RoomSum How-to and Troubleshooting

The task-and-fix companion to the RoomSum product knowledge base. That document explains what RoomSum is and what each plan includes; this one answers "how do I…" and "why isn't this working". Every entry is written to stand on its own.

Words used throughout: organization (your workspace; signing in at roomsum.com takes you there), class (a course that holds questions), session (one live run of a class), participant (someone in the room on their phone).

Getting started

How do I run my first session, start to finish?

1. Sign in at roomsum.com, which takes you to your organization (or asks you to pick one), open Classes & Questions, and create a class (name and a short code).
2. Add at least one question to it.
3. Open Sessions, pick the class, and start the session.
4. Put the results view on the projector using the "Open results view" link in the control room, or show the QR from the control room itself.
5. Participants scan the QR or type the 6-character code at roomsum.com.
6. Use Show/Hide in the control room to move the room from question to question.
7. Answer what comes in on the Moderation page.
8. End the session, then publish the answers. Confirmed opt-ins are emailed automatically, including anyone who confirms later.

Which menu option does what? Classes & Questions sets up classes and their questions, and Action Plans the action plans. Organization holds the team, billing, and branding. Sessions runs sessions, and Moderation answers what participants submit. The big-screen results view for the projector is at roomsum.com/v/CODE, and the public answers page is a link you share once a session is published. Participants only ever need roomsum.com and the join code.

Do I need to install anything? Only for PowerPoint decks. Everything else is a browser.

Classes and questions

How do I create a class? Classes & Questions → + New beside Classes. Give it a name and a short code (the code appears on printed material and in PowerPoint setup). Admins and developers can create classes.

What question types are there? Three. Q&A: participants type their own questions and you answer them (one active Q&A question per class, because it feeds the answers page). Poll: participants type short open answers, and the AI groups similar ones live. Multiple choice: participants pick from options you write, and results appear as vote bars. When you write the options, Enter moves to the next one, or adds a new one from the last.

How do I add a multiple-choice question? Add a question, set its type to Choice, then write at least two options. Turn on multi-select if participants may pick more than one.

How do I mark the correct answer to a choice question? On each option there is a control to mark it correct, and the question then shows "answer key set". Correct answers are never sent to participants' phones. The facilitator reveals them during the session (see "How do I reveal the correct answer").

How do I reorder questions? Use the ↑ and ↓ buttons in the question list. This changes the display order only. The question numbers (Q1, Q2, …) never change, because PowerPoint slides bind to the number. So a deck keeps working after you reorder.

How do I duplicate a question? Clone on any question copies its content and settings, gives it the next free number, lists it directly after the original, and opens it for editing. It is the fast path for a set of similar questions.

What is the secondary prompt for? A supporting line shown under the question everywhere the question appears. Useful when the headline is short and the instruction is long ("Myth or Truth?" as the question, the scenario as the secondary prompt).

What is the results heading for? An optional heading that replaces the question text on the results view, the slide print image, and the published answers page. Q&A prompts like "What questions do you have about X?" read badly as a title over a list of answers, so "Your questions about X" goes here. Submission screens always show the real question. Leave it empty on polls and choice questions, because the result bars usually need their question above them.

What are Domain terms (the class glossary)? A comma-separated list of words spelled exactly as they must appear, so the AI preserves them instead of "correcting" them. Examples: DiSC, kWh, i4, and single letters like i, S, C. Set it per class on the class screen. If the AI keeps mangling a product name, this is the fix.

How do I limit how much someone can submit? Each question has a length cap and a maximum number of submissions per participant.

How do I stop using a question without deleting it? Deactivate it. Inactive questions keep their content and their number.

Can I delete a question? Only one that has never collected anything: no submissions, votes, answers, or stock answers. Those questions show Delete in the class editor and read "nothing collected yet". A question that has collected anything can only be deactivated, which keeps its content and its number. To remove everything a class gathered, move the class to the trash instead.

Class ownership and the editing lock

Every class records who created it, and carries a current owner (the creator, until an admin reassigns it). The owner, or any admin, can lock editing from the class's settings panel. On a locked class, other developers can view everything and run sessions as usual, but changing settings or questions is refused for everyone except the owner and admins, and the page says so plainly. Locking protects finished course work from accidental edits when several developers share a tenant; new classes are born unlocked, so collaboration stays the default. Admins can reassign ownership from the same panel when a course changes hands.

The class key

What is the class key? It is what a PowerPoint deck presents to drive this class. Every RS slide saved for the class carries it, which is how a deck starts and runs sessions, shows results, and reveals answer keys without the presenter signing in. The key authorizes the deck, not a person. It is shown on the class's settings panel with Copy for deck setup.

Why would I regenerate the class key? Because a deck has gone where it should not have: a facilitator who has left still has the file, a deck was emailed outside the organization, or a copy sat on a shared machine. Anyone holding a deck with the old key could run your sessions. Regenerate issues a new key and the old one stops working at once. Decks already in the field stop driving until each slide is re-saved with the new key, or until a facilitator signs in on RS Start and starts or locks from it, which rebinds the deck automatically (every RS Question, RS Extra, DS Check and DS Room slide in that saved file follows). Nothing else changes: the class code, the join flow, past sessions, and answers stay as they were. Treat it like changing a lock, not routine maintenance.

The Activity panel

Admins see an Activity panel at the bottom of the admin page: who changed what, and when, across classes, questions, stock answers, locks, ownership, and session archive or delete. Each entry names the person, the action, and which fields changed. Entries are kept for 180 days. Session starts and closes are not repeated there; the sessions list already shows who started each one.

Names

How do I set my name? Open Your access from the account menu and fill in Your name. It is shown to colleagues in place of your address, on RS Start when a session you started is live and in the team list. Leave it empty to show the address.

How do I set a colleague's name? Admins: on the organization page, the team table has Set name next to each member (or Rename once one exists). It works for people who have not signed in yet, so you can name the whole team on day one.

Stock answers

What is a stock answer? A reusable answer with a trigger phrase. When a submission matches the trigger, including the first one of its kind, the answer attaches to that group, is approved on the spot, and is shown to the submitter immediately, so recurring questions answer themselves. It also goes out in the answers email and on the public answers page. Business plan and above. A class with no sessions yet shows Prepare stock answers in the moderation panel's sessions list, so the answers can be written before day one; they attach to matching questions the moment a session runs.

Where do I create one? On the Moderation page, in the Stock Answers panel on the left, under the question it belongs to. You can also promote an answer you just wrote: ☆ Make stock on the answer card.

How do I apply one to a question that already came in? 📚 Use stock on the answer card, then pick the stock answer.

Can I copy a stock answer to another class? Yes. Copy to… on the stock answer lists your organization's other classes, then the Q&A questions in the one you pick; the copy appears under that question at once, matchable straight away. A virtual class and an in-person class on the same material usually share most of their stock answers this way. Copies are separate: editing one leaves the other alone, and a question that already holds a stock answer with the same trigger is not given a second.

Why can't I edit an answer on the board? Because it is backed by a stock answer, and the Stock Answers panel is the one place that content is edited. Editing it there updates every group it backs, everywhere. The card says so and shows the stock badge.

Why is there no Approve button on a stock-backed card? A stock answer is approved the moment it attaches: it is already live to whoever asked and already part of the answers email and the public page. There is nothing left to approve. Merge, Split, and Delete still work.

The stock answer is wrong for this particular group. Click Detach stock on the card. The group goes back to a draft with the stock text left in the box for editing, nothing is live for it until you approve something, and stock will not attach to that group automatically again. 📚 Use stock attaches one on purpose. The stock answer itself is unchanged.

I changed a trigger phrase and matching stopped for a moment. Expected. Changing a trigger re-computes its matching data, which takes a few seconds, and a small dot marks it as pending until it is ready.

Running a session

How do I test my own deck without a facilitator seat? Start a test on the web: Test beside the class on Classes & Questions. Then open your deck and run the show: every RoomSum slide drives the test exactly as it would a live session, and RS Start, signed in as you, shows the test's join code. A test behaves exactly like a real session for you and for the phones, and it is thrown away: hidden from the Sessions and Moderation lists, its reports sent only to you, and gone six hours after it ends. RS Start itself starts only real sessions, which need the facilitator role. The deck drives your test only while no real session is live for the class; a facilitator's real session always takes over.

Does a test leave anything behind? No records: its answers, action plans and evaluations are deleted six hours after the test ends. Its reports go only to the person who ran it, marked TEST: when a test ends, the session summary, the action plans email and the evaluation report come to you and to nobody else, whoever is subscribed on the class. Plan reminders are never sent for a test. A plan written in a test says TEST on its page and on the copy emailed to the address typed, because it is deleted with the test and its link stops working then; the evaluation on the phone says so too.

