RoomSum for facilitators

You run the room, and most of the time the deck does the work: your slides drive the phones, and the phones follow you. This guide covers what to do before the first session, how a session runs from the deck, presenting from PowerPoint for the web, the one moment that needs care (revealing an answer), multi-day classes, running without a deck, the action plan, the course evaluation and checkpoint rounds on the day, and what to do when something looks off. Answering the room is moderator work, in the moderator guide; building decks is in the developer guide.

Before your first session

Install the add-ins first. Every machine you present from needs the RoomSum PowerPoint add-ins, from roomsum.com/downloads. The installer takes under a minute (on a Mac it opens PowerPoint's add-in folder and you drag one tile into it); quit PowerPoint completely and reopen it afterwards. Without them, the RoomSum slides in a deck show ADD-IN ERROR at the top instead of the live slide; the deck is fine, and installing the add-ins brings the slides back. The download buttons ask you to sign in first, with any RoomSum account (the free plan counts): signed out, each one reads Sign up free to download, with Log in under it. Presenting from PowerPoint for the web? The installer does not reach it: see "Presenting from PowerPoint for the web" below, which also says how the add-ins get there.

You need the facilitator role. Starting a session is what the facilitator role is for. If the RS Start slide tells you that you cannot start, ask your organization's admin to add the role to your account. Nothing else needs setting up: your organization, the class, and its key all travel inside the deck.

Sign in once. Open the deck from your developer and go to the RS Start slide, usually the first one. The slide asks for your email and emails you a one-time code, or lets you continue with your Google or Microsoft account, or use a passkey if you have set one up. After that first time, the slide remembers you on that machine.

Can I rehearse a class before the day? Yes. On Sessions, pick the class and press Test this class first. It opens a test session on one screen: the results wall the room will see and a simulated phone side by side, both live, with a button for each question. That phone is counted like any other, so one phone you join with as well shows as 2 in the phone count. Its reports come only to you, marked TEST, and everything it creates is deleted six hours after you end it. A test is yours alone: it takes no co-facilitators, and nobody else sees it. Open the class's deck while the test is running, signed in on RS Start as yourself, and the deck drives the test exactly as it would a live session: RS Start shows the test's join code and every slide moves the phones, so you can rehearse the show itself. If a real session of the class is running, the deck drives that one instead. Ready for the real thing while the test is still running? Start a session on RS Start starts it, and the deck moves to it; starting it ends the test, and the test's reports come to you, as with End test.

Running a session from the deck

Open the deck and go to the RS Start slide. Sign in if it asks, either with a code emailed to you or with Sign in with your browser, which opens roomsum.com in your own browser so you can use a passkey, Google or Microsoft. Check the code in the browser matches the one on the slide, confirm, and RS Start finishes signing in by itself. PowerPoint keeps its own sign-in, so being signed in on roomsum.com does not sign in the deck, and the slide says so when an old sign-in has ended.
Check the class, name the session, and press Start session. The deck already carries its class, so the slide shows it chosen; a locked deck shows exactly one class and one button. The session name is required: a city ("Atlanta"), a group ("Leadership Team"), or an event ("Marketing Retreat"), whatever tells this run of the class from the others, since a date alone will not. It is typed fresh each time. If the slide says the class is already live and names who started it and which run, read that line. Same room as you, for instance a co-facilitator who set up early? Press Add me as a co-facilitator: the session counts for you too, your deck drives that session, and you can swap laptops mid-class without anyone re-scanning. A different room running the same class somewhere else? The slide says Do not use it: press Start a new one, which opens a fresh screen for your own session name and reference (Cancel goes back). Each computer's deck drives its own room's session, so the two rooms never mix. Already added to a session as a co-facilitator? The slide opens on it, and your deck drives it. Two or more rooms running the class and you are on none? The slide lists them: press Add me beside yours.
Start the slideshow. The RS Start slide turns into the join screen: a full-size QR code and the six-character code, with a small counter of phones connected. Leave it up while people arrive. Participants scan the code or type it at roomsum.com; no app, no account, and they stay anonymous. If the class allows Spanish submissions, phones show an English / Español switch at the top; the wall and the answers stay English either way. On PowerPoint for the web, do the warm-up first: see "Presenting from PowerPoint for the web" below.
Advance to a question slide. It shows the question and the submissions as they arrive, and every phone moves to that question by itself, within a couple of seconds. Move past the slide and the phones return to the lobby. One scan at the start covers the whole session.
Results-only slides show results without moving the phones. They are RS Question slides with Show results only ticked. Use them to come back to something later. Phones stay in the lobby while one is on screen, and the slide never shows the join code or QR: people scan on an RS Question slide. Each one carries a question number; a slide without one opens its settings in the editor, and in a show it shows a notice instead of results. On any slide that shows results, question slides included, a grouped answer's count opens the answers behind it: ×N on a Q&A row, the number in its bubble on a poll row. They show as the AI tidied them (typos and grammar fixed), each wording once, so you can pick up the nuance a group's label may smooth over. A single answer has nothing to open. A Q&A row can also carry ⚡ or ✅, which mean a moderator has answered it and show the answer on screen when clicked (⚡ when the answer also went to the phones, ✅ when it is held for the emailed recap), and 📚 shows a stock answer. Click anywhere, or press Esc, to close what you opened.
Multiple choice: reveal the answer when you are ready. See the next section before you try this in front of a room.
Action plans at the end, if the class has one: the RS Extra slide showing the action plan has the QR and a live count, and phones already in the room get a button. Details further down.
End the session from the control room: sign in at roomsum.com and open Sessions, which lists the live session. Answering, publishing, and the answers email are the moderator's job after that. If you hold the moderator role as well, the moderator guide covers it.

