Behold Butterers! The Session Planner is here!

With the Session Planner, we're fundamentally changing the way that you plan and set up your sessions in Butter.

It’s our biggest step so far towards our mission of becoming a full workflow platform that allows you to set up, run, and debrief your virtual workshops.

In this post, we’ll cover everything you need to know about Session Planner to prepare your next session.

Strap in, here we go!

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Psst... Not the reading kind of person? Then let Jakob, Butter CEO, take you on a video tour of the upcoming updates here:

What is the Butter Session Planner?

The Session Planner is a workshop setup tool that allows you to:

• Fully plan your virtual sessions and workshops in Butter
• Prepare all the tools you need before your session
• Easily run engaging remote sessions with everything lined up perfectly 👌

Excited yet? Let's look at how this actually works!

⚡️ Extreme agenda power-up

The new agenda planner is where all the magic happens. You can use this to plan your entire session!

The agenda is made up of blocks. Each block can be customized with a:

• Title: The name of the agenda item
• Description: A description or instructions visible to participants
• Duration: A time estimate, with the option of displaying it to participants
• Tools: The apps and activities that will be used for this agenda block
• Private notes: Notes or scripts, visible to facilitators only

You can also change the color of a block to make your agenda super snazzy.

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Adding tools to your agenda

Here’s the best part about the new agenda: you can add any tool directly to an agenda block.

This means you can prepare any tool or activity—whether it’s a poll, breakout session, Google Doc, Youtube video, whiteboard, or music playlist—and add them directly to your blocks. 🤯

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Let’s talk more about tools…

🛠 The new and improved toolbox

What if you don’t want to be tied to agenda, but you still want to set up your tools in advance? For this, we've built the Toolbox.

The toolbox allows you to pre-load tools and activities to be used later in your live sessions.

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Tools set up in your toolbox can also easily be added to the agenda if needed. You can also search and filter through the tools you've set up.

💅 Beautiful new room setup!

In order to make space for all of this, we've completely updated the room setup. Things have been moved around and everything has been given a fresh coat of paint.

The room setup now has five tabs:

• Overview - For customizing your room name and invite link
• Waiting room - For creating energy before your sessions
• Facilitators - For inviting co-facilitators to help you set up
• Toolbox - For preparing your resources
• Agenda - For bringing it all together in one plan

The result is a simple and intuitive layout with all of the stuff you need readily available!

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💁‍♀️ Updated in-session layout!

For all of this to be available in-session, we've also made updates to the session layout.

You'll notice that we've packed all of the tools previously stacked to the right into a little floating menu that contains access to your agenda and toolbox.

Need to make changes to your agenda during the session? No problem! Access the agenda directly from the floating menu as well!

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To start your planned session, simply click on 'Start agenda' as you normally would and you'll see everything you've prepared, allowing you to swiftly start the tools you need—exactly when you need them.

Here’s what it would look like to launch a Miro board from your agenda:

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That's all folks! 👋

By the way: everything you've already set up will still be available with the new updates.

But ho-ly cow! We hope you're buzzing just as much as we are. The best way to learn about the Session Planner is to give it a spin yourself.

To try the new Session Planner, try Butter for free.