Can I try a class without PowerPoint? Yes, if you are an admin, a facilitator or a developer. Test, beside a class on Classes & Questions, or Test this class first on Sessions once you pick a class, opens a test session on one screen: the real results wall and a simulated phone side by side, both live. Put each question on the wall and answer on the phone. When the class has them turned on and your organization's plan includes them, the last steps offer the action plan and the evaluation. End test closes the test so its reports come to you; Delete now deletes everything at once and sends nothing. Admins also find Test beside each class in Moderation. Moderators do not have it: a test cannot be moderated. A test is one person's: it takes no co-facilitators, and nobody else sees it. While a test is running, the class's deck drives it exactly as it drives a live session: open the deck, run the show, and every RoomSum slide moves the test's phones. Signed in on RS Start as the person who started the test, the slide shows the test's join code, and if you can start sessions it also offers Start a session for the real one, which ends the test (its reports come to you, as with End test) and moves the deck to the real session. A real session of the class, when one is running, always comes first.

How do I start a session? Sessions, pick the class, confirm the per-session options (multi-day, questions while paused, session length), and start. You need the facilitator role, which is the billable seat. Every session needs a session name: a city ("Atlanta"), a group ("Leadership Team"), or an event ("Marketing Retreat"). A class may run dozens of times, and a date alone does not say which run this was; the name does. It shows on the RS Start slide's live block, in the control room, on the Sessions list, at the top of the report, and in the report email's subject. It is typed fresh for every session, never carried over from the last one.

Someone else already started this class. What do I do? The start screen shows the live session and who started it, and offers "Open its control room". Use that: two facilitators sharing a class should land in the same session rather than creating a second one.

How do I run a class across several days? Turn on multi-day when you start the session (a class default or a per-session choice). At the end of a day you do not need to do anything: the session pauses itself once it has been live for its session length (default 12 hours, counted from when it went live that day). The setup screen on the RS Start slide and the control room show when the session will pause or end, in your local time. The next morning, resume it from any of three places: the Sessions page, which offers the paused session before it offers a new one; the RS Start slide in PowerPoint, whose setup screen says "This class is paused" and offers Resume; or the moderation panel's toolbar. Same join code, same participants, everything already collected. Nothing resumes a session on its own, and starting the slideshow does not either: phones say "Class is paused" until someone presses Resume. Multi-day is a Business feature.

Should I pause at the end of the day? Only if you want phones to show "paused" straight away: the control room's Pause does that. Otherwise the session stays live until its session length runs out that evening, and phones can still send questions until then; a shorter session length (a class default, or chosen at start) brings the automatic pause sooner. Without multi-day, the same timer closes the session instead. The setup screen on the RS Start slide and the control room show when the session will pause or end, in your local time. A paused session nobody resumes within 24 hours closes itself, and none lasts more than 7 days.

What about the last day? Nothing to do: the timer pauses the session that evening as on any other day, and a session left paused for 24 hours closes itself, so it closes the evening after the last day. That close sends the session summary, lets you publish answers, and starts the course evaluation's window. To have all that the same day, press End session in the control room when the class finishes. The days need to run back to back for the same reason: a class with a day off in the middle closes on the day off.

Can people submit between days? Once the session has paused, only if "accept questions while paused" is on, which is the homework case; set it as a class default or per session at start. Until the session pauses itself, it is still live, so they can.

How do I show and hide questions? Show/Hide buttons in the control room. The results view and every phone follow the current question.

How do I reveal the correct answer? On the results view, press Tab or click Show answer. Correct options turn green. Nothing about the answer key reaches participants' phones before you do this. Once the answer is on screen, votes are final: phones stop taking new or changed votes on that question until you hide the answer again.

How do I put results on the projector? "Open results view" in the control room, or go to roomsum.com/v/CODE. Put it on the projector or screen-share it in Zoom, Teams, or WebEx.

How do participants join? They scan the QR, or type the 6-character code at roomsum.com. No account, no app, no download, and participation is anonymous.

Moderating

Where do I answer questions? Moderation. Pick the session, then work the per-question board. Colors: red means no response yet, orange is a draft, green is approved.

How do I write and approve an answer? Type in the answer box (it autosaves as you type), then click Approve. No answer reaches a participant or the public page without approval, given on the card or in advance as a stock answer (a stock answer applies itself when a question matches it; see Stock answers). The chip under the box says what approving will do right now: "Approve to send" or "Goes live when approved" while live answers are on, and "Live to everyone who asked" once it is out. Polls and multiple-choice groups have no chip, because there is nothing to approve.

Two groups are really the same question. How do I combine them? ⇄ Merge on one card, then click the highlighted card you want to merge it into. Merging works within one question. Press Escape to cancel.

One group contains two different questions. Can I split it? Yes. Click the ×N count on the card to expand the submissions, then ⇢ Split out on the one that does not belong. It becomes its own group.

How do I fix a group's wording? Edit the title text on the card and click Save. That text is what participants see on the answers page.

Something legitimate was marked as spam. Open the Spam section at the bottom of the board and click Not spam. It goes back through the full AI pipeline with a note that you read it and consider it genuine, and the AI decides again. Plain spam and a Q&A entry that is not phrased as a question come back flagged; a short poll answer such as "None" or "Neither" passes when the prompt offered that choice. To change the wording first, use Fix & re-check, which re-runs the full process on your edit.

How do I draft an answer from our own knowledge base? If an admin has connected DriveState, unanswered Q&A cards show ✨ Draft. It asks your connected corpus and lands the result as a normal draft for you to review and approve. It never publishes anything by itself.

How do I see what our knowledge base can and cannot answer? 🧭 Check DS coverage on a question grades each group as solid, thin, or a gap, and the cards show a badge. 🧭 Check all does the whole session. Only questions are graded: a poll response is an opinion, not a question, so it never goes to DriveState. The session and class reports list what your room asked that your knowledge base does not answer, which is the list worth adding to it.

How do I add an answer to our knowledge base? Approve the answer first, then click ↑ To knowledge base on the card. It goes to your connected DriveState corpus, which reviews it and replies in place: added, already known, conflicting, or not accepted. Only approved answers can be sent, and only a moderator or admin can send them.

DriveState says my answer conflicts with something. What now? The card shows what the corpus currently says next to what you wrote. If yours is right, click Use my answer instead, then confirm. That replaces the existing content. It cannot be undone from RoomSum, so read both versions first. If the corpus is right, click Dismiss and leave it alone.

I sent the same answer twice. Did it go in twice? No. Sending identical text again returns the original decision instead of creating a second contribution. If you edit the answer and send it again, that is treated as a new contribution, which is usually what you want.

Can participants write in Spanish? Yes, when the class allows it: turn on Spanish submissions in the class's Session defaults on Classes & Questions. Phones in that class then show an English / Español switch at the top; a person who picks Español types in Spanish and RoomSum keeps what they wrote as typed, renders it into English for grouping, moderation, the wall and the report, and marks it "es" in the moderation panel's spam list and the CSV export. Everything staff see is English, and answers go back in English. The phone's own wording stays English for now. Other languages are added on request.

How do I let people see answers during the class? Turn on Show answers during the session in the class's Session defaults on the admin page. It is off unless you switch it on. With it on, approving an answer sends it straight to the phone of whoever asked that question, where it appears under "Answered for you". People only ever see answers to their own questions; everyone gets the full set after the session, as usual. Treat approving as publishing while this is on.

How do I export the data? On Reports, open the session: ⬇ Answers CSV for grouped answers (multiple-choice questions export one row per option with its vote count, plus a total-voters row), and ⬇ Submissions CSV for raw submissions. Paid plans.

Can I download the action items? Only if your organization has been given the action item download; it is off by default, and it is turned on for an organization by RoomSum on request. Administrators then see ⬇ Action items CSV beside the other exports on a session's report, and so does anyone who is sent that session's action plans email: a facilitator of the session (unless an admin has unticked Action plans for them under Report emails on the class), and an admin or moderator who is ticked for Action plans there. The file is one column: the wording of each action item people wrote, and nothing else. It holds no steps, no notes, no dates, no names, no email addresses and no times. The items are shuffled on every download, so their order says nothing about who wrote what or when, and an email address, web link, @handle or phone number typed into an item is replaced before the file is built. A name typed into free text cannot be found by a rule, so read the file as you would any anonymous comment. A session needs at least five plans to download, so no one can be recognized in a small room. Each download is recorded in the organization's activity log. Where the download is on, the plan form tells the people writing a plan that the organization may receive the wording of everyone's action items together, never tied to a name or an address.

