Seating basics overview
This article covers core seating-chart actions in Grouper's Seating view:
Open Seating and switch between class views.
Build and adjust your seat layout.
Place students in seats using attributes or random shuffle.
Move students between seats with drag and drop.
Use the seat toolbar to mark attendance, set Do not group with, and lock seats.
Save, open, and manage seating charts.
Seating is a PRO feature. It is available to PRO subscribers and PRO trial users. See grouper.school/pricing for plan details.
This article covers core Seating operations only.
For general grouping actions (formation, shuffle, rotate, saved groupings), see the Grouping basics support article.
For Do not group with, Study buddies, and Seating preference, see the Preset attributes support article.
For sharing and export options, see the Share and export groupings and seatings support article.
For presentation tools, see the Live mode support article.
Helpful links:
The Seating view
The Seating view is the best place to design a seating chart and place students into specific seats.
To open Seating view:
Open a class.
Use View as near the top of the class page.
Select Seating.
The right-hand control panel in Seating view has three sections:
Seating — open and manage saved seatings, and shuffle student seat placements.
Attributes — apply attributes to automatically shape where students sit.
Layout — edit your seat layout.
Note:
On mobile, open the seating controls by clicking the three-dot menu in the top-right corner and selecting Show controls. Close the panel by clicking the x in the top-right corner of the panel.
Seating names and saved seatings
Each seating chart has a name — the same name that identifies it in the saved seatings dropdown. It is viewable and editable directly on the seating map: click the name to edit it, and the saved seating is renamed.
Your seating is auto-saved as you work, so you don't need to save it manually. It is not necessary to name a seating for it to be saved — unnamed seatings are saved as "Untitled".
Important:
Custom seating names will be visible to students in Live mode.
Default seating names ("Untitled") will not be visible in Live mode.
To open a saved seating:
Open the dropdown at the top of the Seating section in the right-hand control panel.
Hover over a saved seating to preview it on screen.
Click the saved seating to open it.
The dropdown shows the seating that's currently open at the top, followed by your six most recently updated seatings. If you have more, click View all saved seatings at the bottom of the dropdown to open the Saved seatings panel, where you can search and sort all of your saved seatings.
Next to the dropdown are two buttons:
The + button creates a new saved seating.
The three-dot menu contains Rename, Duplicate, History, and Delete for the seating that is currently open. Rename jumps to the seating name on the seating map so you can edit it.
Seating history
Select History from the three-dot menu to see the history of the currently open saved seating. Hover over a history entry to preview it, and click the entry to restore the seating to that point in time.
Editing the seat layout
Use the Layout section of the right-hand control panel to create and edit your seat map.
Click Add/remove seats to enter layout mode.
Click a tile to toggle between inactive tile (white) and active seat (green).
Click and drag to quickly add or remove many seats.
Click Done to finish and return to placing students.
Notes:
A green tile is an active seat and can hold a student.
An empty (white) tile is inactive and cannot hold students.
Click Clear next to the Done button to clear all seats and start from scratch.
The layout must include enough active seats for all of your students. If you don't have enough, the control panel shows a message saying how many more seats you need to add (for example, "Add 3 more seats") before you can click Done and return to placing students.
Grid style
Use the Grid style buttons in the Layout section to switch the shape of the tiles in the seating canvas. The available options are:
Square (default)
Hex
Placing students in seats
Shuffle students
Use Shuffle in the Seating section to randomly place students in seats.
Note:
Shuffle only places students into active seats (green tiles).
Do not group with, Study buddies, and Seating preference rules are also applied in the background during Shuffle. In other words, the placement will be mostly random but will still follow those rules.
If attributes are applied, Shuffle will still apply the attributes when reshuffling students.
Students are not removed from or added to locked seats by Shuffle — see the Locking seats section below.
Apply attributes
You can apply attributes to shape which students are placed near each other or spread out across the seating map.
Cluster (button with arrows pointing in) places students with similar selected attribute values closer together.
Spread (button with arrows pointing out) spreads out students with similar selected attribute values.
Hover over an attribute name in the right-hand control panel to see color-coded overlays on student avatars showing their attribute values.
