The roundtable

The roundtable is one question put to every colleague at once. Instead of asking Hardware, then Quality, then Supply Chain and stitching the answers together yourself, you ask once and each colleague responds from its own angle.

Use it when a question crosses colleagues: a design decision with cost and compliance consequences, a change that touches manufacturing and test, or the opening review of a brand-new product.

Start a roundtable

1. Select the product you want discussed.
2. Open the colleague picker in the composer and choose ● Roundtable (all).
3. Describe the situation and send.

An empty roundtable greets you with Start a roundtable — All enabled colleagues will discuss your product together. A strip above the messages lists who is taking part, for example 8 colleagues participating, with each colleague's colour dot.

While it runs

A progress panel replaces the usual typing dots:

• Roundtable in progress with a counter such as 3/8 colleagues.
• One line per colleague, marked ○ waiting, ↻ working now, ✓ finished.
• A blue progress bar.
• Directives issued — the concrete instructions the roundtable has handed to individual colleagues, each tagged with the colleague it is meant for.

A roundtable takes longer than a single answer because every colleague thinks separately. Leave it running; you can read the earlier responses as they land.

Directives are the output that matters

The discussion is useful, but the directives are the point. A directive is one colleague being told to do something specific — write a requirement, check a tolerance, get a supplier quote.

Once a roundtable has issued directives, you see them again in the individual colleague chats: a purple strip reading Roundtable directives: with up to three of them. Click one to jump back to the roundtable thread it came from, or × to dismiss the strip.

Treat directives as your backlog

Work them one at a time in the relevant colleague's chat. That is much more effective than asking the roundtable to do the work itself — the roundtable is for deciding, the individual colleagues are for doing.

Bringing a question to the roundtable

If you are already deep in a one-to-one conversation and realise it needs wider input, click ↗ Roundtable next to the colleague pill. Your last message is carried over, marked with the chat it came from, so you do not have to explain the background twice.

New products start here

When you create a product, Colleag opens the roundtable automatically and asks every colleague to look at what you described. That first pass produces the initial gap list — what is missing, what is risky, what needs deciding — which is exactly what you want on day one. See Products.

Troubleshooting

Problem	What is going on
Only two or three colleagues take part	Only colleagues that are part of the product join. Check each colleague's status under Settings → Colleagues.
The roundtable option is missing	You are in Commercial, Corporate or Quality System, or you have not selected a product. The roundtable runs on a product.
It is very slow	Every colleague answers in turn. Use a cheaper model for broad discussions and save the expensive one for the decisions.
Credits drop quickly	A roundtable is many answers in one go. That is expected — use it for questions that genuinely span several colleagues, not for lookups.

Next: Products →