Mural’s real magic begins when you invite teammates to collaborate together. Those teammates might be members of your organization or others you want to share ideas with. This article is a one-stop-shop so you can feel prepared for your next collaborative session in Mural.
Contents
Collaboration use cases
Collaboration means working together. Easy enough, right? But how does that look when put into practice? And, when should you collaborate live in a mural versus asynchronously? Here are some common use cases for using Mural, and helpful resources for each.
Agile ceremonies
Agile ceremonies are meetings where team members update each other on their project’s details. Some common agile ceremonies include sprint planning, daily stand-ups, and sprint retrospectives.
Here are some of our most popular templates for agile ceremonies:
Retrospective - Reflect with your team on recent work. This could be after a sprint or after a cross-team project.
Team warm-ups and energizers - Short team-building exercises aimed at overcoming shyness and boosting energy with a group of distributed people.
Brainstorming & ideation
Brainstorming is a well-known term defined as a group discussion to produce ideas or solve problems. The beauty of Mural is that a collaborative brainstorming session can happen live, even if your team is scattered across the globe.
Here are some of our most popular templates for brainstorming and ideation:
Conducting a brainstorm - Use this when you’re just starting a new project and want to hit the ground running with big ideas.
Brainstorm and idea prioritization - Hold a brainstorming session so your team can unleash their imagination and start shaping concepts.
Strategy & planning
A collaborative meeting about strategic planning is where you and your team set goals and create a blueprint for the future of a project, the team, or the company.
Here are some of our most popular templates for strategy and planning:
Roadmap: One year - Plan work across an entire year. (We also have a quarterly roadmap template.)
Swimlane diagram - This flowchart provides a clarifying structure to complex processes and responsibilities.
Alignment & coordination
Collaborating with others, especially asynchronously, requires clear goals, regular check-ins, and transparent communication. Whether async or live, alignment has never been easier than it is in Mural.
Here are some of our most popular templates for alignment and coordination:
Wall of work - Track the status of your to-do list or an entire team’s work on an active project.
Team alignment workshop - Get your team on the same page by collaborating visually in this strategy alignment template.
Research & analysis
Working together to investigate topics or projects in an in-depth, systematic manner is imperative to the success of any business. From there, you and your team can analyze and interpret the research findings so you can confidently move forward.
Here are some of our most popular templates for research and analysis:
User journey - Work with your team to gain a deeper understanding of your users, their pain points, and how you can best support them.
Customer experience journey map - Understand customer needs, motivations, and obstacles.
For more information, check out Mural’s case studies to see how real companies are using Mural to innovate and transform.
Collaborator types (member, guest, visitor)
Not everyone has the same collaboration needs in Mural. To help facilitate efficient collaboration, Mural has different collaborator types and offers different permissions based on each person’s role.
What is a member in Mural? - A member is a registered user who has full access to the collaboration features and content available in your plan. Members are typically part of your core team as they need full access to Mural and your workspace(s).
What is a guest in Mural? - A guest is a registered user that does not have full access to the collaboration features and content available in your plan. We recommend inviting those who are external to your organization as guests. Guests are only available as part of Enterprise and Business plans.
What is a visitor in Mural? - A visitor is a non-registered user who is invited to collaborate temporarily, with limited access to collaboration features, in specific murals. You’d invite a visitor if you want a person to have temporary access to a mural.
Note: Not all plans have visitors enabled with edit access. For the best collaborative experience, we recommend inviting collaborators as members. Or, on the Free plan, visitors can request access to the workspace and become a member.
For more information on collaborator types, check out Introduction to collaborator types.
Collaborator roles
Mural members can hold administrative roles, such as company admin or workspace admin. Mural members or guests can also be facilitators, which gives them access to unique tools and lets them run collaborative sessions in Mural.
Administrators
What is a company administrator? - Company admins are Mural members with access to the company dashboard, meaning they can edit settings on a company-wide level. These admins are designated when your organization joins an Enterprise plan.
What is a workspace administrator? - A Mural member with full access to a workspace, allowing them to update members, permissions, and settings on a workspace-wide level.
Facilitators
What is a facilitator? - If you’re in charge of leading a workshop or session using Mural, we call that “facilitating.” A facilitator is a Mural member (or Mural guest if guest facilitation has been enabled) who has facilitator permissions. If you’re the owner of a mural, you’re automatically a facilitator in that mural.
To make your facilitation fun and easy, Mural gives facilitators a few extra tools called Facilitation Superpowers®.
Some examples of Facilitation Superpowers are:
Timer - Keep track of time as you're facilitating by time-boxing activities you run in a mural.
Voting - Make decisions together by running voting sessions with your collaborators.
Private mode - Give collaborators the space to add content privately.
Laser pointer - Point a virtual laser on-screen to bring attention to mural content as they present or explain.
Custom toolbar - Customize which visual thinking tools are available to collaborators in your mural.
Summon participants - Direct collaborators to your current location on the mural.
Tips and tricks when collaborating
Here are some helpful resources so you can feel like a pro when collaborating with others in Mural:
Before a session
Explore human-centered design through the LUMA System™ to become a better collaborative problem solver.
During a session
Present your content - No need to launch that old, unwieldy presentation app when you can present your content directly from a mural.
Hide cursors on the canvas - Maintain focus in a mural by hiding your cursor or those of your collaborators.
Follow collaborators - See what other collaborators are seeing in a mural by following them. Or, share your view with them.
Facilitation Superpowers® - A special set of features for those conducting workshops and meetings to help you save time and stay in control of your sessions.
After a session
Comment and tag collaborators - Discuss ideas asynchronously with your team by leaving comments for your collaborators.
Export and download your canvas - Get an export of your mural’s content for offline viewing.
Embed view-only murals - Show off your work on an external site by embedding a view-only version of your mural.
We hope you feel better-equipped for your journey in Mural. As always, if you have any questions, reach out to Mural Support. Or, for a deeper dive on Mural, check out our Resources and support article.