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Mural

Mural
Formerly Mural.ly

Overview

What is Mural?

MURAL (formerly Mural.ly) from Tactivos (DBA MURAL) in San Francisco is described by the vendor as a digital workspace and visual collaboration tool, designed for creative teams to make the process of design more efficient for distributed teams, working remotely.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

MURAL has become a go-to tool for remote collaboration across various departments in organizations, especially during the pandemic. Users …
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AKG-Mural

10 out of 10
March 21, 2022
Design Thinking workshops main tool between selected customers and business partners. Default Mind Map and brain storming tool during …
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Mural User Experience

9 out of 10
December 12, 2021
Agile project management, workshops, brain storming and ideation sections we are currently using. For follow up meetings also we are using.
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MURAL Review

8 out of 10
November 04, 2021
Incentivized
I use MURAL for remote collaboration sessions, discovery work, process mapping and shared note taking.
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Starter

$12

Cloud
per month

Plus

$20

Cloud
per month

Enterprise

Contact sales team

Cloud

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

Using workspaces, rooms and murals

YouTube

Sharing murals with others

YouTube

Navigating the Mural

YouTube

Microsoft Teams Mural Demo

YouTube

How to create templates in Mural

YouTube

Voting in Mural

YouTube
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Product Details

What is Mural?

The Mural digital whiteboard is a collaboration solution that helps teams to work better and make better work, offering both a place to collaborate and guidance to hone teams' collaboration skills. With Mural, teams get to learn as they create. Mural’s built-in methods are designed to teach and strengthen habits for more engaging processes and more impactful outcomes. With Mural, there’s no prep necessary — it is designed so that users can just dive in and start practicing the collaboration habits that bring about faster progress, better ideas, happier teams, and more consistent results.

Mural Screenshots

Screenshot of the brainstorming templates that brings more minds to the table and helps turn good ideas into extraordinary work.Screenshot of energizers and icebreakers that help teams feel connected and open-minded so they can tackle big problems.Screenshot of strategic plan sharing, to improve people's sense of safety and expectation, leaving more brain space for creativity and innovation.Screenshot of retrospectives, which help teams get better and happier over time.

Mural Video

MURAL is a digital workspace for visual collaboration.

Mural Competitors

Mural Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

MURAL (formerly Mural.ly) from Tactivos (DBA MURAL) in San Francisco is described by the vendor as a digital workspace and visual collaboration tool, designed for creative teams to make the process of design more efficient for distributed teams, working remotely.

Miro, Stormboard, and InVision are common alternatives for Mural.

The most common users of Mural are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(224)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

MURAL has become a go-to tool for remote collaboration across various departments in organizations, especially during the pandemic. Users have praised MURAL for its ability to facilitate visually brainstorming and whiteboarding sessions with colleagues who are located in different time zones and locations. Whether it's synchronous meetings, asynchronous planning, or design sessions, teams can work together in real-time using MURAL. This software has proven to be a versatile alternative to process-oriented tools like Jira, offering teams the flexibility they need for planning and organizing work in sprints and roadmaps. Consulting professionals, architects, engineers, landscape architects, planners, and other teams within organizations have all found value in MURAL. From deep-dive discussions with customers to understanding pain points and facilitating workshops, MURAL has received high recommendations for its ease of adoption and its ability to tackle any collaboration scenario. The software has been particularly helpful in supporting remote workshops, meetings, and strategic planning sessions. Users have leveraged MURAL for brainstorming, ideation, process mapping, managing social media calendars, developing customer journey maps, drafting communications, and facilitating agile events. It has also proven essential for addressing problems, aligning team members in large departments, running team meetings, coordinating activities in program and project management, and ensuring team engagement and alignment. Additionally, MURAL has been utilized as a valuable tool for general brainstorming sessions, Design Thinking workshops, and cascading cultural change initiatives throughout organizations. By saving time for workshops and promoting collective visualization of thoughts, MURAL fosters collaboration while keeping everyone on the same page.

Easy Usability and Engaging Platform: Many users have praised MURAL for its easy usability and engaging platform that enhances collaboration and teamwork. The user-friendly interface and good graphic interface make it seamless to adopt, with some reviewers mentioning the positive experience they had while using the tool.

Effective Collaboration Space: The effectiveness of MURAL's collaboration space in brainstorming sessions, requirements gathering, and design thinking has been commended by several reviewers. They found it to be a valuable tool for promoting innovation, facilitating effective collaboration, and fostering creativity.