How do I pause, resume, or end a session from the moderation panel? Select the session. The toolbar above the board shows Pause session while it is live, Resume session while it is paused, and End session for either. The same Pause and Resume live in the control room.

Can I get an alert when a question comes in while I'm in another window? Yes. On the moderation page, turn on Desktop notifications in the top right and allow it when the browser asks. From then on each new question posts a system notification whenever the moderation window is not in front; clicking it brings the window back and takes you to the question, whose card opens, scrolls into view and flashes. Clicking the on-page amber "New question" card does the same. Alerts muted silences both. The choice is per browser, and it is not available on an iPhone. Desktop notifications depend on the computer: Windows hides them while a display is duplicated or an app is full screen (Focus assist), and a Mac shows them only if the browser is allowed under System Settings, Notifications, and not while a Focus mode is on or the display is mirrored. Private and incognito windows never allow them. Test, beside the chip, sends one immediately so you can check the computer before the session. The on-page cards always show.

After the session

How do I publish the answers? End the session, then Publish answers in the moderator screen. That makes the public page live. It contains approved content only.

How do I email the answers to the people who asked? Nothing to click. Publishing emails every participant who opted in and confirmed their address, and anyone who confirms later gets the answers automatically. The panel reads "X opted in; Y confirmed; Z emailed".

I improved an answer after it was emailed. Can I send again? When an approved answer changes after it went out, a Publish update button appears on the panel (Business plan) and emails everyone confirmed again. If nothing has changed since the last email, there is no button, because there is nothing to send.

Can I email before the session closes? No. Publishing keeps the page current during a multi-day class, but sends happen after the final day.

Where is the full session summary? Open the full report in the summary email opens that session on Reports. The report carries the exact counts, the AI summary (headline, themes, action plans, and up to three questions or poll answers worth a look, each with the reason), the evaluation results when the class has one, and, when a DriveState knowledge base is linked, the questions it could not answer. RoomSum writes the summary within about five minutes of a session closing and emails the same text to everyone subscribed to that class's reports; Reports shows it as soon as it exists, and ✨ AI summary writes or rewrites one on demand.

Tidying up sessions

Sessions accumulate one per run, and there are two levels of tidy. On Reports, Archive (on any closed session) hides it from the default list and nothing else changes: published answers stay up, exports still work, and the class report always counts every session, archived or not. Delete, offered on archived sessions, is admin only and permanent: the session and everything in it, submissions, answers, and opt-ins included, are gone for good, and reports stop counting it.

Action plans

What is an action plan? A form participants fill in at the end of a session: up to five action items, each with a checklist of steps and a target date. They get a copy by email, then a reminder before each deadline. Included with Business, a $9/mo (or $90/yr) add-on on Starter, not available on Free. Your 30-day trial (Business) includes it.

Where do I create one? Action Plans in the top menu. Admin or developer role. Pick the course, give it a title, and save. From a class on Classes & Questions, Add one opens the editor with that class already chosen and the title set to "Your action plan", ready to change. The list groups plans by class: the class you last worked on is open when you arrive, the others stay folded until you click them.

Do I need a new plan every time I teach the class? No. One plan per class is reused for every run, which is why its link and any QR you print stay good. Each response records which session it came from, so the emails still say the right date. Make a second plan only if the class genuinely needs two different ones.

Why can't I see the Action Plans screen? It's there for admins and developers, but the screen asks you to upgrade unless your plan includes it. On Starter, add it under Organization → Add-ons; on Free, move to Starter or Business first.

How do I put it on a slide? Insert the RS Extra add-in: Insert › My Add-ins › RS Extra. Its setup screen first asks What should this slide show?; choose The action plan, then set your org, class code, and class key once. It shows the QR, the short link, and a live count of plans submitted in the current session. Leave it small and put your own instructions beside it. It does not move phones, and the QR carries the live session so each plan is tied to that delivery. Each RS Extra slide carries its own choice; Show the course evaluation instead, on its setup screen, switches it. The starter kit has a ready-made slide for it.

What is the link code? The last part of the plan's address: roomsum.com/plan/your-code. Leave it blank and one is generated. Set your own to get something printable, and use the short form roomsum.com/p/your-code on a QR code or handout.

Can I change the link code later? Yes, from the same screen. Anything already printed with the old code stops working, so change it before you distribute, not after.

What does the session date do? It is only a fallback. Normally the date comes from the session someone attended, and that is what the emails say. Set this if you hand the plan out away from a live session and still want a date on it. Either way it does not drive reminders: those come from each item's target date.

How does RoomSum know which session a plan belongs to? If the link carried a session, from the RS Extra slide or a session-scoped link, that one is used, and it must belong to the same class. Otherwise RoomSum uses the class's one open session, or one closed in the last twelve hours. If two could apply it records none rather than guess, and falls back to the plan's own date.

Can I move a plan to a different class? No. A plan stays with the class it was created under. Create a new one on the right class instead.

Only some of my classes are in the dropdown. Archived and deleted classes are excluded. Restore the class, or pick another.

How do I stop taking responses? Open the plan and click Deactivate at the top right of the editor. The link then tells visitors the plan is not available, and Reactivate brings it back at the same link. Plans already submitted stay editable by the people who submitted them. Not while a session is live on the class: end the session first.

Can I delete an action plan? Only while nobody has submitted a plan under it. Delete sits beside Deactivate at the top right of the editor; when it is greyed out, the line under the buttons says why. Once plans exist, deactivate instead, and the plans stay with the people who wrote them. Neither works while a session is live on the class, because an RS Extra slide may be showing the plan: end the session first. A plan under a class in the trash can be deleted along with its plans, which would go with the class anyway. Deleting the class removes the definition and its plans together once the 30-day trash period ends.

How do I try an action plan without changing the results? Use Test it beside the plan's link on the Action plans page, or add ?test=1 to the end of the plan's link. That writes a TEST plan: it is tied to no session, gets no reminders, is left out of the counts, the reports and the summary, its email is marked TEST, and it is deleted six hours after it is saved. A plan written during a test session behaves the same way, deleted six hours after the test ends.

How do participants get back into their plan? The private link in their confirmation email and in every reminder. If they have lost it, roomsum.com/plan/mine signs them in with the address they used and lists every plan they have submitted.

How do reminders work? One email a week before each target date, listing everything due that day. Three items due the same day is one email, not three. Finished items are skipped, and moving a date moves the reminder. Participants can switch reminders off from their own plan.

Can I see who has responded? The plan list shows the submission count. Per-person completion tracking and reporting are not built yet.

Do participants have to scan the action plan slide? Not if their phone is already in the room. From the moment the RS Extra slide showing the action plan is on screen, a phone in the lobby shows a "Go to the Action Planner" button, and it stays for the rest of the session and on the session-ended screen. It never appears before the slide has been shown, so the plan is not advertised early; ask people to start their plan while the slide is up. Scanning still works for anyone who joined late or is not on their phone. When the plan is saved, the phone offers Back to the session while that session is still open (in the lobby, live or paused), which is where the evaluation button lives; back in the lobby the button reads Action plan saved and reopens that plan. A plan written after the session ended, or from a link with no session, offers no way back.

Someone mistyped their email on the action plan. Can they fix it? Yes, on the spot. The saved screen shows the address the copy went to and a link, Wrong address, or want to change something? Open your plan, that opens the plan for editing; saving with a corrected address sends a fresh copy there. The copy email carries the same link, and the lobby button reopens the plan too. A bounced address also shows on the organization's Email tab, where an admin can fix it.

How do I take the button off the phones again? Open the action plan slide's settings (in a show, the small ⚙ at the bottom right of the slide; in the editor the settings are on the slide) and click Clear from phones. Every phone in the session drops the button at once. It comes back the next time the slide is on screen, so you can show the plan, clear it, and show it again later without a new session. An admin or moderator can do the same without the deck: Clear action plan from phones in the session's control room.

Pro tip: point people to the phone button. When the action plan slide comes up, its QR code invites everyone to scan it, but the faster way in is the Go to the Action Planner button that appears at the same moment on the phone they joined with. Put that in large type beside the add-in ("On your phone, tap Go to the Action Planner"), and say it as the slide comes up; the QR is for anyone who is not on their phone yet. You cannot hide the add-in under a shape and animate the shape away: in the editor and in a show, PowerPoint draws a running add-in above everything on its slide, whatever the layering order. To choose the moment the QR appears, put the RS Extra slide after a slide without it and advance to it (a Fade transition reads as a reveal); the phones get the button at that same moment.