Presenter View is a preview for RoomSum slides, not the live slide. 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, and it does so unreliably. Watch the room's screen or your Zoom share for results, and run RoomSum from the room's screen.

Presenting from PowerPoint for the web

The RS 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, so run a Checkpoint from PowerPoint on a Mac or a Windows PC.

On the web an add-in is installed in the browser, not by the installer: with Microsoft's Upload My Add-in, or by your organization's central deployment. The IT guide says how. If you cannot add them, ask your developer or IT team.

The web has one step of its own before you present. 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. After you click on a RoomSum slide, move on by clicking once on the slide outside the RoomSum box, as described under "Revealing the correct answer" below.

Revealing the correct answer

On a multiple-choice results slide, Show answer turns the correct options green. Nothing about the answer key reaches participants' phones before you press it, and Hide answer takes it back. Once the answer is on screen, votes are final: phones stop taking new or changed votes on that question, and only hiding the answer again reopens it.

Two things about this catch people out, so read them once before the day:

Click on the live show screen, not Presenter View. The button lives on the slide the room sees. Pressing Tab also toggles the answer, but only after you have clicked on that live screen once.
If your remote or arrow keys stop building after you click a RoomSum slide, restart PowerPoint. In early October 2026 a bug in PowerPoint for Mac left the keyboard with any add-in you clicked, so the remote and arrow 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 fully quit (Cmd-Q) and opened again, once. If a Mac that has not been restarted since still does it, restart it. Until you can, one click on the slide itself, outside the RoomSum box, moves the show on by one step and gives the keyboard back; the clear strip along the bottom of every RoomSum slide is there for that click. PowerPoint for Windows never did this.

Multi-day classes

How do I run a class across several days? Multi-day is set on the class, or chosen when you start from the Sessions page. 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 (12 hours by default, counted from when it went live that day), so it is waiting for you the next morning. Then 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. The setup screen on the RS Start slide and the control room show when the session will pause or end, in your local time.

Should I pause at the end of the day? Only if you want phones to show "paused" straight away: Pause in the control room 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 in the class settings 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. Until it pauses itself, it is still live, so they can. Starting from the deck uses the class's defaults, which your developer or admin set. To change multi-day, homework, or the session length for one run, start the session from the Sessions page instead, where those options are offered before you press Start; the deck then attaches to that session as usual.

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.

Running a session without a deck

Everything the deck does, you can do from a browser. Sign in at roomsum.com, open Sessions, pick the class, confirm the per-session options, and press Start. That opens the control room:

Show and Hide on each question move every phone, the way advancing a slide does.
Open results view puts the results on a second screen, at roomsum.com/v/CODE. Put it on the projector or share it in Zoom, Teams, or WebEx. The same ×N, answer icons, and Show answer controls work there.
Pause and End session live here too.

The results view also works alongside a deck: if a laptop ever misbehaves mid-show, the control room takes over the room in seconds (see Troubleshooting).

Action plans on the day

If the class has an action plan, the deck has an RS Extra slide set to the action plan, usually near the end. On the class branding it shows the QR code, the short link, one line naming the phone button and the scan, and a live count of plans submitted. From the moment that slide is on screen, every phone already in the room shows a Go to the Action Planner button, so nobody who joined has to scan; the button stays for the rest of the session and on the session-ended screen. 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 a plan is saved, the phone offers Back to the session, which is where the evaluation button lives, and the lobby button then reads Action plan saved. The saved screen also carries the link to fix a mistyped address.

The plan is the participant's own: they enter their email address on the planner (and a name, if they want), get a copy by email, and are reminded before each deadline. Nobody in your organization sees the plan or the name, and the address appears only if an email to it bounces, so an admin can correct it. Phones are never moved there for them.

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 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.

The course evaluation on the day

If the class has the course evaluation turned on, open it near the end from the control room with Open the evaluation (an RS Extra slide set to the course evaluation does the same from the deck). Every phone in the room shows Rate this training in the lobby and on the session-ended screen, and the offer stays open after you end the session for the class's window (20 hours unless an admin set it otherwise), so someone who left early can still answer. It is four questions and anonymous: you see how many answered, never who.

