Customizing the Interaction Panel

Last Updated: April 2, 2021

Customizing the Interaction Panel

The Interaction Panel is a great feature on Engagez, allowing you to customize how much you want Attendees to interact with various locations. This article will focus specifically on the various functions that the Interaction Panel has in Sessions. Follow along for a walkthrough of customizing your Interaction Tabs. 

1. To begin, you’ll need to know about the three different areas where you can set up your Interaction Panel for Sessions. The first place is under Administer > Sessions > Default Settings.

This is where you can choose what you would like your Interaction Panel to show in your Sessions as a default. This is a great option if you plan on having all of your Interaction Panels in your Sessions be the same.

If you would have already created a few Sessions but would like to update all your Interaction Panels to be the same, click “Check to update all existing sessions with this setting when saved.”

Note: This function will only update the interaction panel in Sessions. It will not update your interaction panel in any other locations.

2. The second place you can edit or manage your Interaction Panel is in the creation of a Session. When you create or edit a Session from the Sessions page under Administer, there will be four tabs to configure your session: Description, Schedule, Video, Interaction, and Advanced. You can get to these tabs by either clicking Create New Session or clicking on Edit Session.

The Interaction tab will be where you can customize your Interaction panel for that specific session.

3. The third place you can edit your Interaction Panel is directly within the Session. Go to the Menu Bar and click Sessions. Then located the specific session that you would like to customize.

Once in the Session, click on Edit Session.

This will pull up the same five tabs that you seen on the backend of the Sessions page. Click Interactions and turn on or off which features you would like to use for that specific session. 

Remember to hit Submit when you are finished making your changes.

4. Now, we will go over what each option is and what type of interaction it can bring to your sessions. The first thing to note is that next to each option you will see a text box with the words “Enter Alternate Label”. Here, you can rename the option to be anything you would like. For example, some people change the Resources option to say Slides if they plan on only placing the speaker’s slides in that area. If you do not enter an alternate label, it will pull the original name the feature is given. 

5. The first feature is the Q&A tab. This is a great option for attendees to post comments or questions during a session as well as respond or receive responses from others. It also allows attendees to attach files or pictures to their posts and choose whether or not they want their submissions to be private or public.

You can customize the Welcome Message that all attendees will see in order to prompt them to engage. 

There are also options to aggregate all sessions’ Q&A. This will cause all previous Q&A posts to be carried over to each session. If you would like to only allow Speakers and Moderators to respond to questions, click the Limit Q&A to Private Submissions Only button. This means that other attendees will not be able to see posts made by others nor will they be able to respond to other posts. Only Admins, Moderators, and people labeled as Speakers for that session will be able to see and respond to posts. 

6. The next feature is the About area. This section will automatically pull any information entered in the Description tab as well as the bios and headshots of your Speakers and the date and time of the Session.

To edit this, you’ll need to make any changes directly in the Description tab under Edit Session.

7. If your Speaker plans on giving out handouts or allowing people to follow along with their slides, you’ll want to turn on the Resources option. 

To add any resources, turn on this feature then click Add Resource.

This will allow you to add various types of resources to the Session. You can use File(s) to pull resources that you have uploaded to your Media Library. These can be PDFs, PNGs, JPGs, or MP4s. You can also add Links or Embedded HTML. Then hit Publish. 

8. The Chat feature is a less formal option than Q&A. All posts will be public, but an Admin or Moderator has the ability to delete these posts. 

With this feature, people do not have the ability to directly respond to other posts.

9. The Twitter option allows you to embed your company’s Twitter feed into the Session so that attendees can see real-time updates.

10. Polls are a great way to engage your audience with questions and to gage their interest in various topics.

You can either create the polls ahead of time or create them in the moment. Click Add a Poll to create a poll and get started. 

Type in the question you want to ask, the response options you want to provide, and then choose whether people will only be able to choose one response or multiple. Then click Create. 

Click Open Polling when you want the poll to live and available to attendees.

When the poll is done, click Close Polling. You can also review the results by clicking Polling Result. 

11. The Notes option allows attendees to take notes during the Session and email them to themselves. 

12. The Online Now option functions much like the Who’s Online Now pop-up in that it will show attendees who is currently active on the site. 

13. Staff is a great option for listing out Staff members for a Session. These Staff members can be venue-level Staff members (who often belong to the company putting on the conference) or booth-level Staff members (who are associated with a specific Exhibitor Booth).

Note: When creating a Session, you have the option under the Advanced tab to link the Session to an Exhibitor Booth. 

14. Surveys can also be attached to your Sessions and are often used to either gather interested individual’s information or conduct session feedback. You must create a Survey first by going to Administer > Forms > Create New Form before you can attach the survey to the session.  

Warning: You can only attach one Survey to one Session. You cannot use the same Survey across multiple sessions. We recommend creating a Survey template for things like feedback forms and then copying them, renaming them, and attaching them to their corresponding session.

15. The HTML 1, HTML 2, and HTML3 options allow you to further customize your Session by embedding the content of your choice directly into the Interaction Panel. You can also limit who can see or interact with these embedded tabs by limiting them to Access Groups that have already been created. 

Remember to hit Submit after you’ve finished customizing your Interaction Panel!

Still have questions? Visit the Engagez Support venue or email us at support@kb.engagez.com. If you’ve purchased an implementation package, please contact your implementation representative through Skype or email.