The Theme tab is where you group thoughts together (targeted theming is one great approach) to develop your understanding of the exchange you just led. The topics covered in this article are,

• Theming 101
• Summary Themes
• Theme Templates
• Theming Tips for Advanced Users

Theming 101

• Review the progress you’d like to make before you get started.
• Click 'New' to create a new theme set and enter a name for it, then click Create.
• Click on the ‘Manage’ button and enter your first theme name in the text box and click ‘Add’. Once you are happy with your initial list of themes, click ‘OK’ to start theming.
• To theme, select one thought (or several) and select a theme name. The thought is automatically assigned to that theme.
• To change the theme, simply select the thought again and select a new theme name.
• You can add or delete theme names at any point.
• A thought can only be assigned to one theme, but you can create multiple theme sets.

Summary Themes

If you are working with a large number of themes and would like to organize them under larger categories, Summary Themes can help.

• Click the 'Manage' button and click the arrow next to 'Theme'. Select 'Summary theme'.

• Click a theme you would like to add to your Summary Theme and click the 'Move' button to the right. Then select the Summary theme you want to add it to.

• You can create up to 15 summary themes for high-level ideas and 15 sub-themes within each summary theme to focus on the details. 
• Use summary themes for high level,
  • Strategic planning buckets
  • SWOT categories
  • Positive and negative sentiment
• Only delete empty summary themes. Deleting a summary theme will delete all sub-themes as well.

Once you theme as many thoughts as you need to develop your understanding, visualize your results using Tiles, Bars or Heatmaps.

Theme Templates

If you're looking for some theming inspiration, our templates give you several predefined theme sets:

• Click on 'New' and then fill in a theme set name at the top of the pop-up box.
• Under the 'New' menu list, choose from a list of seven templates.
• Select 'Create' and you are ready to start theming!

Theming Tips for Advanced Users

• Use keywords in the search bar to pull up a list of related thoughts. You can then ‘select all’ and assign them to a theme en masse.
• Use the 'Show:' filter at the top of the page to select 'Themed thoughts' and you can then view all thoughts in a single theme.

When you are working through your participant thoughts, remember, theming not only helps pull out participant priorities, but also underlying values and beliefs. Looking at your results from this values-based perspective can point you in the direction of new solutions and innovative ways to bring your community together. And you can use our theme commenting feature to help participants understand your thinking and why you grouped specific thoughts together.

Theming also helps you understand the language that resonates with your participants so you can close the loop even more effectively. Draw on participant language when you report back and they are sure to feel like their voices were heard.