What are the Reference field and the co-facilitators when I start? Both sit on the start screen and the RS Start slide beside the session name. Reference is your organization's own code for this delivery, such as a training locator or an LMS event number; your admin can name the field after whatever your rosters call it. It is optional unless your organization requires it, in which case the field says "(required)" and Start waits for it. If your organization makes references unique, one already used by a running session is refused: the message names that session and who started it, and a button offers to join it instead, Add me to “Atlanta” as a co-facilitator on the RS Start slide (on Sessions, Add me to “Atlanta” and open it, which also opens its control room), with that session's own name in the quotes. That is how two co-facilitators end up in one session rather than two. Co-facilitators are the other facilitators of your organization: press + Add them and pick whoever teaches with you (once more for each extra person), and the session counts for all of you on Reports, with its evaluation when the class has one. Left off a session someone else started? Press Add me as a co-facilitator on the RS Start slide, or on Sessions at roomsum.com. Nobody signs in twice; the laptop stays yours. Either can be changed afterwards on Reports, by the facilitator who started the session or any other facilitator or admin.

Checkpoint rounds on the day

If your course runs Checkpoint Live with DriveState, each round opens on every phone from its DS Check slide while that slide is on screen, or from the control room, where each of the class's rounds has its own button. One round is open at a time.

There is nothing to hand out: no list of names and no invitations. Everyone already in the session sees Start the conversation on their phone. It opens the round in the same tab, and when they finish, Back to the session brings them straight back. Each round is a spoken conversation, so phones ask for the microphone the first time.

The button knows where each person stands. Once somebody has done the round, their own phone says You've done this one instead of offering it again. In a practice round it reads Practice again with the number of goes they have left, and when those run out it says so. Nobody else's phone changes, and the room screen never shows any of it.

The DS Check slide counts who has finished and who is still talking. For the debrief, the DS Room slide shows DriveState's Room View for the round: how the room did, as a shared picture, never who did what. Running from the control room instead? Open results view shows the same Room View while a round is open, and keeps it up after you close the round until you move to a question.

After the session

Where do I see how it went? On Reports (sign in at roomsum.com), which every member can open: pick the class, then your session. It shows how many were in the room, the questions and their answers, the AI summary once the session has been closed for a few minutes, the evaluation results when the class has one, and the action plans due. The control room links to it as Session report, or Session report so far while the session is still open, and the report itself is marked Still open until the session is closed.

Some organizations show each facilitator only the sessions they ran or co- facilitated, and keep the report across a whole class for admins and moderators. If a session of yours is missing from the list, the person who ran it can add you under its details on Reports, or on the day you can use Add me on RS Start while it is running.

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 on the join screen or 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. 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.

"You've reached the submission limit for this question." The developer set a per-question cap. It is changed on the class, not in the room.

A participant's phone shows nothing new. No question is on the room yet: the deck is on a non-question slide, or the current question was hidden. Advance to a question slide, or press Show in the control room.

Starting and running

I cannot start a session. Most often the facilitator role is missing from your account; ask your admin. Otherwise the class is inactive, archived, or in the trash, which is the developer's or admin's side.

A session I paused came back paused, or phones say "Class is paused" on the morning of day two. That is multi-day working as intended. 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.

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 show

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:

Keep presenting. Nothing about your slides is affected.
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.
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.
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.

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: pictures of the slides are sitting in front of the live add-ins. In the show, the RS Start slide replaces its join screen with a warning about this; in the editor, open any RoomSum slide's settings and click Live view, which sends every picture behind its add-in. A Mac is not affected.

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. Restarting the slideshow does not help. Exit the show, close the deck file, reopen it, and resume from that slide. 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 the slide has to be rebuilt (see "My deck has RS Results, RS Action or RS Eval slides" below).

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.

My deck has RS Results, RS Action or RS Eval slides. Those add-ins were retired on October 8, 2026: re-running the installer removes them on Windows, and a computer set up since does not have them, so those slides have to be rebuilt; on a computer where the old add-in is gone, such a slide shows that its add-in is not available. An RS Results slide becomes an RS Question slide with Show results only ticked, an RS Action slide an RS Extra slide set to the action plan, and an RS Eval slide an RS Extra slide set to the course evaluation. If you do not build decks yourself, ask your developer.

The RS Extra slide is an empty white box on Windows. RS Extra is its own add-in. Confirm it is installed on that machine, not only RS Question and RS Start; the installer at roomsum.com/downloads adds all of them.

My deck stopped connecting after something changed in the class. Most likely an admin or the class's owner regenerated the class key (a class's code never changes). Ask them; re-saving the slides with the new key, or signing in on RS Start and starting or locking from it, rebinds the deck.

After a show on a Mac, a RoomSum slide shows nothing in the editor. Controls on a configured slide appear only when the mouse is over it, so hover first. If the slide stays frozen, PowerPoint for Mac has suspended it after the show; close the deck and reopen it. A running show is never affected, only editing afterwards.

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.