The phone button appeared before the action plan slide was up. Open the deck in the editor and go to the action plan slide. Its settings (organization, class, class key, plan) are shown right on the slide; click Save settings once. That teaches the slide which slide it is; decks saved before September 2026 did not know, and could report themselves as shown the moment the show started.

Course evaluations

What is the course evaluation? Four questions at the end of a class: would you recommend this training (0 to 10), why, did it give you ideas and skills for your job (0 to 10), and anything else. It belongs to the session, so nobody types a locator code. Anonymous: RoomSum keeps the scores and comments, never who wrote them. Included with Business and Enterprise.

How do I turn it on? On Classes & Questions, open the class and tick Course evaluation under Session defaults, and set how long it stays open after a session closes: 20 hours by default, 0 for a demonstration, 72 for three days. One evaluation per class; every session of the class offers it once a facilitator opens it.

How do I open it during a session? In the control room, press Open the evaluation. Every phone in the room shows Rate this training in the lobby and on the session-ended screen, and the offer stays after the session closes for the class's evaluation window (20 hours by default; 0 closes it with the session, 72 gives three days; set under Session defaults), so people who leave early can still answer from the same page. An RS Extra slide set to the course evaluation does the same from the deck. withdraw beside the chip takes the offer back while nobody has answered yet.

How do I put it on a slide? Insert the RS Extra add-in: Insert › My Add-ins › RS Extra. Its setup screen first asks What should this slide show?; choose The course evaluation, then set your org, class code and class key once (a deck rebound on RS Start reaches it too). While the slide is on screen in a show it opens the evaluation on every phone in the session and shows "Rate this training", a live count of responses, and a small join QR for anyone not on their phone yet. Keep it small beside your own closing words. Withdraw from phones on its settings takes the offer back. Each RS Extra slide carries its own choice; Show the action plan instead, on its setup screen, switches it.

Pro tip: point people to the phone button. The same as on the action plan slide: the phones get Rate this training as soon as the slide is up, so put "On your phone, tap Rate this training" beside the add-in and say it. A shape over the add-in will not hide it, because PowerPoint draws a running add-in above everything on its slide; to time the moment, advance to the RS Extra slide from a slide without it.

Can I see who has responded? No, by design. The report says how many of those present responded, never who, and there is no per-person reminder.

When does the evaluation report arrive? When the evaluation window closes (20 hours after the session by default, or the hours set on the class), to the session's facilitators and to the admins and moderators ticked for Evaluation under Report emails on the class: the NPS with its counts, the two score distributions, an AI reading of the comments (what people valued, what to improve), every response as a table, and the same rows as a CSV attachment. The session summary itself goes out earlier, when the answers are analyzed, and carries one line with the evaluation count so far; the action plans have their own email with counts and due dates.

Who gets the report emails after a session? The session's facilitators, the person who started it and its co-facilitators, get all three (the summary, the action plans and the evaluation) for that session, without having to turn anything on. They never get other people's sessions of the same class. Admins choose on each class under Report emails, which groups the team under each member's highest role (Admins, Moderators, Developers, Facilitators): a blue tick sends that admin the email for every session of the class, an amber tick does the same for a moderator (so a client's moderator can get the summaries without being made an admin), and unticking a facilitator's green tick stops that email for the sessions they facilitate. Only admins can change these. A test session's reports go only to the person who ran it.

Can I stop facilitators seeing each other's reports and evaluations? By default every member of your team can open every session's report, evaluation results included, and the session list names who ran each one. Under Organization, Who sees reports, tick Facilitators and developers see only their own sessions' reports, and a facilitator or developer opens only the sessions they started or co-facilitate: their list, each report and its evaluation, the exports and the stored summaries. Admins and moderators still see every session, and the report across a whole class is for them too. It follows who is sent each report by email, and it is off until you tick it. Starting and running sessions is not affected. A facilitator who joins a running session with Add me becomes its co-facilitator, and so sees its report, so each partner in a pair should add themselves at the start; if one forgets, the person who ran the session can add them afterwards under the session's details on Reports. The live screens (the control room and Moderation) and the raw questions and answers behind a session are not covered. The change is written to the Activity log.

Why is a column gray under Report emails? Because that email cannot go out for the class as it stands. Evaluation is gray until Course evaluation is ticked under Session defaults; Action plans is gray until the class has an action plan, or altogether on a plan without action planning. The reason is written under the table, and ticks already made are kept, so turning the feature on later needs no second visit.

Where are the results? On the session's report: the NPS, the two distributions, averages, the comments, and Download CSV with every response as a row. On the class report: the cumulative NPS over all sessions and a per-session list. NPS is promoters (9 to 10) minus detractors (0 to 6) as a percentage of responses; with fewer than twenty responses the report says how far one answer moves it.

PowerPoint decks

How do I set up a deck? Install the add-ins from https://roomsum.com/downloads (once per machine, under a minute, then restart PowerPoint; the download buttons ask you to sign in first, and a free account works). On a slide, insert the RoomSum add-in, then enter your organization slug, the class code and the class key (copy it from the class under Classes & Questions), and choose the question from the list that fills in once the class key matches. If RoomSum cannot be reached or the class has no questions yet, type the question number instead. To show a question's results without moving the phones, tick Show results only on its RS Question slide. The RS add-ins also run in PowerPoint for the web, with a step before you present; see "How do I present from PowerPoint for the web?" under Troubleshooting.

How do I show a question's results without moving the phones? Insert RS Question, choose the question, tick Show results only and press Save. While that slide is on screen it shows the question's results, the phones stay in the lobby, and it never shows the join code: use it to go over the answers after the question, or for the Q&A question. Untick it to make the slide drive the phones again. This replaces RS Results, the add-in that did this before, which is now retired (see the next question).

My deck has RS Results, RS Action or RS Eval slides. Rebuild those slides. The three add-ins were retired from the installer on October 8, 2026. On Windows, re-running the installer removes them. On a Mac they stay in PowerPoint's add-in folder (the wef folder the installer opens in Finder) until you delete their files: roomsum-manifest.xml, roomsum-manifest-action.xml and roomsum-manifest-eval.xml (or the same names starting qa-ag- from an installer older than October 2). Old slides keep working on a computer that still has them, but one set up after October 8 does not, so rebuild them anyway. RS Question's Show results only replaced RS Results, and RS Extra replaced RS Action and RS Eval: one add-in whose setup screen asks What should this slide show? (The action plan or The course evaluation). Replace each old slide like this:

• An RS Results slide: an RS Question slide with Show results only ticked.
• An RS Action slide: an RS Extra slide set to the action plan.
• An RS Eval slide: an RS Extra slide set to the course evaluation.

On a computer where the old add-in is gone, such a slide shows that its add-in is not available. Their manifests are no longer offered either, so PowerPoint for the web and central deployment need RS Extra in their place (see "Does RoomSum work in PowerPoint on the web?").

A question I just added is not in the slide's question list. The slide reads the list when its settings open, and again whenever you change the organization, class code or class key. It does not keep checking while the settings stay open. To pick up a question added since, retype the last character of the class key, or on a slide that is already set up choose Cancel and then Edit settings again. Reloading the add-in works too.

On a Mac, the RS Start slide in the editor says "Waiting for a session…", has no Start button and shows no code, though I started a session. After a practice slideshow, PowerPoint can leave a slide still drawing its slideshow card in the editor. That card has nothing to press and does not look for new sessions, so a session you start elsewhere (the website, the control room) never appears on it. Current copies correct themselves about ten seconds after you select the slide. If yours does not, right-click the slide and choose Reload, or quit and reopen PowerPoint: a slide you have already visited keeps the code it started with until PowerPoint restarts. Nothing is wrong with your sign-in, the deck or the session.

The Add-ins list takes a long time to open. It happens now and then, ten seconds or more, and once it starts it tends to stay slow for the rest of that session. Save the deck and restart PowerPoint; it opens quickly again after that. If a restart does not fix it, PowerPoint's connection to Microsoft's store may have stalled: turn Wi-Fi off, open Add-ins once, and turn Wi-Fi back on.

The add-in does not fill the slide. What do I do? Drag it. An inserted add-in often lands smaller than the slide, and on Windows it usually does. Selecting it works differently on the two platforms. On Windows, click anywhere on the add-in to select it. On a Mac, a click inside goes to the add-in rather than to PowerPoint, so click its very edge instead; that edge is also where you grab it to move it. On a Mac the first click inside an add-in can also just activate it, so click a field a second time to type in it. The resize handles appear once it is selected: grab a corner handle and stretch it to the slide edges, but stop short of the bottom edge (see the next question). Do this before you set the print image, since the picture is taken at the size the add-in occupies.

