Check-in

What a Check-in room is

A Check-in room runs standups and pulse surveys in writing, on a schedule. Instead of a daily call, questions go out automatically, people answer when it suits them, and everyone reads on their own time. Each entry carries a mood signal and optional status flags, and responses roll up into team-level analytics — so the room answers both "what is everyone doing" and "how is everyone doing".

Add a Check-in room

1. In the space's sidebar, click + and pick the Check-in room type.
2. Name it and set visibility. A team standup is usually open to the space; a wellbeing pulse may warrant a smaller audience.

Set up a check-in

Pick a template or write questions. A library of 36 templates spans industries and covers daily standups, retro-style prompts, and pulse surveys. Start from the closest template and adjust, or write your own questions.

Set the schedule. Choose the cadence — daily, weekly, monthly — and check-ins go out automatically from then on. Nobody has to remember to trigger them.

Keep the question set short enough to answer in a few minutes. The lighter the ritual, the better it sticks.

Answer a check-in

When a check-in arrives, answer the questions and set your mood:

• Green — going well.
• Yellow — some friction.
• Red — struggling.

Mood is one tap, which is exactly why it stays honest.

Add status flags when an entry needs attention beyond the answers:

• Blocked — something is stopping your work.
• Help — you need a hand.
• Milestone — something worth marking got done.
• Kudos — recognition for a teammate.

Flags are how blockers get spotted the day they're raised instead of surfacing at the end of the week.

Say it out loud instead

Not everyone wants to type their standup, so there are two ways to give one by video, both ending in the same place — the day's check-in is published.

• The meeting. One live room per day. People join, talk and share a screen, and whoever started it can record. Ending the meeting publishes the check-in of everyone who was in it. Standing up and saying it is the check-in, and making people then type it again is how standups get resented.
• A recording. For anyone who could not make it: record, upload, done. Finishing the upload publishes that person's check-in.

Recordings are kept with the rest of the organization's files, in the Bookbag account service, and they count against the owner's account allowance — which is shared with Madebook and Bookbag, so a long recording here eats into the room those have too. They do not count if the organization has pointed itself at its own storage. Playback is served through Openbook behind the room's own permission check rather than straight from the bucket. See Storage and files.

Read and act on responses

Scan the round's entries and go to the flags first — a Blocked or Help flag is a same-day action item. For managers, two views cover early-warning:

• Individual entries — flags mark what needs action today.
• Team Pulse analytics — moods and responses rolled into trends over time. A slow slide from green to yellow shows up here weeks before it would surface in a one-on-one.

Publish digests

Turn a round of check-ins into a publishable digest: a shareable summary that gives stakeholders the picture without reading every entry. Use it for the weekly summary a department head actually wants, generated from the check-ins the team already wrote.

Tips

• Replace the morning standup call with a check-in due before a set time; the call becomes optional and the record is written.
• Run a monthly wellbeing pulse alongside the daily standup — different cadence, different template, same room type.
• Treat a red mood or a Help flag as a prompt for a conversation, not a metric. The signal only stays honest if responding to it is safe.
• Rotate or refresh questions occasionally so answers don't go on autopilot.

FAQ

Will people actually fill these in? Short, scheduled, and async beats a meeting for most teams: a few minutes to answer, mood in one tap, on your own schedule.

What kinds of check-ins can we run? Daily standups, weekly reviews, and pulse surveys, for a start — the 36-template library covers these across industries, and scheduling handles the cadence.

How do managers spot problems early? Flags like Blocked and Help mark entries needing action today; Team Pulse analytics show mood and response trends over time.

Can we share results outside the team? Yes — publish a digest summarizing a round of check-ins for stakeholders.