Notes:
To keep overlays visible for an attribute so you don't have to hover while you make adjustments, open the overflow menu (the three-dot menu) to the right of the attribute name in the control panel and select Show. To return to overlays being visible only on hover, select Hide.
Attributes are not visible to students in Live mode, even if you select "Show" in the attribute overflow menu in the control panel. The exception is the Role attribute, which can be made visible in Live mode — see the Preset attributes support article.
For deeper attribute strategy (Spread/Cluster and grouping goals), see the Making groupings and seatings with student data support article.
Seating students by grouping
You can also place students in seats according to a grouping by using the Group attribute.
A common workflow is:
Open Grouping view.
Create a new grouping or select an existing grouping.
Switch back to Seating view.
In the Attributes section, find Group. It will show the name of the active grouping.
Click the Cluster button next to Group.
Students in the same group will be placed next to or near each other.
Notes:
You can also click Spread next to Group to spread students from the same group across the seating map.
This can be useful for instructional strategies such as the jigsaw method.
Hover over Group in the right-hand control panel to see color-coded overlays on student avatars showing their assigned group name.
Manual movement
You can drag and drop students to fine-tune seat assignments.
Students dragged into empty seats (green tiles) will be placed in those seats.
Students dragged into a seat occupied by another student will swap places with that student.
Tip:
Try using Shuffle or attributes first, then use drag and drop for final adjustments.
Expected behavior:
Grouper separates Do not group with pairs automatically.
Grouper almost always places each student next to at least one selected study buddy.
In highly constrained seating setups, perfect Do not group with separation or study buddies pairing may not always be possible.
Do not group with and Study buddies are not listed in the Attributes section of the right-hand control panel.
Don't worry — those rules will still be followed.
Do not group with alerts
If a Do not group with pair ends up too close together in Seating, you may see yellow or red boxes/lines around the two seats and between them.
Yellow means the two students are getting close together.
Red means the two students are very close together.
Note:
You are most likely to see these alerts while manually dragging students.
The seat toolbar
Hover over or click on a student or unoccupied seat to open a quick-action toolbar above the student or seat. Toolbar actions include:
Mark absent / Mark present — toggle the student's attendance status.
Do not group with — set or remove do not group with pairings for the student.
Lock seat / Unlock seat — see the Locking seats section below.
Three-dot menu — more actions, including Set seating preference and Edit student.
Selecting multiple students or seats
Click and drag on an empty area of the canvas to draw a selection box around multiple students. This only works with students, not unoccupied seats.
Command+click (Mac) or Control+click (Windows) to select multiple students or multiple unoccupied seats one at a time.
When more than one student or seat is selected, the toolbar shows bulk actions, including:
Mark all absent / Mark all present
Do not group with each other — sets do not group with pairings between all selected students.
Lock / Unlock for all selected seats.
Moving multiple students
You can also drag and drop multiple students to new seats. Drag any student in the selection and the whole cluster moves together, keeping the students' positions relative to each other. As you drag, outlines show the seat where each selected student will land.
Notes:
Drop only works if there is an active seat available for every student in the cluster. If any student would land on an inactive tile or outside the layout, nothing moves — adjust the drop position or the students selected and try again.
If a target seat is already occupied, the seated student swaps out: they move to a seat vacated by the dragged students.
Locking seats
Lock specific students to their current seats so they are not moved during automatic arrangements like Shuffle and attribute-based placement.
Hover over a seat or student and click the lock icon in the seat toolbar.
Locking an occupied seat locks the student to that seat.
Locking an empty seat prevents it from being filled - the seat becomes blocked.
Locked seats show a lock icon and a striped background.
Zoom controls
Use the zoom buttons in the corner of the seating canvas:
Zoom in and Zoom out adjust the zoom level.
Reset zoom centers the seating chart and fits all seats on screen.
Important notes
Absent students are included in the seating arrangement. This differs from the Grouping view, where students can be removed from the groups altogether.
You can click Go live from Seating view to open the Seating display in Live mode. This is useful for projecting the current seating chart for your class.
You can click Share from the Seating view to create a print-friendly PDF of the seating chart or paste an image of the seating chart into other tools.