Two add-ins are the exception and are meant to stay small, so your own instructions sit beside them: RS Extra, whichever it shows, and DS Check. DS Room is the opposite and wants nearly the whole slide, since it shows DriveState's Room View for the debrief.

Should the add-in cover the whole slide? Cover everything except a strip along the bottom. PowerPoint's own Previous and Next controls sit along the bottom edge of the show, and an add-in stretched over that edge hides them. A clear strip about half an inch (1 cm) tall is enough. The RoomSum background on your master slide shows through the strip, so it looks like part of the design. Leave it clear on every slide that carries a RoomSum add-in, in decks shown from PowerPoint for the web too.

The strip had a second job in October 2026. A PowerPoint for Mac bug left the keyboard with any add-in a presenter clicked, so the remote and arrow keys skipped builds until the presenter clicked once on the slide outside the add-in, and the strip was where they clicked. Microsoft fixed that on October 15, and the fix reaches a copy of PowerPoint when it is fully quit and opened again, so the strip no longer has to be a click target and a Next button in it is no longer needed. A deck that already has one can keep it: pressing it is a click on the slide, which moves the show on, and it works only on the show itself, not in Presenter View.

What are DS Check and DS Room? The two green add-ins, for organizations that have connected DriveState. A course runs a Checkpoint: a baseline round, then the teaching, then a practice round, then a measure round that shows what changed. RoomSum labels the three Baseline, Practice and Measure, so the last one is not confused with a course evaluation, which is a different thing shown by RS Extra. DS Check runs one round from a slide: showing the slide opens that round on every phone, and the face counts who has finished and who is still talking. DS Room shows DriveState's own Room View for a round, full slide, for the debrief.

Each DS Check slide carries ONE round, chosen when you build the deck, so the deck itself is the running order: the baseline slide before the teaching, practice after it, the evaluation at the end.

Where do I add a Checkpoint round to a class? Under Classes & Questions, select the class, and look just above the questions beside the action plans, at Checkpoint rounds. Press Add a round.

Rounds are not created in RoomSum. They are authored in DriveState, and that panel lists what your organization has authored so you can put one on this class. Until DriveState holds a round there is nothing to add, so the panel says "No Checkpoints are authored in DriveState" and links to DriveState instead of offering the button. Author the round there first. If the panel says Checkpoint rounds need a DriveState connection, an admin makes that connection once under Organization, with a connect code from DriveState's Tenants screen.

A class holds as many rounds as the course runs. They list in DriveState's own order, and what actually runs when is the order of the DS Check slides in your deck.

A DS Check slide says the round does not belong to this class. The deck was pointed at a different class on RS Start after that slide was set. Pick the round again from the list, which now shows the rounds of the class the deck is bound to. It refuses rather than opening, because the round it held would have reported into the other course's comparison.

What is a Snapshot question? A multiple-choice question that re-asks an earlier one and shows the movement. Add a choice question, ask it, teach, then click Add question, choose Snapshot, and pick the first question under Re-asks. Its text starts as a copy of the first question's, ready for a lead-in such as "Now that you've been through the deck, ...". On the results wall it first looks like any other multiple-choice question. Click Show previous at the bottom right (beside Show answer, when the question has a correct answer) and each option gets a pair of bars: Now on top in your accent color and Before under it, muted, each with its own count and share, and the change in points beside the option. Hide previous takes the Before bars away again. The button appears once the first question has answers in this session. An option nobody picked shows an empty, outlined bar. The report says how many of the people who answered both changed their answer, and the AI summary says in words which way the room moved (toward the correct answer, away from it, or hardly at all), leaving the numbers to the chart. In the question list a Snapshot's chip says SNAP, and the question it re-asks says which question re-asks it.

An existing multiple-choice question can become a Snapshot too: open it with Edit and choose Snapshot. That works only while nobody has voted on options the other question does not have, and a question that a Snapshot re-asks cannot become one itself.

Its options come from the question it re-asks and are edited there, so the two can never disagree about what the bars mean. If you reveal the correct answer before the second ask, the second ask measures whether people remembered what you told them rather than what they think, and the report says so.

How do I sign in to RS Start with a passkey, Google or Microsoft? Choose Sign in with your browser on the RS Start slide. It opens roomsum.com in your own browser, where every sign-in method works. Sign in, check that the code on the page matches the one on your slide, and confirm; RS Start finishes by itself a few seconds later. If your browser did not open, go to roomsum.com/link and type the code. PowerPoint's built-in browser cannot use a passkey, and Google does not allow sign-in inside it, which is why the add-in hands this step to your own browser. Never approve a code you did not start yourself: RoomSum will never send you one.

RS Start says my sign-in on this computer has ended. PowerPoint keeps its own sign-in, separate from your browser, and it ends after a long time away or a sign-out elsewhere. Sign in again on the slide. If you are already signed in to roomsum.com in your browser, Sign in with your browser only asks you to confirm there. If the slide says instead that it could not confirm your sign-in, RoomSum could not be reached from inside PowerPoint: check the connection and press Try again.

Why can't I delete an option? Somebody has already voted for it. Votes are stored against the option, so removing it would drop their vote from the count while still counting them as having voted. Rename it instead, or add a new one.

Should the slide background match my RoomSum background? Yes, and it is the single change that makes a deck look built rather than assembled. The add-in fills its area with your RoomSum look, so setting the PowerPoint slide background to the same image (or the same flat color) hides the seam while the add-in loads and along any edge that does not line up exactly. Your background lives under Organization, then Branding; use the same file in PowerPoint under Design, then Format Background.

How do I get a picture of the slide for printing or PDF? Each configured slide stores a print image, refreshed whenever you save that slide's settings or click Set print image. Then use Review mode, which brings every print image in the deck to the front so the whole deck prints or exports with its content visible.

What is the difference between Review mode and Live view? Review mode puts the pictures in front, for printing, PDF export, and reading a deck offline. Live view puts them behind the add-ins, which is the normal state and the one to present in. In Live view the picture paints during slide transitions and the live view lands on the same pixels, so the show stays smooth.

My printed deck came out with blank slides. PowerPoint only starts an add-in on a slide you actually visit, so slides you never opened have nothing to show. Click Review mode first, which brings every stored print image forward, then print or export.

A slide printed with old vote bars. A print image is taken once. Re-save that slide's settings (or click Set print image) to refresh it after content changes.

Do I have to rebuild the deck for each session? No. Decks bind to the class, not the session, so the same deck attaches to whatever session is live. Two facilitators on two laptops attach to the same session; presenting is one machine at a time (see "Two machines, one class" below).

How do I know how many people have joined? In the show, RS Start shows a small counter beside the QR code: the number of phones connected, meaning seen in the last ten minutes. The control room and the results wall's "N of N responded" use the same count.

In a test, the phone count is one higher than the phones I joined with. The Test screen has a simulated phone of its own beside the results wall, and it joins the test like any other phone, so it is counted. One phone you join with reads as 2 on the RS Start slide, in the control room and in the wall's "N of N responded". The wall itself is never counted. In a real session there is no such phone, so the count is the people who joined.

The results list is cut off and shows "N more". By design. The wall shrinks its rows to fit up to six and a half rows, then scrolls and shows the chip, so the type stays readable from the back of the room. Click a grouped answer's count to see the answers behind it.

What do I see when I click a count on the results wall? On any slide that shows results, question slides included, and on the browser results view, a grouped answer's count is a button: ×N on a Q&A row, the number in its bubble on a poll row. It opens the answers grouped behind it as the AI tidied them (typos and grammar fixed, never the raw text), each wording once, with ×2 or more beside a wording several people gave. It is there for the nuance a group's label can smooth over. A single answer has no button. Click anywhere, or press Esc, to close it.

The question text is much larger on some slides. When a question has no secondary prompt, its text grows to fill the header (at most two lines). With a secondary prompt the pair fills the same space.

Will the wall look the same on the projector in the room? Yes. The wall renders one fixed composition and scales it to whatever it is shown on, so a laptop screen, a projector, and a TV all show the same layout, on Mac and Windows alike.

How quickly do phones follow the deck? Within two to three seconds of a slide change, both onto a question and back to the lobby. The one exception is the first slide-off of a Windows show, which can take about ten seconds while PowerPoint's own slide reporting settles.

Tip for the smoothest show: set the slide background to match the RoomSum look, so the brief moment before the live view appears blends in.

The Start slide is also the join screen

In the editor, RS Start is where you sign in and open the session. In the slideshow, the same slide shows the room how to join: a full-size QR code and the session code. Leave it on screen while people arrive; phones sit in the lobby until your first question slide. There is no separate QR add-in to insert.