Large Workspace for Strategic Planning: Several users have highlighted MURAL's large workspace as ideal for strategic planning. It allows them to easily track and develop their thought processes, providing a clear overview of conversation development. This feature increases productivity, focus, and facilitates effective brainstorming.

Difficult User Interface: Many users have found the user interface of the tablet drawing feature difficult to navigate, leading to frustration. They have mentioned that it takes time to understand how to use the tools effectively, and some users reported that lines in their drawings sometimes become erratic, impacting their ability to create accurate designs.

Limited Integration with Other Apps: A significant number of users expressed a desire for more integration options with other apps. They feel that MURAL has limited integration capabilities, which hinders their workflow and collaboration process. Specifically, users mentioned popular collaboration tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams as examples where they would like improved integration.

Issues with Login and Loading Boards: Some users experienced issues with the login process and had difficulty loading mural boards. This caused difficulties in accessing their work and disrupted their productivity. These technical issues can be frustrating for users who rely on MURAL for collaborative projects.

Users commonly recommend the following three things for MURAL:

  1. Try the free starter license: Users recommend taking advantage of MURAL's free starter license to experience its visual and easy-to-use features.

  2. Provide training and conduct workshops: Users suggest conducting workshops in smaller groups and providing training for users to fully utilize MURAL's functionality. They advise scheduling time to introduce MURAL to new users for effective and collaborative meetings.

  3. Explore templates and shortcuts: Users recommend exploring all available MURAL templates for inspiration and productivity. They also suggest learning the shortcuts and utilizing the premade templates and image/icon search repository for a better experience with the tool.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-19 of 19)
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Mural for multiple purposes. We use it as a remote collaboration tool (it allows team members to collaborate in real-time on a shared canvas, making it easier to work together regardless of location), brainstorming and ideation space, workshops, as well as planning.
  • enables easy for all collaboration especially in the hybrid environment
  • makes brainstorming better as users can create digital sticky notes, draw diagrams, and add images to visually represent concepts and ideas
  • it helps to visualize data effectively - users can create charts, graphs, and diagrams to present data-driven insights to team members and stakeholders
  • Although Mural integrates with some popular collaboration tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams, expanding its integration options with a wider range of tools commonly used in business workflows would make it more versatile and seamless.
  • While Mural has a mobile app, the mobile experience is not as robust as the web version. Improving the mobile app's functionality and user interface could enhance the accessibility of Mural for users on the go.
Remote Collaboration: In a remote or distributed work environment, Mural shines. It enables teams to collaborate effectively in real-time, bridging geographical gaps and facilitating virtual meetings, workshops, and brainstorming sessions.

Workshop Facilitation: For facilitators leading workshops or team-building activities, Mural provides interactive templates and tools for engaging participants and achieving specific objectives.
Steve Bassette | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Several of our teams used MURAL to help us planning and organize our work in our sprints and plan our roadmaps. Planning and organization tools like Jira are too process oriented with too many distracting features to be very usable so we shifted to white boarding tools. At our peak usage, we used MURAL pretty intensely to collaborate in synchronous meetings, asynchronous plannings, and design. Ultimately, we replaced it with a more cost efficient option, but overall I found it a great tool.
  • It is Lightweight and Stays out of the way
  • It feels informal like a white board
  • It easy to use
  • Adding consistent sticky notes is easier than others
  • It is easy to change sticky note shapes
  • No embedded data to accidentally lose
  • The Inking works well
  • Linking within boards is really smooth
  • Frames cannot be nested
  • It was easy to move notes while panning
  • Lines sometimes go crazy
  • It is sometimes laggy (especially when working with Indian teams)
I've recommended MURAL to a lot of people in a lot of fields. This is a great tool for any group of people that might stand around a white board if they were in person. Even if they are in person, I still recommend it pretty often because, unlike a white board, MURAL is virtual, so it can go offline with you. I've recommended it to other Software Teams, individual software developers, engineering teams, Sales Managers, Office Staff, Manufacturing teams, and more.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The MURAL is a great online collaboration application for our team and many other teams in our organization. We being a team of developers, BA, Product owners troubleshoot any functionality together on MURAL's whiteboard together due to it being online and easily available, and being easy to use. MURAL is used across the whole organization as I have worked on many projects and can see MURAL being used everywhere and even I use to with my team for collaborating with my team and designing any solution.
  • MURAL greatly helps in designing phase of a project
  • It has different frameworks to define different personas, Scenario maps, hills.
  • Can add own customized image by uploading them on MURAL
  • MURAL's integrated chat service is another great feature it has.
  • MURAL hardly has any integration with other apps so that can be improved.
  • More shapes or options
  • Sometimes a little slow
MURAL has ready-to-use templates which make it very seamless for collaboration with clients or teams. It's an on-the-go platform to create or showcase solutions with its friendly images and shapes. Sometimes it gives us ideas even during the design phase, scenarios that haven't been thought of yet. Whenever we are starting a project or a new phase of a project, MURAL is the go-to app to start brainstorming for all kinds of projects or requirements. I can hardly think of a scenario where a MURAL is less appropriate but maybe it is less useful after the completion and delivery of the project.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
At our company Mural is used as a collaborative software among agile squads in order to develop customer journey maps, to draft communications destined to clients and to have brainstorming sessions and agile events where everyone can give their input. Mural easily tackles the problem of working together since we are still under a home office regime.
  • Organizing ideas
  • Give visibility to everyone's input
  • Brainstorming
  • Adjusting canvas size, there could be predetermined templates
  • Insert tables
  • Insert frames
Mural is well suited for collaborative work where there isn't high complexity in the job that needs to be done, like drafting simple diagrams or journeys without too much information. Since the items and icons available don't allow a more dinamic or creative approach, Mural is better for day to day activities that don't require high impact presentations.
March 21, 2022

