Disable avatars on whiteboards.

Question

I'd like to use a confluence whiteboard for my teams next retrospective, and would like to share the board ahead of time, so that everyone can add cards before the meeting starts. While the board can be put into private mode, it still shows all team-members present on the page currently, which kinda defeats the purpose of the private mode (If you're see a post-it note being added to the board, and only one other team-member is on it next to you, you'll know who put it there).
While I found that avatars can be disable for published pages, this setting doesn't seem to transfer to the whiteboard, and the private more doesn't seem to impact the avatar visibility as well. Am I missing a setting? Thank you for your help!

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Martin Grühn -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Unrelated to your avatar visibility question, but related to the retro process you describe...

There is some risk allowing people an essentially unlimited amount of time to add cards / ideas before the session.  It could create a challenge where there is not enough time to read or organize the ideas, let alone perform other steps, in the retro discussion.  During a retro with the team present, this is often managed with a timebox for brainstorming / adding ideas, leading people to self-manage which ideas they offer.

How is your team managing when there are too many ideas to discuss?

Kind regards,
Bill

Martin Grühn · Answer

Hi Abi, thank you for your response!

The setting suggested by you will only disable to author name on the post-it note itself.
In contrast, I am looking for a setting to disable the general presence of team-member avatars on the whiteboard itself. Therefore the avatars that are displayed on the top-right corner of the board, and that are visible at all time. With those visible, it doesn't matter that the post-it notes themselves are anonymous and that the private mode is enabled; the overall process is no longer anonymous.

It may be the case, that only I and another team-member are on the board at a given moment, and I notice a whole cluster of post-it notes appearing (all of which by themselves are anonymous, of course). This way, if I am attentive enough, I may know who wrote them even without my team-members name being attached them, when the actual Retro meeting takes place and the private mode is toggled off. It is just a design flaw in the overall concept.
Like I've mentioned, I am providing a head-start of seven days for my team, during which each of us may prepare the Retro individually, so it is not far-fetched to think that, by sheer happenstance, only two members are preparing their notes on the board at the same time.

I may not be able to convince with my team to use Confluence Whiteboard with this current behaviour of the application, and we may have to revert back to Mural.

Thank you, once again!

Abi Brown- Kolekti · Answer

Hi does this work

How to use Private Mode:

Open: the whiteboard you want to use.

Turn on: private mode by selecting the private mode icon in the right-side toolbar.

: To keep the authors anonymous after the session, toggle on the "Keep authors anonymous" option.

Select: "Start for everyone" to begin the private mode session.

I was not sure from above if you had used the toggle part!

Hope it works for you!

Thanks

Abi