A hidden setup slide and a separate QR slide

Some facilitators prefer to keep the sign-in slide out of the show entirely: a hidden RS Start at the front of the deck for setup, and a second RS Start placed wherever the room should see the join screen. That works, with one extra step, because a hidden slide never runs in the slideshow and each add-in remembers its own class separately.

1. Put RS Start on slide one, sign in there, and start the session as usual. Hide the slide (right-click it, Hide Slide).
2. Insert a second RS Start where the join screen belongs and stretch it to fill the slide.
3. In the editor, that slide offers "Use this deck's class for this slide" with the class named. Press it. No sign-in is needed on this slide.
4. Lock the deck from either Start slide.

In the show, the second slide is the join screen, QR code and all. If it says the slide is not bound to a class yet, step 3 was skipped.

Shipping a course deck

A configured deck travels. Build it with the add-in slides pointed at a course, save the file, and send it. A facilitator installs the RoomSum add-in on their machine, opens the deck, signs in on the RS Start slide once, and presents. Nothing on their machine needs configuring: the deck carries its own setup, and this works across platforms, so a deck built on Windows presents from a Mac and the other way around. A facilitator can keep decks for several classes, even saved under the same file name one after another: each deck answers to its own class, never to whatever was opened from that place before.

To make a shipped deck foolproof, lock it. On the RS Start slide, after choosing the class, admins and developers see "Lock this deck" at the bottom, beside Sign out. A locked deck shows facilitators exactly one course and one Start button, so a session can never be started for the wrong class from the deck. A facilitator without access to that course is told exactly what to ask their organization admin for. Admins and developers can unlock from the same slide when a deck needs repointing. Any admin or developer can unlock it, including someone who received the deck from another organization along with a copy of the class; the lock keeps a facilitator from starting the wrong class, it does not protect the deck.

Two machines, one class

If two decks for the same class run shows at the same time, the first one to put a question on the room holds it. The second deck's question slides say so plainly ("Another machine is presenting this class") instead of competing, and participant phones follow only the holder. To hand the room over, end the slideshow on the holding machine; the waiting deck takes over within about ten seconds. Two facilitators rehearsing at once is the usual way to meet this screen, and nothing is broken when you do.

Your organization

How do I change our organization's name? Organization, then Organization branding: the Organization name field at the top, then Save name. Admins only, and on every plan (the rest of Branding is a Business feature). Phones, the room's screen, emails and reports use the new name at once, and the change is recorded in Activity. The organization's web address, its roomsum.com subdomain, stays the same.

Team, roles, and seats

How do I add someone to my organization? Organization → Team → enter their email, pick roles, Add member. They sign in with a one-time email code, with their Google or Microsoft account when its address is the one the organization knows, or with a passkey once they have added one. A corporate mail filter that swallows the code is no longer a wall: the Google or Microsoft button never sends an email.

How do I add many people at once? Organization, then Team, then Import…: choose an Excel (.xlsx) or CSV file with one person per row and three columns, Name (optional), Email and Roles. Roles takes admin, facilitator, moderator or developer; put several in one cell separated by commas (in a CSV, a cell with commas is normally quoted, but an unquoted list at the end of the row is read correctly too). The dialog has an Excel and a CSV template to start from. It checks the whole file first and shows every row: nothing is added while any row has a problem, or when the file needs more facilitator seats or team places than are free, and it says how many and where more seats come from. Leave anyone out with the × beside their row (Put back undoes it), so trimming a list never means editing the file. People already in the organization are skipped and keep their roles. New members get their names and, unless you untick it, a sign-in invite.

What does a new team member see? The invite email names their roles, says in a line what each one lets them do, and its button opens the screen that matches: the moderation panel for a moderator, Start for a facilitator, the admin console for an admin or developer. Their first signed-in visit stops at Your access (always in the Account menu afterwards), which lists the roles they hold with a door to each, and the roles they do not hold with an "Ask for this role" button. That sends your admins an email through RoomSum, with an optional line from the requester, and the request appears at the top of the Team card on Organization with Accept and Dismiss. Accept adds the role and emails the person; Dismiss clears the request as if it had never been made, and the role can still be added from Team at any time. A role added by hand under Team settles the request the same way. While a request waits, the requester's Your access page shows when it was sent and offers Remind them, which emails the admins again, marked as a second request, at most once a day. Nothing is granted automatically. Someone added to the team who never signed in gets the same first stop whenever they do.

Can I sign in without waiting for an email code? Yes, with a passkey. Sign in once with the code at roomsum.com, open roomsum.com/account/passkeys, and add a passkey; it uses your device's own unlock (Face ID, Touch ID, Windows Hello). From then on the sign-in page offers "Sign in with a passkey". Passkeys live on roomsum.com itself, so start there rather than on your organization's subdomain; the sign-in carries over.

Microsoft says RoomSum "needs admin approval". What now? Some companies let staff use their Microsoft account only with apps their IT department has approved. Send your IT administrator this link: approve RoomSum for your company. Opening it and choosing Accept approves RoomSum once for everyone in the company; they land on the RoomSum sign-in page with a note confirming it, and the Microsoft button works from then on. RoomSum receives only the person's name and email address from Microsoft, nothing else. Until the approval happens, the email code works as always.

Our security software blocked roomsum.com, or our mail filter eats the emails. What do I tell IT? Send them RoomSum for IT departments. It is written for them: the hosts to allow, how RoomSum email is authenticated, what the Microsoft and Google sign-in buttons request, and where data lives. If their filter blocks roomsum.com itself, download the PDF from that page and email it; the file names the live address for whoever reads it later.

Which role does what? Admin manages classes, team, branding, and billing. Facilitator starts and runs sessions. Moderator answers submissions. Developer builds classes and questions without organization powers. One person can hold several.

Why can't I start a session even though I am an admin? Starting a session requires the facilitator role, because that role is the billable seat. Give yourself the facilitator role in Team. Admin covers every other permission, but not this one, by design.

How many seats am I using? The Team panel shows "N of M used". Only members with the facilitator role consume a seat. Moderators, developers, and admins without it do not.

How do I bring in an outside course author? Add them as a developer. They can create and edit classes, questions and domain terms, and can share or duplicate a class, with its stock answers if it has any. They cannot write or edit stock answers, which is moderators' work in Moderation, and they cannot see billing, manage the team, change branding, start sessions, or permanently delete anything. The work lives in your account and stays yours.

Deleting, archiving, and the trash

What happens when I delete a class? It goes to the trash. It stops running immediately and leaves every list, and you can restore it for 30 days. After that it is deleted permanently along with all of its session history.

How do I get a deleted class back? Classes & Questions → the Trash section → Restore.

Can I reuse the code of a class I deleted? Yes, immediately. A trashed class releases its code. If you later restore it and the code is taken, RoomSum asks you to free the code first.

How do I delete something permanently right now? In the Trash section, admins get Delete now…, which asks you to type the class code. This erases every session, submission, and answer that class ever had. It cannot be undone.

What is the difference between archiving and deleting? Archiving only hides a class from the lists and keeps everything working; archived classes still count toward your plan's class limit. Deleting puts it in the trash on its way to being erased, and trashed classes do not count toward the limit.

Sharing and reusing classes

How do I give a class to another organization? Share it from the class screen. RoomSum sends a copy to the address you name, and they accept it into their own organization. Nothing links the two afterward: it is a copy, not a subscription. As they accept, they can give the copy its own class code (the sender's code is only the default). To start sessions on the copy they need the facilitator role in their own organization; the developer role lets them accept and edit it, not start it. On the machine where the deck is opened next, picking the copy on RS Start and starting (a test session will do) moves every RS Question slide in the deck to the copy within a few seconds and saves that binding into the slides; save the deck afterwards so it travels.

How do I copy a class to another organization of mine? If you hold the admin or developer role in more than one organization, the class header shows Copy to… beside Share and Duplicate. Pick the organization and a class code for the copy, and it is there at once: no email, no inbox, nothing to accept. It is a copy, owned by you in that organization, with no link back and no editing lock. Its active action plans come along too, each with a new link code, when that organization has action planning; the note after the copy says if any stayed behind. Plan content never travels. Share stays the way to give a class to someone else. Session defaults travel too, with Copy to…, Duplicate and Share alike: multi-day, session length, answers during the session, Spanish submissions, course evaluation and its window are part of the course design. Branding stays with the organization.

How do I copy a class inside my own organization? Duplicate it. The copy gets its own code and its own class key.

Does sharing include the answers? It includes the class structure, questions, domain terms, and optionally stock answers. Session history and participant data never travel.