AKG-Mural

A. Kıvanç Güler | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Design Thinking workshops main tool between selected customers and business partners. Default Mind Map and brain storming tool during covid times between team members and also different LOBs from the organization. MURAL is a very helpful tool in order to save time for workshops internal and also external members.
  • Collaboration
  • Templates, canvas and rich palette items
  • Export and import options
  • Industry standard support
  • Trello Plugin
  • Miro Integration
  • More Export Option
Best tool for Design Thinking
Good tool for Mind Map and Brain Storming
Should be improved for product and project management
February 16, 2022

feedback

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Following the team retrospective meeting, collecting feedback, creating voting section
  • Voting scrum master or product owner
  • collecting feedback about last sprint
  • creating teamhealth checkup section
  • page scrolling
  • zooming
  • mention people
It is a very nice platform where you can collect feedback about the team. It can be used without the names of people. It also has the ability to be updated later. when one of the people on the page scrolls the screen at the same time, all the people on the screen scroll this feature can be improved.
December 12, 2021

Mural User Experience

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Agile project management, workshops, brain storming and ideation sections we are currently using. For follow up meetings also we are using.
  • Simultaneously idea registration and comments about existing ideas
  • User friendly interface and easy to use tools
  • Visual reports, classifications of ideas
  • Sometimes application gets slower during sessions
  • Hard to see modifications at the same time, there are some lag between users
For example, during ideation sessions, it's hard to synchronize with others. [The] application gets slower and after modifications sometimes team members write down [on] the same page. Maybe during typing cells should be locked?
November 04, 2021

