Hi, Jack here – Toasty’s Head of Product.
I’m super excited to share with you Toasty’s latest product update. It’s going to make your life so much easier! Before I do that, our co-founder and CEO, Kevon, would love to share with you why we’re having such a big update this time.
“Building a simple and useful product has always been in our hearts at Toasty, and we’re always on the lookout for ways to improve our users’ experience. This UX overhaul is something we’re super excited about, and we cannot wait to share this with you! What we learned is that during a virtual meeting or workshop, you (the host) want the flexibility to engage the participants based on how things are going – let’s prompt everyone a question, let’s get everyone to answer a poll, let’s regroup everyone to do a new discussion etc. We heard you, and we’re making it possible now. Continue to support and give us feedback – we love them! Cheers.”
Co-founder & CEO, Kevon
If you prefer a video demo of our changes, Kevon is going to walk you through the details in 10 mins.
1. A whole new flow to launch live sessions
Previously, you had to pre-plan your Toasty activities and prepare the agenda of your session ahead of time.
Now, your session is ready to start immediately! If you’re an existing Toasty user, you’ll be delighted to find that your session starts immediately when you click Create new Session.
It’s so easy to add content and activities – you can use our templates or create activities during the session (more on that below), so now you can create your session and invite participants immediately when your session is scheduled, rather than preparing beforehand.
Check out the video below to see how it looks.
2. A flexible way to engage your participants
As a host, our updated toolbar allows you to control every aspect of the session at your fingertips. Scroll down to see it!
Firstly, you can manage your participants:
- Disable everyone’s camera and mic so you can present with no disruptions
- Move participants between groups
- Give a participant the ability to share their screen and present with video and audio
- Breakout into small group rooms or bring everyone back to the main room with a single click
And now you can also manage your session’s activities:
- Add a Template, which includes pre-made activities
- Add new activities, including the ability to create random groups
- Edit, move, delete and restart activities
3. Introducing Toasty’s new templates!
We have a wide selection of templates already available, and the best thing is we’re adding new templates every week.
We’ve also made it a lot easier to get started. Just click Start session and you’ll be able to choose a template immediately. These templates are ready-to-play, no editing needed. Try something different every time!
What sort of templates does Toasty have?
Each of our templates is designed for a certain use case for teams. Currently, we have templates for these use cases:
- Team happy hour – get to know your teammates better while having fun.
- Daily stand-up – help your team start their day with their best foot forward
- All hands meeting – get everyone interacting at your team or company all-hands/town hall meeting
- Other – we’re working on specialist templates for a range of other use-cases
Even better, each template can help you achieve an objective or goal with your team. For example:
- Watercoolers: strengthen bonds between team members
- Discussion & Meeting Efficiency: Improve communication and collaboration
- Teamwork: Increase the level of trust and transparency in your team
As I said, we’ll be adding more templates regularly, so please do request any additional templates you’d like to see.
How do Toasty templates work?
Start a new Toasty session and you’ll be able to pick a template straight away. Once you choose one, those activities will be instantly added to your session, ready for you to invite your participants and get started.
You can even add additional activities to the same session by clicking + Activities and choosing another template. Most of our templates are designed to be pretty quick, so you can add multiple if you want.
4. New activities available: Poll & Individual Response
Along with our new templates, we’ve also just released two new activities that you can run at any time to make your Toasty session more engaging
Poll
Run a quick poll at any time during your session. Just click the Poll button and set up your questions and options. Participants can respond instantly.
Individual Response
Have your participants respond to a question or prompt by submitting text or an image. Everyone will submit their own response, and you can even allow everyone to vote on the best responses.
Retiring in-person Toasty sessions
Since Covid19, we’ve been focused on helping teams run better meetings virtually, whether they are seasoned remote workers or newcomers to working-from-home because of the virus. At Toasty, we believe the future of work is flexible, with much more support for virtual and remote working.
We are now retiring in-person Toasty sessions. In the past, Toasty could be used at offline events and meetings, but the overwhelming majority of our users now are seeking a virtual solution. We are removing the ability for users to create new in-person sessions, allowing us to focus 100% of our efforts on Toasty’s virtual experience.
🍡 Our new templates and activities are available now in your Toasty account! I hope you find them useful and have fun exploring the new additions with your team. As always, I love hearing any questions and feedback you have. Contact me at [email protected] to get in touch.