I build courses for other organizations. What is the workflow? Either join their organization as a developer and build inside their account, or build in your own organization and share the class to one of their admins or developers. The accepted copy keeps the name, the class code where it is free (else a suffix is added), the question numbers, and the domain terms and stock answers you included; it gets its own class key, and nothing links the copies afterwards. A deck built against your class needs its RS Start slide re-saved with their organization, class code, and class key; the other slides follow on their own and the question numbers still match.

Troubleshooting

Participants

"This session isn't running." The session was closed, or the code was mistyped. Codes never contain the letters I, L, O or the digits 0 and 1. Check the code in the control room.

"This room is full." The room hit the participant cap for your plan. The cap counts phones present in the last ten minutes, not everyone who ever joined, so a phone that leaves gives its place back rather than holding it for the whole session. People already in stay in, and someone who steps away and returns is always let back. The control room header shows the live count against the cap ("14 of 20 in the room"), so you can see it coming. Upgrading takes effect immediately.

"You've reached the submission limit for this question." The per-question submission cap set on that question. Raise it under Classes & Questions.

A participant's phone shows nothing new. The facilitator has not shown a question yet, or has hidden the current one. Use Show in the control room.

Starting and running sessions

I cannot start a session. Most often the facilitator role (see the Team section above). Otherwise: the class is inactive or archived, or it is in the trash.

A session I paused came back paused. That is multi-day working as intended. Resume it from the Sessions page, from the RS Start slide's setup screen, or from the moderation panel's toolbar, and it keeps its code and its data.

Phones say "Class is paused" on the morning of day two. The session parked itself overnight, which is what multi-day does instead of closing. Nothing resumes it on its own, and starting the slideshow does not either. Press Resume in any of the three places above and the phones wake.

My session closed on its own. Sessions close after their session length, 12 hours by default. Multi-day sessions pause instead, and close once they have sat paused for 24 hours. The setup screen on the RS Start slide and the control room show when the session will pause or end, in your local time.

Classes and questions

"This class already has an active Q&A question." Only one Q&A question can be active per class, because it feeds a single answers page. Deactivate the existing one first.

"The plan allows a limited number of active questions per class." Deactivate a question or upgrade. Inactive questions do not count.

"The plan allows a limited number of classes." Archive or delete one, or upgrade. Archived classes still count; trashed ones do not.

"This class is archived. Unarchive it to add questions." Unarchive from the class screen.

"This class has session history and can't be deleted." Use Delete, which trashes it, or rename it. Permanent erasure with history intact is the admin-only "Delete now…" in the Trash section.

"You don't have permission for that change." Your role does not cover it. Branding, team, billing, and permanent deletion are admin-only; developers can author classes and questions.

PowerPoint

The show is running but phones fall to the lobby or stop following. This is the mid-show recovery, worth reading once before you ever need it. RoomSum is built so a PowerPoint failure degrades your show instead of ending it:

1. Keep presenting. Nothing about your slides is affected.
2. Open the control room on any device, your phone included: sign in at roomsum.com, open Sessions, pick the class, and open the live session.
3. Within about fifteen seconds of the deck going quiet, the Show buttons in the control room wake up. Tap Show on the question you are presenting. Participant phones follow immediately.
4. Drive the rest of the session by hand from there, or restart the slideshow at any time: the deck picks the room back up on its own once its slides resume reporting.

If the deck is misbehaving rather than silent, showing the wrong question or flickering, end the slideshow once (press Esc). That silences the deck and hands the room to the control room cleanly.

Two slides never move the phones, forwards or backwards, while the slides around them do. A duplicated slide keeps its source's identity, and the deck cannot tell two slides with one identity apart, so it keeps the room in the lobby on both rather than guess. During the show, an amber line across the top of each slide concerned says so; afterwards its setup screen does too. Click the slide once in the thumbnail pane, so it is the only slide selected, open its setup screen and press Save, which sets its identity from the slide it is on; do the same on the other one. The next show drives both. Restarting a show, or renumbering a slide and saving it, does not raise this line: a slide booting again under the same identity and the same question is the same slide, not a twin.

A sixty second pre-show check. Before people arrive: start the slideshow, walk to your first question slide, and watch one phone follow it. Walk one slide past it and watch the phone return to the lobby. That is the whole system proven end to end. If anything looks off, present with the control room driving and sort the deck out afterward.

A slide shows its question but no join code or results, and only on Windows. The deck is in Review mode: the print images are in front of the add-ins. Windows shows the picture; a Mac draws add-ins on top of every shape, which is why the same deck looks right there. Open any RoomSum slide's settings and click Live view, which sends every print image behind its add-in. On Windows, where it matters, the RS Start slide carries the warning and the same button on its setup screen, in both its signed-out and signed-in views, because a covered question slide cannot show anything itself. In the show, RS Start replaces its join screen with the warning at full size. A review left on for more than twelve hours is undone by itself the next time a RoomSum slide opens in the editor. A Mac stays quiet about it, because a Mac is not affected.

After a show on a Mac, a RoomSum slide shows nothing in the editor, or keeps spinning. Two different things look alike here. Controls on a configured slide appear only when the mouse is over it, so hover first. If hovering shows nothing and the slide stays frozen, PowerPoint for Mac has suspended that slide's add-in when the show ended and not woken it; the slide is fine. Close the deck and reopen it. This does not affect a running show, only editing afterwards.

I duplicated a question slide and now it will not drive the room. A copied slide carries its original's identity, and two slides claiming one identity means RoomSum trusts neither. Click the duplicated slide once in the thumbnail pane, so it is the only slide selected, open its setup screen, choose its question and press Save. The slide learns who it is and both copies behave. If the setup screen says the identity is not confirmed, click the slide once more, wait a moment, and Save again.

The Save button on a slide's setup screen is grayed out. The amber note above it says what it is waiting for: the organization, the class code, the class key, and whatever that slide carries of its own. RS Question needs its question number, results only or not: a question slide drives that question, and a results slide shows one question's results and has nothing to show without it. If the class key does not match, the question list stays closed and the note asks for a class key that matches. RS Extra set to the action plan needs its plan, and DS Check and DS Room need their round. Fill in what the note names and the button comes back.

Every add-in's setup screen works the same way: it fills the add-in until you press Save to this deck, then the slide shows what the room will see, with Edit slide settings to go back. The DriveState pair have a green Save; RoomSum's own are blue.

A slide I just added opened with another class filled in. A slide you add to a deck takes the deck's class from the deck itself: RS Start keeps it inside the file, so this works on any computer. The setup screen opens with a class filled in from your computer, and an amber note saying so, only when the deck cannot tell it: the deck was bound before September 24, 2026 and its RS Start slide has not been shown since, or PowerPoint is older than Microsoft 365 and Office 2024 (a volume-licensed Office 2021, for example), which cannot read what RS Start keeps in the file. Check the organization and class code, correct them if they are not this deck's, and press Save to this deck. Until you do, the slide shows the room nothing. For an older deck, show its RS Start slide once in the editor and save the deck, and every slide added after that takes its class.

Does RoomSum work in PowerPoint on the web? Yes, for the RoomSum add-ins: RS Start, RS Question and RS Extra run in PowerPoint for the web, in a browser with Microsoft 365. DS Check and DS Room do not yet: on the web they show a notice that says so, and they run in PowerPoint on a Mac or a Windows PC.

The Mac installer and the Windows script do not reach the web, because there an add-in is installed in the browser. One way is Microsoft's Upload My Add-in (Insert, Add-ins, My Add-ins, Upload My Add-in) with the add-in's manifest file. The manifest files are at https://roomsum.com/ppt/manifest-start.xml for RS Start, https://roomsum.com/ppt/manifest-question.xml for RS Question and https://roomsum.com/ppt/manifest-extra.xml for RS Extra. The other way is your organization's central deployment (Integrated apps), which also reaches PowerPoint on a Mac or a Windows PC. The web needs one extra step before you present; see the next entry.

How do I present from PowerPoint for the web? The same way as anywhere else, with one step first. After any change to the deck in the web editor, whether you typed or an add-in saved, the slide show can move ahead on its own to a later slide when it starts. That is how PowerPoint for the web behaves, and reloading the page does not clear it. Starting a slide show once does, even one that cannot move. So after your last edit, start the slideshow from the last slide and press Esc. Then present.

If the show still moves ahead on its own, press the left arrow. If a slide says it could not load the add-in, press Retry.

