Comments and reactions on prep tasks

Pre-work doesn't have to be a one-way street. By default, every prep task in Gleo carries two engagement affordances built in: emoji reactions and a comment thread, both visible to the rest of the participants on the same session.

Most facilitators leave these features dormant — and miss one of the highest-leverage ways to warm a session up before it starts. This page covers what they are, how participants use them, and how you read them as a facilitator.

What's on every prep task

Both surfaces are on by default. The participant doesn't need to be told they exist; they're visible inline as the participant works through the task list.

Why this matters

In most pre-work flows, the participant submits their answer and never sees what anyone else said. They walk into the session with no idea what the rest of the group is thinking. The first 10 minutes of the meeting then get spent surfacing positions that could have been visible all along.

Letting participants react and comment on each other's prep:

• Surfaces alignment and disagreement before the session. A response with five 👍 reactions tells you something different than a response with three 🤔 and a comment asking for clarification.
• Lowers the activation energy for the live conversation. People are more willing to engage in person on a topic they've already engaged with asynchronously.
• Gives quiet voices a way to amplify others. A participant who'd never interrupt in a live meeting can react with a 💯 to a colleague's idea — and the group sees it.
• Surfaces side-questions early. Comments on prep often catch the "wait, what does this mean?" moments before they derail the session.

The pattern: make prep social, and the session benefits twice — once from the prep itself, once from the warm start it produces.

Visibility — who sees what

How participants use them

From a participant's point of view:

Reactions

• A row of emoji thumbnails appears next to each task and each response. Click an emoji to add your reaction; click it again to remove it.
• The picker offers a small set of common emojis (👍 ❤️ 💯 🤔 🎉 …). Pick the one that captures your read.
• Counts aggregate — if four people react with 👍, the thumb shows once with a count of 4 next to it.

Comments

• The comment panel sits below each task. Type a comment and submit; it appears in the thread.
• Comments are attributed to the participant who posted them (or to a guest's chosen name).
• Anyone with access to the session prep can read the thread; replies are inline.

How facilitators see them

For the facilitator, reactions and comments surface in two places:

1. The prep page itself — the same view the participants see, with the same threads and reactions. Useful when you want to engage as a peer (e.g. responding to a participant question with clarification).
2. The Responses tab — the facilitator's read-out of all incoming prep, with reactions and comments aggregated alongside each response. The right place to scan engagement at a glance.

The Responses tab is covered in detail in Tracking responses as a facilitator.

Walkthrough

1. 1

   As participant A — submit a thoughtful response

   Open the prep link. Submit a substantive response to one of the tasks (more than a sentence; ideally with some real point of view).

2. 2

   As participant B — react and comment

   Open the same prep link in a different browser session (or as a different guest). React to participant A's response with an emoji. Add a comment that builds on or questions their point.

3. 3

   As facilitator — read on the Responses tab

   Open the session's Responses tab. Find participant A's response; you'll see participant B's reaction and comment alongside it.

4. 4

   Reference it in the session

   In the live session, surface the exchange — "I noticed B asked a clarifying question on A's response, let's start there." This is the engagement loop closing.

Tips & pitfalls

Related pages