Roles and participants

Everyone in a planning room holds one voting role, and any number of people can also hold moderator controls on top of it. Nothing on this page needs a paid plan.

Choose your role#

You pick a role when you join: Dev, QA, or Observer.

Dev and QA both vote. Observer follows along — the queue, the discussion, the revealed results — without voting, and never counts toward the "waiting to vote" total, so a round is never held up on an observer.

To change your role without leaving:

1. Open your name menu at the top right of the room.
2. Under Voting role, pick Dev, QA, or Observer.

The change takes effect immediately, including mid-round. Everyone's role is shown beside their name in the presence rail and in the participants list.

Dev and QA scored together or separately#

By default Dev and QA votes are pooled into one team estimate. The role is still labelled next to each name; it just does not change how the round is scored.

A moderator can change that from the Room menu → Room settings, in the General section under "Separate Dev and QA estimates?". Switch it from One team estimate to Separate by role and each round collects and accepts a Dev number and a QA number side by side, plus a combined total. With the split on, a moderator also gets an Included roles control beside the participant rail, so a single item can be put to Dev only or QA only.

Choose your bee#

Everyone in a room has a bee — a small avatar shown beside their name in the presence rail, the participants list, and the row of faces in the top bar. You get one the moment you join, generated from your display name, so a room full of people is never a row of identical grey circles.

To change it:

1. Open your name menu at the top right of the room.
2. Choose Choose your bee.
3. Pick one from the tray, press Shuffle for a different set, or open Customize to set the background, color, headwear and the rest yourself.
4. Press Save.

Your teammates see the change immediately — there is nothing to reload.

Guests can do this too; you do not need an account. If you are signed in, the bee you pick follows you into every room and every Retro. A guest's bee belongs to the room they picked it in.

Give someone moderator controls#

Moderator is not one of the roles you join with. It is a permission layered on top, and a room can have several moderators at once. Moderators change room settings, start and reveal voting, accept estimates, and manage the queue.

1. As a moderator, open the Room menu in the top bar and choose Room settings.
2. Switch to the Participants tab.
3. Click the shield-plus button beside a name to make that person a moderator.

The shield button flips to shield-minus once someone holds the permission; click it to take moderator away again.

Claim moderator when nobody is running the room#

If a room has no connected moderator — the facilitator's laptop died, or a recurring room has been reopened by someone else — a Take moderator button appears in the top bar for anyone in the room. Click it and you have the controls.

The room's owner is the exception to the "no moderator connected" condition: the owner always sees Take moderator and can reclaim control even while somebody else is moderating.

Moderator keyboard shortcuts#

While you hold moderator controls and a work item is on the stage, five single keys drive the round:

Key	Action
S	Start voting (while voting is paused)
R	Reveal votes
A	Accept the current estimate
N	Next item — skips the current one
C	Clear votes and re-open voting

N and C ask for confirmation first if any votes have been cast, because both discard them. Shortcuts are ignored while you are typing in a text field, and ignored when Cmd, Ctrl, or Alt is held, so they never fight with browser shortcuts.

Hide your own vote while you share your screen#

Whoever shares the room over a call is showing everyone their own hand, and a lifted amber card gives their estimate away before the reveal.

1. Open your name menu.
2. Choose Presenter mode.

From then on, until the votes are revealed, your own card is not marked as chosen on your screen, and nothing names it: the line under your hand reads "Vote cast — hidden while you present" instead. Everyone else's view is untouched — you still count as voted, and your card still turns up in the spread at the reveal like anyone else's.

Two buttons sit on that line, because a hand with no visible selection cannot carry them:

• Show me un-hides your card for five seconds, then hides it again on its own. It is on screen for everyone watching while it shows.
• Clear vote takes your vote back. Choosing your own card again is how you normally retract, and that needs a card you can pick out.

One room setting overrides all of this. If Room settings → When are votes revealed? is set to Show votes live, every card goes on the stage as it is cast — yours included — so there is nothing presenter mode can cover. The line under your hand says so rather than pretending otherwise; switch the room to Hide until reveal first.

Presenter mode also prints each card's keyboard shortcut on the card, whether or not you use Keyboard hints — voting with the keys avoids a mouse travelling toward your answer, which gives it away just as plainly as the card would. The setting is remembered on this device and applies to every room you open here.

Remove someone from the room#

1. Open Room → Room settings → the Participants tab.
2. Click the person-x button beside the name you want to remove.
3. Confirm in the dialog.

Removing is not a ban. The dialog says so plainly: they can rejoin later with the room code. Use it to clear out a stale duplicate of somebody who rejoined under a new name, not as a moderation tool.

Three participants cannot be removed this way, and their buttons are disabled with the reason on hover: yourself, the room's owner, and the scripted bots in the demo room.

Step away without holding up the round#

Stepping out for coffee is better than leaving the room, because a break tells everyone else why the vote count is short.

1. Open your name menu.
2. Choose Set break.

While you are on break you are excluded from the "waiting to vote" total, so a round can finish without you. Other people see a coffee cup on your avatar in the presence rail. The same menu entry now reads Return from break — choose it when you are back.

When a connection drops#

SprintBee reconnects on its own and stays quiet about it for the first few seconds, so a brief network blip usually resolves before you notice. If the retry is still failing after that, a banner appears: "Connection lost. Trying to reconnect…", with a Reconnect now button if you would rather not wait. A short "Connection restored." note confirms when you are back.

Your seat is held for 30 seconds after a disconnect, so a refresh, a laptop lid, or a dropped Wi-Fi hop does not remove you from the room. Stay disconnected past that window and you are marked as having left and dropped from the vote totals. Rejoining with the room code restores you.

A tab left idle for 15 minutes is released deliberately, so an abandoned tab does not sit in the room occupying a vote slot. Coming back to that tab shows a Resume this room? prompt — Reconnect puts you back in, Leave closes it out.