If the remote or arrow keys stop building after you click on a RoomSum slide on a Mac, fully quit PowerPoint (Cmd-Q) and open it again. A PowerPoint for Mac bug in early October 2026 left the keyboard with any add-in you clicked, so the keys either did nothing or jumped whole slides and skipped their builds. Microsoft fixed it on its side on October 15, and the fix reaches a copy of PowerPoint when it is restarted. Until then, one click on the slide itself, outside the RoomSum box, such as the clear strip along the bottom, moves the show on by one step and gives the keyboard back to PowerPoint.

Presenter View is only a preview for RoomSum slides. The room's screen always shows the live slide; Presenter View usually shows the slide's stored picture, and sometimes, after a delay or a click, the live slide, unreliably. Watch the room's screen or your Zoom share for results, and click RoomSum controls there, not in Presenter View.

Does the Mac installer need an administrator password? No. Open the download, open Install RoomSum Add-ins, and it downloads the current add-ins, opens PowerPoint's add-in folder in Finder, and shows one tile to drag into it. macOS 27 lets only the person at the Mac put files in that folder, so that drag is the install; no password and no administrator are involved, and the installer checks that every add-in arrived. It works on Intel and Apple Silicon Macs with macOS 12 or later, and the Mac needs to be online. IT deploying to many Macs can skip it: Microsoft 365's admin center (Integrated apps) deploys the add-ins with nothing installed.

Chrome says the Mac installer is a suspicious file, or the download never finishes. Chrome holds back a download it has seen only a few times, and each new version of the installer starts with no history. Until you decide, the file sits in Downloads as "Unconfirmed" followed by a number, ending in .crdownload. Open Chrome's downloads list and choose to keep it; the file then becomes install-roomsum-mac.zip. The installer is signed and notarized by Apple, and macOS checks that again when you open it.

"This needs the PowerPoint add-in host." The page is open in a normal browser tab instead of inside PowerPoint. Use it from the slide.

"Needs a newer PowerPoint (Microsoft 365)." Print images and deck modes need a current Microsoft 365 build on Mac or Windows. The live view still works.

"Select just this slide, then add the print image." More than one slide is selected. Click the single slide first.

"No question #N in this class yet." The slide points at a question number that does not exist. Add it under Classes & Questions, or change the number on the slide. Remember that reordering questions does not change their numbers.

The add-in area is blank in the deck. PowerPoint starts an add-in only on a slide you visit, and only when the machine is online. For a deck someone will page through offline or print, use Review mode so the stored pictures show instead.

A RoomSum slide stays blank, or the whole show goes black, on Windows. The phones and the control room usually stay correct while this happens, which tells you the slide itself is fine and the machine's graphics are not keeping up: every RoomSum slide the show has visited keeps its own browser view alive, and an older laptop can stop presenting them. Restarting the slideshow does not help, because PowerPoint keeps the same add-in instances. Exit the show, close the deck file, reopen it, and resume from that slide. If the print image shows instead of the live slide after an Alt-Tab, that is the same condition. Present from a capable machine for a real room.

Every RoomSum slide says ADD-IN ERROR. The add-ins are not installed on this computer. To check, open Insert › My Add-ins: if RS Start and the other RoomSum add-ins are not listed, run the installer from roomsum.com/downloads, then quit PowerPoint completely and reopen it. Do not delete or re-insert the slides: nothing is wrong with them, and they work again as soon as the add-ins are installed. In PowerPoint for the web there is no installer: add each add-in with Upload My Add-in (see "Does RoomSum work in PowerPoint on the web?" in the how-to). A slide built with RS Results, RS Action or RS Eval is the exception: those add-ins are retired, so rebuild it (see "My deck has RS Results, RS Action or RS Eval slides").

A RoomSum slide says ADD-IN ERROR after I re-ran the installer. First check that the add-ins are listed under Insert › My Add-ins. If they are not, they are not installed (see the entry above): install them and leave the slides alone. If they are listed and a slide still shows ADD-IN ERROR, read on. PowerPoint ties each add-in on a slide to the version of the add-in it was inserted with, and when that version changes, a slide made before the change can show ADD-IN ERROR. The RoomSum and DriveState add-ins all changed version on 6 October 2026, when they got new icons, so a slide made before then can show it. Earlier changes were DS Check on 21 and 23 September, and DS Room on 21 September. Delete the add-in from the slide and insert it again from Insert › My Add-ins. The deck's class fills itself in; set whatever else that slide carries again, such as DS Check's round. A slide built with RS Results, RS Action or RS Eval cannot be fixed this way, because the installer now removes those add-ins: rebuild it instead (see "My deck has RS Results, RS Action or RS Eval slides").

The RS Extra slide is an empty white box on Windows. RS Extra is its own add-in with its own manifest. Confirm it is installed on that machine, not only the RS Question and RS Start add-ins.

My deck stopped connecting after a change to the class. A class's code never changes, so look at its key: if an admin or the class's owner regenerated the class key, every slide still carries the old one. Re-save each RS slide with the new key, or sign in on RS Start and start or lock from there, which rebinds the deck. A copy of a class (a duplicate, or one shared with you) has its own code and key, so a deck built for the original does not drive the copy until its slides are set up for it.

Email

Participants did not get the answers email. Sends go only to people who opted in and confirmed their address by clicking the link they were sent. The moderator screen shows how many verified recipients exist. Also check that the session is closed and published.

I published the answers, but no email went out. Publishing puts the answers page up; the email goes by itself once the session has ended, to everyone who opted in and confirmed their address, including anyone who confirms later. The line beside Publish answers says what it is waiting for: the session is still running or paused, email delivery needs a paid plan, nobody opted in, or nobody has confirmed yet. When an answer changes after it was emailed, Publish update emails everyone confirmed again (Business).

DriveState

"DriveState isn't connected." An admin connects it once under Organization, with a connect code from the Tenants screen in DriveState (it starts dsp_ and lasts ten minutes).

"The DriveState connection was revoked." The key was retired on the DriveState side. An admin connects again under Organization with a fresh connect code.

"DriveState has no answer for this one." The corpus cannot answer that question. RoomSum records it as a coverage gap, which is exactly what the gap report is for.

A participant says they never saw the answer on their phone. Check three things in order: the class has Show answers during the session switched on (it is off by default), the answer is approved rather than a draft, and that person actually asked that question. Answers go only to the people who asked them, so someone who asked nothing sees nothing until the answers page is published. A phone that was closed and reopened catches up on its own.

"Approve the answer first." Only approved answers can be sent to a knowledge base. Approve it, then send.

"That override expired." A conflict override is single-use and expires after 24 hours. Send the answer again to get a fresh decision, then override that one if you still want to.

A contribution says it is waiting on review. Some DriveState workspaces stage contributions for a person to approve. The card keeps the status; nothing more is needed from RoomSum.

A participant's poll answer showed up in Q&A, flagged "Not a question". The phone keeps an "Ask a question" button on screen during polls; it opens a separate box for the always-open Q&A question, and now and then someone types a poll answer into it. That box closes itself twenty seconds after a question is sent, or a few seconds after the room moves on, so it no longer lingers over the next poll. If it happens anyway, the row is a poll answer, not a question: delete it from the Spam section, or, if it is worth keeping, use Fix & re-check to reword it as a question. Not spam on its own sends it back through the AI, which will flag a bare poll answer again.

A participant says the answers email never arrived. Check that they confirmed: the panel shows "X opted in; Y confirmed", and only confirmed addresses are emailed. Then check the spelling of the address they opted in with; that is the next usual cause. If their mail server rejected the message, the moderation panel shows the address under "Not reachable" beside the send history, and a hard bounce is left out of later sends automatically. Ask them to opt in again with a working address; the new opt-in goes through the normal confirmation.

Where do I see bounced emails? Email in the top menu, for admins and moderators. It lists the mail RoomSum could not deliver for your organization, newest first: a bounced action plan or answers email, with what went wrong in plain words. For an action plan whose address was rejected, Fix address corrects it and re-sends the plan under a new link, so the link that reached the wrong address stops working; you never see the plan itself. A block by the receiving server is not a wrong address and has nothing to fix. A red count on the menu item is the number of problems you have not looked at yet; opening the page clears it. Delivered mail is not listed anywhere in your organization. Delivery records are kept for 90 days and then deleted automatically, which the page states; nothing older than that can be looked up.

When to contact support

The quickest way is inside RoomSum: open the Account menu on any staff page and choose Send feedback. Pick General feedback or Something went wrong and write what happened. Your name, email address, organization and the page you were on travel with the message, so we can follow up without a round of questions, and the same dialog shows the status of everything you sent before, from received to fixed.

Writing by email instead? Have this ready: your organization slug, the class code, the session join code, roughly when it happened, and the exact message you saw. The address is info@roomsum.com.