MURAL Review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use MURAL for remote collaboration sessions, discovery work, process mapping and shared note taking.
  • Shared digital white board
  • Voting, affinity mapping
  • Templated exercises
  • sync with audio / video tool
  • licensing and free user access and guests
  • very large groups
MURAL works well with small to medium sized group collaboration and working sessions. As well as structured exercises with templates. For very large groups (100+) there are sometimes issues.
Ann Puckett | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently, it is being used among many departments for several different use cases. We have our strategic communications team using it for feedback on our annual report, our centennial celebration team is using it for project planning, our finance department is using it for updating & reviewing goals, our program department is using it for process mapping.
  • Custom configuration of design templates
  • Easy to invite and engage guests
  • Real-time collaboration
  • It is somewhat clunky inviting guests (vs. assigning a user)
  • The ability to easily turn off tracking people (should be default off)
  • Wish it would auto-resize shape larger for characters rather than characters getting smaller.
It is very well suited for virtual collaboration particularly in a situation where you would normally be in a room brainstorming in person. It works great for projects, committees or teams who need to come together to collaborate on an idea, project, process mapping, goal setting or as someone said just a place to jot down their own personal to-dos and or stick notes.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
MURAL's being widely used by some large departments, particularly related to services delivery. It's being used to addressed any kind of problems or situations, but it's particularly used as a modelling tool for gaining common understanding, of new business flows, and team understanding and alignment of customers scenarios.
  • visual 'mind-mapping'
  • brainstorming processes
  • Very easy to use and adopt
  • Very good graphic interphase
  • It'd be nice that the zoom regulation could be easier to manage
  • The advanced features are a little bit easy to adopt. Why not adding some agile trainings, or some other tools to facilitate their adoption
  • A faster and easier way to Integrate with ms office
I think MURAL is great to sketch fast teams action, in a collaborative way. When a plan needs to be done, for some specific action (software go live, software trainings, etc), and a number of people needs to be part of, I found MURAL an easy and quick tool to adopt and use, almost immediately, without much further explanations. On the other hand, I wouldn't use for a more accurate or formal scenario, where you need to establish some precise and well-defined actions (industrial process, for example).
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Honestly, I don't think I could do my role without MURAL (formerly Mural.ly). I use MURAL (formerly Mural.ly) to run all of my team meetings and coordinate activities with my partners. I run programs and projects across Africa, and MURAL (formerly Mural.ly) is my go-to tool to ensure that the entire team is engaged in the process and is on the same page when it comes to execution. I've even started running my weekly team meetings on a mural, as it's a great way for the team to catch up and share ideas.
  • Easy to use
  • Engaging
  • Templates
  • Sometimes people get lost.
  • Need to have a way to track people's comments--who added what, etc. It gets quite confusing when you have multiple people adding and moving stuff.
  • Guest users need to be given a proper name. Its cool having visiting giraffes but when it's a CEO of a customer, it's important to know that.
  • Locking and unlocking items is sometimes really painful. People pick up an unlocked frame and move it.
  • Great for team meetings
  • Customer reviews
  • Workflow sessions
  • Planning sessions
  • LUMA workshops
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It lets us visualize our collective thoughts, keeping everyone on the same page on a daily basis. It is used by certain users in our organization. For instance, each team has their own planning murals. These are used regularly--often daily--to show progress. The workspace also increases productivity and focus.
  • MURAL (formerly Mural.ly) has ready-to-use templates for everything to seamlessly collaborate with our clients and engage with them
  • The workspace also increases productivity and focus
  • MURAL (formerly Mural.ly) does take a little time to get up to speed on using it.
  • The sketching feature could be vastly improved to be more like concepts offers, vs the paint app on Windows computers that is currently mimics.
  • Unless you have certain permissions, it is difficult to change your name.
The main value of this software is the collaboration aspect. I love that I can bring people together regardless of their tech fluency and with one icebreaker activity, I can get them to use the main functions they will need for the next few hours. I love that you can paste a URL and it shows a thumbnail of the article.
Brandon Woodle | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
[MURAL (formerly Mural.ly)] is used across all consulting professionals in my organization. This includes architects, engineers, landscape architects, and planners. It is a great solution to the problem: how do you visually brainstorm (whiteboard) with your colleagues across offices and remote workers and time zones? Mural allows people to work together regardless of location at the same time, live, in a meeting, or whenever they can fit it into their busy schedules.
  • Collaborate on a visual brainstorming session
  • Share ideas with colleagues regardless of physical location
  • Create simple diagrams and mindmaps
  • Improved accuracy of tablet drawing
  • More customizable shapes
Scenarios where I use Mural [(formerly Mural.ly)]: brainstorming meeting to generate ideas; image board for project vision, precedents, examples; mind-mapping.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
MURAL [(formerly Mural.ly)] is authorized for use across the organization and is used in various forums. In particular, I've used it as a white board type space for general brainstorming, as well in more structured Design Thinking sessions with both internal and external stakeholders. Most recently we've created some workspaces relative to deriving and cascading Cultural Change content and initiatives throughout the organization, by region and LoB/team.
  • Collaboration space for brainstorming
  • Requirements gathering/definition
  • Design Thinking - innovation
  • Formatting of content - perhaps restricting standards for post-its to be consistent
  • Folder and copy functions confusing -- tutorials would help
General brainstorming and Design Thinking activities are good application areas for MURAL [formerly Mural.ly)], in that participants can share ideas and then use the 'table top' to sort and gather them into solutions/concepts that drive to a desired outcome. Similarly can be done as a 'I Like, I Wish' type feedback board that can even remain active/available for follow-on reflection and comment.. perhaps where subsequent events are planned to build upon an initial one.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
MURAL (formerly Mural.ly) is not just limited to a department or a project; rather, it's being used across the whole organization to do deep-dive discussions with the customers to understand the client pain areas.

