RoomSum for moderators

You answer the room. Questions arrive already grouped, you answer each group once, and every participant who asked gets the answer: on their phone during the class if the class allows it, and by email and on the answers page afterwards. This guide covers the moderation board, stock answers, the knowledge base tools, publishing, and the report. Running the room is the facilitator guide; building classes is the developer guide.

Getting started

Your first session as the moderator, start to finish.

1. Sign in at roomsum.com, which takes you straight to Moderation in your organization (or asks you to pick one first), and pick the live session. The moderator role is all you need; a facilitator runs the room.
2. Questions arrive on a board per question, one card per group of similar submissions. Red means nothing written yet, orange is a draft, green is approved.
3. Write in the answer box, which saves 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, which applies itself when a question matches it. The chip under the box says what approving does right now.
4. Tidy as you go: merge two cards that are really one question, split one that holds two, fix a group's wording, and check the Spam section for false positives.
5. When the session ends, click Publish answers. The public page goes live and the answers email goes out by itself to everyone who opted in and confirmed.
6. Within a few minutes, the session report is on Reports, and in your email if you subscribed to the class's reports.

Do I need to watch the board the whole time? No. New questions raise a bright card for twenty seconds, and Desktop notifications in the top right of the moderation page posts a system notification whenever the window is not in front. Clicking the notification brings the window back and takes you to the question: its card opens, scrolls into view and flashes. Clicking the bright 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.

The board

How do I write and approve an answer? Type in the answer box (it autosaves as you type), then click Approve. 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.

Do participants see answers during the class? Only if the class has Show answers during the session switched on, which an admin or developer sets in the class's Session defaults; it is off unless someone turns it on. With it on, approving an answer sends it straight to the phone of whoever asked that question, under "Answered for you". People only ever see answers to their own questions; everyone gets the full set after the session. Treat approving as publishing while this is on.

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; to change the wording first, use Fix & re-check, which re-runs the full process on your edit. In a class that allows Spanish submissions, a submission written in Spanish is rendered into English for the board and carries a small "es" tag in the spam list; the AI's English rendering is what you group and answer.

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, and now and then someone types a poll answer into it. 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.

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 pause, resume, or end a session from here? Yes. 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 controls live in the facilitator's control room.

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? In the Stock Answers panel on the left of the moderator screen, 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.

Your knowledge base

These tools appear once an admin has connected DriveState.

How do I draft an answer from our own knowledge base? 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.

After the session

How do I publish the answers? End the session, then Publish answers. 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 session report? On Reports, which every member of the organization can open: pick the class, then the session. It also goes by email to everyone subscribed to that class's reports. It 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), and, when a knowledge base is linked, the questions it could not answer. RoomSum writes the summary within about five minutes of a session closing; ✨ AI summary writes or rewrites one on demand. The summary is generated from what participants wrote (their questions and open-text poll answers) and from the plans' action items and notes, generalized so that no plan is identifiable, never from your answers, so read it before you pass it on.

How do I tidy old sessions? On Reports, Archive (on any closed session) hides it from the default lists and nothing else changes: published answers stay up, exports still work, and the class report always counts every session. Deleting a session, offered there on archived sessions, is admin only.

Where are the course evaluation results? On Reports, on the session, when the class has the evaluation on: the NPS, the two score distributions, the comments, and Download CSV. Responses are anonymous; the report says how many of those present answered, never who. The class report carries the cumulative NPS across sessions.

Troubleshooting

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.

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 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.

"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. 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.

"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.

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.