Limiting features on Figjam

Hi Farrar,
Thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback!
Not at this moment, but it’s definitely in our radar. I’ll make sure to pass your feedback along to our team.
I also switched your topic as a feature request, so we can gauge the overall interest in the community. Thank you!

I’d second this request. I work as a consulatnt in Ed Tech in the UK. Lots of schools I work with use Jamboard and are looking at FigJam. Unfortunately they are put off by the inability to turn off some of the features mentioned here.

Yes, I just watched a demonstration via the Ditch Summit - great variety of tools for teachers to use, but would be chaos in a group. One of the things about Jamboard was the simplicity - great for students with SEND as it isn’t too distracting, super easy to introduce and get a lesson up and running quickly, easy to be spontaneous and quickly add one to a class, and the space to work on was clearly defined to the page. I can create a page per student/or sub-group and then flick back and forth on my iPad to watch and comment directly. The demo I saw FigJam seems to be a big white board with some demarcation, but not the clear boundaries of separate pages (which again, was great for SEND students, e.g. those with ADHD/ASD who work best with simplicity and clarity . I had thought I’d transition over for the start of the new year, but I’m going to wait a while still. I really hope you manage to introduce some teacher controls before we all have to transfer over from Jamboard.

I would just like to add my two cents here as well.

It is EXTREMELY important to be able to turn off functions for educators. I don’t need a switchboard of which ones to turn on or turn off…I would just like a “basic view” (only comments-- no emotes or chatting necessary), and then “simple edit” (all the things in the toolbar except the “fun” stuff like stickers), and then “full edit”.

I would also love to be able to turn that off and on immediately for all people on the board. With Jamboard, I got REALLY quick with just rescinding edit access when I wanted student attention/stop why they are doing. However, I can’t do that with the click of a button on FigJam. I wish there was a better way to turn off/on access to interact with the board (including comments).

I love all the things FigJam has to offer, and I want to use it and encourage my peers to use it. It’s just that classroom management can be insanely difficult without more power to the creator of the board.

I want to echo all of the comments left here. I’m searching for a replacement for Jamboard, and FigJam looks promising. However, my first attempts to use it with my students ended in distraction and chaos. Unless there is a “basic” version without the chatting, likes, and reactions, it’s not going to be something I can use with my students.

Agree wholeheartedly. Please incorporate this in an update soon, since we’re all looking for a replacement to jamboard. You’d certainly get a lot of business by making this an option, we want to be able to use this with a group of students without worrying about overwhelming or distracting with too many things. There are other whiteboard-sites that working teams can utilize to brainstorm, but for educators and classrooms we need a simple tool like jamboard was.

I would love features and options to turn off certain features such as commenting or emojis for students on certain boards

@Celine_Figma Any update on disabling features?

Hey there! I’ve checked internally, and to be transparent we’re taking this into consideration, but we don’t have immediate plans to release at this time. Thanks for your understanding 🙏

Thank you for your transparency, at this time we will not be using FigJam with our students as hoped. I will check back in the future in hopes that this functionality will be added.

Same here! It was pure chaos when I tried it with some students aged 13 today. Hope we can have just the move feature and a few very simple features enabled. Not sound and emoji reactions and other fireworks

I am frustrated because someone deleted my locked board and all the sticky notes from the team. I looked at version history and it doesn’t show details about who deleted it. AND it didn’t save the last version with all the work posted. Everything is gone. So frustrated with the lack of control as a teacher. I wanted to love this tool. I have used it several times with students, but now I am hesitating using it.

YES! We need a way to limit the availability of actions. I am using Figma in a GRADUATE LEVEL course,  and it was chaos with them. They are all around 24 years old. My students are future K-12 teachers, but I can tell that using Figma in a K-12 would be overwhelming. 

Admins need to be able to turn features off.