Hi 👋 Jack here, Toasty’s Head of Product.
Since launching Toasty for remote engagement a couple of weeks ago, the most common request we have received is to add a chat feature… Today I’m happy to announce we have launched chat!
Toasty’s new chat feature
Chat is available now in all Toasty sessions. Anyone can kickstart the conversation by going to the Chat tab and sending a message to everyone.
Chat is perfect to share info without interrupting the presentation and chat, so your participants can stay muted. It’s simple, smooth and easy to use.
I wanted to highlight a particularly cool part of our chat feature: Each group has their own private chatroom.
Splitting your participants into breakout groups is a key part of Toasty, and the chat feature works seamlessly with these groups. Once groups have been formed, it’s easy for a participant to toggle between the Main Room and their Group Room chats at any time.
As the host, you can send updates to everyone via the Main Room chat. If you visit a group in their breakout room, you can also see the chat messages in their group chat.
New participant management tools
As well as chat, we’ve also launched a set of tools for hosts to manage the participants of a session.
The biggest update is the Manage participants button in the sidebar, which opens the controls seen above. Here we have several new options available:
- See who is online. We’ve added a status indicator to let you know which participants are active and online, and which may have left the session and are currently offline.
- Change a participant’s group. Want to make changes to your current groups? Between activities, you can now move any participant to any group.
- Toggle on Screen share permission. Many sessions have multiple participants giving a presentation, so now you can give any participant the ability to share their screen.
- Remove participant. You can remove any participant from the session, which is useful to ensure offline participants to do not interrupt activities.
We’ve also added a toggle to Disable participant cameras and mics in the main room. This allows you as the host to silence everyone, perfect for giving presentations with no interruptions. You can toggle it on and off as needed.
That’s it for this update, but we’re busy working on more improvements and updates for Toasty, so I’ll be sharing another update soon.
Take care and stay safe. I love to hear about how teams are adapting to working from home and staying connected and engaged. Don’t hesitate to email me at [email protected] with any ideas or questions.