data matters to your teams and business, presenting it without copying data from one system to another. It also provides the tools to facilitate discussion, support team engagement, monitor participation, and track decisions in one place.

Getting started

The easiest way to understand how sessions make collaboration easier is to look at an example.

A team is assigned a goal – improve the percentage of new sign-ups that complete the onboarding process.

The team had just finished conducting discovery with several customers who have recently signed up, ones that still need to complete the onboarding process. They also reviewed their product analytics for patterns and insights.

They have identified three high-level opportunities that could help bring them closer to their goal of reaching an 80% completion rate.

The team now has two tasks ahead of them.

1. They need to size each of these opportunities to make an informed decision (which may require additional input from other team members).

2. They must present these findings to key stakeholders to keep them informed, collect feedback or additional sizing criteria, and capture any other information relevant to choosing an opportunity.

Creating the Session

To create a new Session, navigate to the Session’s menu in the lefthand toolbar and select “New Session”.

Enter a descriptive title for your Session. If you plan to run the Session asynchronously, use the description field to provide more information about what is expected from participants.

For example, suppose you want to share newly discovered opportunities to make participants aware of them. In that case, you should provide context related to the discovery work or context around the outcome or initiative it is in support of.

Adding participants

Next, we will want to add the team members we want to share this information with. To add participants, select the participant input and choose the team members to add to the Session.

Note: By default, sessions will be in a draft state. When published, participants receive a notification via email or Slack, depending on their preferences.

Adding Session Data

The last step to creating a Session is to add some data. In the example shared above, we want to add the three identified opportunities for improving the onboarding completion rate.

To add cards, select the “Add Cards” button. Navigate the tree adding cards by selecting the “Add To Session” button on each card you want to add.

Once you have added all the cards you want to include in the Session, you will see the number of cards added and a “Done” button at the bottom of the screen. Select “Done” to return to the Session.

Sorting cards

With cards added, the order they display to participants can be set. Drag cards up and down and change the order.

Publishing the Session

The Session is ready to “go live” with participants added, cards attached, and the order set. Scroll to the top of the editor to preview the Session as a participant or publish the Session by selecting “Publish Session”.

Session Participation

The Session is live! Participants can review the information and provide input via discussions.

Viewing the full context of a card

Each card can display its full context (parent and ancestor cards) by selecting the “Show full story” dropdown.

Custom Fields (Sizing Criteria)

With custom fields added, they display underneath each card.

Note: Editing custom field values must be done within the tree. Select the menu icon to view the card from the Session and then “View in tree”.

Insights and discussion

On the right side of each opportunity is the discussion log. This is where participants can participate in the discussion by providing feedback, asking questions, or sharing additional evidence and context.

When participants select the Insights tab, they see any attached insights. Participants can follow the link to the source documents if the insight references data in another tool, like a transcript from an interview repository or an analytics dashboard.

Monitoring Progress

Above each card is a bar with the option to mark the card as “Reviewed”. You may follow along with review progress by selecting “View All Progress” at the top of the Session view.

Completing the Session

To complete a session, the facilitator must mark the Session as complete. Completing a Session will prevent participants from being able to mark additional cards as reviewed. However, they can still continue to add to the discussion in the Session view or directly within the workspace.

After completing a Session, the next step usually involves updating the status of cards to reflect decisions made during the Session. For example, updating an opportunity as committed or uncommitted.