It was Tuesday morning, just after eight. The facilitator had created the room the night before, entered three guiding questions, and sent the link to the team. The meeting was set for Thursday at ten. By then, everyone was supposed to have added their topics so the group could jump straight into prioritisation on Thursday.
At half past eight the first message arrived: “I can't get in.” At nine, the second. By quarter past nine it was clear that nobody could enter the room as long as the facilitator hadn't approved each request individually. She was in another call at the time.
The facilitator as bottleneck
Grounds Up has offered two access levels for rooms until now. The first: every join request must be approved individually. The facilitator sees a notification, decides, clicks. That works fine when everyone arrives at the same time and the facilitator is already at their screen. The second: the room is locked so that only people who have been approved once before can re-enter. That protects an ongoing discussion from unexpected guests.
Both options assume the facilitator is present for each person's first entry. In a synchronous meeting that starts at a fixed time, that's no problem. But the moment a room is opened early so the team can prepare at their own pace, the facilitator becomes a bottleneck. People arrive at different times, the facilitator has to react each time, and whoever doesn't get a response is stuck outside.
What has changed
The third level is called auto-approve. The facilitator activates it when creating the room, or at any point afterwards. From that moment on, anyone who knows the room link can enter immediately. No request, no waiting, no dependency on the facilitator.
The new workflow looks like this: the facilitator creates the room, defines the guiding questions, switches to auto-approve, and shares the link. Colleagues drop in on their own schedule, add their topics, and leave again. The facilitator doesn't need to be online, doesn't need to be notified, doesn't need to react. Preparation runs without them, exactly as intended.
Trust is not a feature, it's a decision
Auto-approve means that truly anyone with the link can walk in. That is intentional, but it requires a conscious choice. In a trusted team that shares the same Slack channel or the same email group, this is straightforward. The link stays within the group that needs it.
Anyone who wants to secure the room again for the discussion phase can switch it back beforehand: to manual approval or locked. The preparation phase stays open and low-barrier, the actual meeting stays protected. That switch takes one click and gives the facilitator control back exactly where it's actually needed.
Why this genuinely lightens the facilitator's load
Facilitation consists of many small tasks: framing questions, setting the stage, guiding discussion, keeping an eye on time. Each of those demands attention. Approving join requests used to be part of that list too, even though it has nothing to do with the actual content. It was organisational friction disguised as a task.
Auto-approve removes exactly that friction. The facilitator remains responsible for the room, for the questions, for the flow. But they no longer have to hold the door open in person. It sounds like a small change, yet in practice it shifts the moment the facilitator needs to be present from preparation time to discussion time. And that is exactly where they belong.
Which of your recurring meetings would benefit from preparation that doesn't depend on one person being available?