Every client interaction in the very beginning where we do workshops goes through MURAL (formerly Mural.ly) for white-boarding exercises.
  • Ability to follow other users' cursors makes it easy for a group to understand what a particular person is explaining
  • Drag-and-drop components for ease of use
  • Quick and easy way to provide access to internal/external users as MURAL (formerly Mural.ly) is a SaaS product
  • Sometimes, while doing a retrospective, it's difficult to make a user anonymous
  • It also is a little painful sometimes to make a certain section move from one place to another
  • It takes time to load a mural board
The tool MURAL (formerly Mural.ly) is best suited for performing any kind of white-boarding exercises both internally and externally to include participants up to 50.
Online collaboration has become very easy during the pandemic when we do not have a chance to meet people in person.

Mural is less appropriate when the number of user might be more than 50
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It lets us visualize our collective thoughts, keeping everyone on the same page on a daily basis. For instance, each team has their own planning mural. These are used regularly--often daily--to show progress. It helps everyone on the team imagine together to unlock new ideas, solve hard problems, and innovate faster.
  • It's a large, virtual wall you can solve problems on visually.
  • You can interact with your content in new ways in MURAL (formerly Mural.ly).
  • MURAL is a standalone tool that does not directly integrate with other tools.
  • I wish you could expand the artboards more or even have the option to do multiple artboards!
When one of my designers needs me to review something, we set up a MURAL and I can sketch over their designs or leave post-it notes, plug in images for inspiration, anything.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
MURAL is being used in various departments across our organization. It was adopted to assist with collaboration, particularly to address the challenges posed by remote working when the pandemic struck. MURAL is an exceptional tool that enables teams to share ideas, organize work and track progress. It is flexible enough to tackle any scenario requiring teams to collaborate. It is very easy to adopt and has tooling built-in to allow for more sophisticated interaction. Highly recommended.
  • Kanban boards
  • Brainstorming
  • Mind mapping
  • Voting for prioritization
  • Having some login issues recently.
Great for team collaboration and visualizing ideas.
Susan Gregory | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use MURAL with multiple clients. It helps with collaboration, engagement, and learning online. I’ve used it to teach communication skills, to run strategic planning meetings, brainstorming sessions, and focus groups. I’ve created a calendar to manage social media. People miss being able to get together in person to share ideas around a flip chart or whiteboard. MURAL fills that gap. It’s much easier to use and more flexible than other whiteboard functions (such as whiteboard in Zoom). People can use it simultaneously or for asynchronous collaboration.
  • Strategic planning: You can build up the thought process on a large workspace and easily see how your conversation has developed.
  • Brainstorming: Easy for people to get started and add lots of ideas at the same time. Easy to move ideas around to see themes.
  • Focus groups: Participants can easily see their ideas being captured.
  • People accidentally type over their own content.
  • Doesn’t work on phones/tablets.
  • Without guidance, participants will type over others notes.
Particularly suited for detailed collaboration with multiple aspects or steps to the conversation. Because there is a learning curve, it is less suited to simple topics such as a short document review or to capture a short conversation. It’s best suited to groups that are open to learning new technology.
Faye Sadler-Clark | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Many of my colleagues and I use Mural when working with clients remotely; we have been using it for several years. It's a fantastic way of working with geographically dispersed teams and has been particularly helpful in supporting collaboration during the Covid 19 pandemic. It is used to run remote workshops and meetings where our clients are open to using the tool.
  • It allows you to build from independent work to group exercises and discussions and using brainstorming and the voting tool to drive decision making and action.
  • It has functionality that allows you to bring your audience to different areas of the whiteboard using the 'summon everyone' function, and move between delivering material with 'presentation mode' and interactive exercises where students contribute ideas or suggestions.
  • It offers an interactive and engaging platform for collaboration and costs can be kept low because people can join sessions as visitors.
  • The only thing that used to bug me about Mural was the fact that you couldn’t identify participants who joined as visitors (one time collaborators appear as anonymous animals). I noticed recently that visitors can now add their name which is really useful. I expect this change came from Mural user feedback, they do seem to develop the features over time.
  • Sometimes participants can't see images that you add to the whiteboard. There's a way around it but it's a little frustrating and I'm not sure why it happens.
It's great when you need to drive real decision making and action; the voting tool is particularly useful in this regard. It's a great tool to use when you want to hear all voices, and not just from the loudest individuals. I've used Mural extensively over the last two years, and I've developed an online course in how to use the tool. I've run hundreds of participative workshops with it too, it's my 'go to' for running engaging remote workshops.
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