Overview of GroupMap

Overview of GroupMap – An Introduction

GroupMap is a powerful tool to improve the speed and quality of your group brainstorming by facilitating discussions and building consensus. GroupMap is used around the world, virtually and/or face to face to capture what people think in real-time.

DESIGN YOUR MAP

Focus on how people think, share, and discover by designing the overall look and feel of each of your maps.  There are lists, mind maps, charts, and canvases that can be tailored to suit your activity. The map design determines where contributors can add ideas. You can change the following in each map:

ALL MAPS

Headings – Add topic themes, key questions, or concepts to focus on people’s thinking.

Descriptions – Provide more detail for each heading.

Color – Use the color palette to differentiate regions.

Icons /Picture – Gives your map a little personality by placing an icon as part of the backdrop. Ideas will be posted over the icon.

For charts,

Region – Give a region a specific name.

Axis Label – Name the X and Y axis of the chart.

CUSTOMIZE YOUR PROCESS

GroupMap’s innovative features let you add or remove steps to each map, allowing you to create a lightning-fast brainstorm through to a detailed think tank. Each step can be customized and reordered to achieve the best outcomes. Manage each step by hiding it, allowing view-only access, or bring all contributors to a specific step. Reports are generated for each step.  You can choose the level of anonymity within the map and use the advanced features to turn off specific features on the map if you wish.

Brainstorm – Lets people add ideas to a map. You can determine how people can contribute ideas to a map, including brainstorming style and the number of ideas people can add.

Group – Lets you or contributors put similar ideas into a group and rename it if needed. GroupMap keeps an audit trail of group ideas. People can then vote, rate, take action, or comment on groups of ideas.

Rate – Lets contributors rate each idea on a sliding scale or against a score (up to 999). Each contributor rates independently. Results are automatically collated to show the average results of ratings and the spread of how everyone rated.

Vote – People can prioritize the top ideas by allocating dot votes to ideas. You can decide if people can allocate multiple or just one dot vote to an idea and if they have to allocate all their votes before they can proceed to the next step. Sort the results to show the most voted ideas at the top.

Position – People can drag and drop ideas around the map. Use this sorting exercise to drag the most important ideas to the top of the list, along the axis of a chart, or to a different region of a canvas. You can do this individually to see how aligned people are, or promote a collaborative approach so that everyone sees the same output. Reports will show the position of ideas relative to each other.

Action – Add multiple actions to an idea based on what needs to be done, who is responsible, and when it needs to be done by. Generate a report with a list of actions for each idea.

Results – This step displays the final outcomes from each step. You can view this at any time. Ideas can be sorted according to votes, ratings, or alphabetically.

Consent – Provide a notification or have contributors acknowledge the terms and conditions of joining a map. Reports show you the date and time of people providing their consent.

Survey – Create a basic survey with multiple-choice questions contributors can respond to prior to joining the map.

Subscribers with professional and enterprise accounts can add the same step multiple times and rename them. (E.g. 2 voting steps).

You can also save the maps with your customized process as a template for future use.  

RUN YOUR ACTIVITY

Invite people into your map as viewers, contributors of facilitators with email, link, QR Code, or Map ID. GroupMap works on all devices with a modern browser and Internet connection. Lead people through the activity, facilitate discussion, capturing ideas and comments as you go through each step. People will see the process flow on their screen. You can see who is on your map and change their access level.

During your activity, you will have facilitator controls including:

Customizing the step – You can change the settings of a step at any point during the process.

Size or sort ideas – Automatically rearrange ideas alphabetically, their position or based on the number of likes, dot votes, ratings, or scores so that the best ideas float to the top.

Contributors can edit – This can be toggled on and off to manage when people can input ideas into a step.

Contributors can view – This can be toggled off to hide a step.

Lock contributors in this step – Brings all contributors to a particular step in your process.

Import ideas from another map – Allows you to bring in ideas from a different map.

Clear all ideas – Resets the map and clears out any previous data (note that this cannot be undone).

Lock the map – Prevents further changes occurring within the map.

SHARE YOUR OUTCOMES

All results are updated in real-time so you can see them during or at the end of your process. Easily generate reports which can be shared by inviting people to the map or downloaded as a PDF, CSV, or Excel file.

Map report – Shows an overall image of the map results screen (non-interactive) and the process flow and step settings used in the activity.

Participants – Provides details of people in your map and their last activity. Clicking on a user name will show a report of what they did on the map.

Ideas – Provides a list of ideas. Clicking on an idea shows further detail about the idea such as any comments, votes, or ratings.

Your report – Provides a summary of an individual’s activity in the map.

Step reports (brainstorm, voting etc) – Provides more details and breakdown of activity by people in that step.

MANAGE YOUR MAPS

All maps that you create or have joined will be kept in your map library. You can start typing in the search field to find maps.

Save as template – Allows you to save a template version of the map based on the customizations you have created as a separate map category. This is good for regular use.

Use as a template – Creates another map using the existing map setting.

Clone with ideas – Creates a copy of a map with all ideas in them (Excludes other information). This is good if you want to refocus on ideas generated in a map.

Archive – Hides the map from the main view into the Archived tab. This can be retrieved later if needed.

Delete – Only available if you are the map creator. This deletes the map and the data within the map. Non-reversible.