Your data, and the works council
This page explains in plain terms how Call It A Five, a live planning-poker estimation tool, handles data, so you can review and approve it with your works council (Betriebsrat) as part of your normal co-determination process. It is written to answer the questions a works council usually asks, including the use of AI and the question of performance monitoring.
The short answer for the works council
- It is an estimation aid, not a monitoring system. It does not measure, score or track the performance or behaviour of individual employees. There are no accounts and no profiles.
- The only personal data is a display name. A free-text name you type to join. No email, no sign-up, no account. Nothing else about you is asked for or stored by the app.
- Anonymous mode hides who voted what. When the host turns it on, the result shows card values only, with names and ids stripped, so an estimate cannot be traced back to a named person.
- Everything is deleted after 8 hours. Each session has an 8-hour lifetime, after which the server storage for that session is removed. Nothing persists beyond that.
- There is no AI. AI: none Zero AI or large-language-model calls anywhere. Every figure is plain arithmetic.
- EU data residency. Session data is held in a European region (Frankfurt or Dublin) on Cloudflare, which acts as a processor under a data processing agreement.
What this tool is, and is not
Call It A Five is live planning poker. One person creates a session, gets a single link, and shares it with the team. Everyone picks an estimate card (Fibonacci, T-shirt sizes or powers of two). The cards stay hidden until the facilitator reveals them, and then the tool shows the spread of votes, the median, the level of agreement and any outliers, so the team can discuss and re-vote.
It is not a sign-up product, not a central database of people, and not a tool for evaluating individuals. It does not create accounts, profiles, rankings or manager dashboards about named employees, and it does not export anything into HR systems.
What data it handles, and where it goes
The data inventory below is the complete list. There is nothing else.
| Data | What it is | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Display name | A free-text name you type to join, up to 80 characters. You may use a nickname. No email or account is involved. | On the session server, deleted after 8 hours. |
| Your vote | The estimate card you pick for the current item. Kept hidden from others until the host reveals. | On the session server, deleted after 8 hours. Names are stripped in anonymous mode. |
| Round results | Aggregate figures for a round: median, mode, minimum, maximum, agreement percentage and which votes were outliers. | On the session server as aggregates only. Round history keeps no per-person data. |
| Resume note | A small entry on your own device holding the last room code and the name you used, so you can rejoin after closing the tab. | Your device only (browser storage), for up to 8 hours. Never sent anywhere. |
There is no email, no account, no password, no phone number, and the application does not store your IP address. The display name is the only directly identifying field, and only because you typed it.
Where the data lives, and how clients sync
Each session runs in its own isolated store on the server (a Cloudflare Durable Object). Every device in the session keeps in step by asking the server for the latest state about every 2.8 seconds. Devices never talk to each other directly. There is no peer-to-peer connection.
The small resume note on your own device holds only the last room code and the name you used, so the tool can offer to rejoin a session that is still running. It stays on the device, is never uploaded, and you can clear it by clearing your browser data.
No AI, no large language model AI: none
Call It A Five contains no AI. There are zero calls to any AI service or large language model anywhere in the product.
Every figure the tool shows, the median, mode, minimum, maximum, agreement percentage and outliers, is plain arithmetic computed on the server from the votes in the current round. There is no model, no inference, no third-party AI provider, and therefore nothing to train a model on and no AI vendor to share data with.
No individual-level monitoring, no performance tracking
This is the question most relevant to co-determination. Estimation in this tool is a collaborative team activity, not a measure of any one person. It is, in our view, not designed or suited to monitor the conduct or performance of employees within the meaning of BetrVG Section 87 (1) no. 6. Your works council makes its own assessment, and this page is meant to support that.
- There are no accounts and no profiles, so there is no record that follows a person across sessions.
- In anonymous mode, the revealed result shows card values only, with names and participant ids removed, so an estimate cannot be linked back to a named person.
- Round history keeps aggregate figures only (median, mode, minimum, maximum, agreement, outliers), never a per-person vote.
- Outliers are identified by their vote value (the highest and lowest card in the round), to prompt discussion, not as a judgement about a named individual; in anonymous mode they carry no name.
- There is no ranking of people, no individual scoring over time, and nothing is exported into any HR or performance system.
- The tool also supports the principle of fair, transparent treatment of employees (BetrVG Section 75). Whether to run a session in anonymous mode is a setting the team and the works council can agree on.
One honest caveat: if a session is run with anonymous mode off, the revealed view does show each name next to its card for the duration of that session (this is the normal, open way many teams play, so they can talk through a difference). It is still deleted after 8 hours and never aggregated into any profile. If your works council prefers, sessions can be run with anonymous mode on as standard.
Hosting and EU data residency
The session server runs on Cloudflare. The per-session store that holds names, votes and results is pinned to a European jurisdiction, so it is placed in a European region (Frankfurt or Dublin). This gives EU data residency for the session data.
Cloudflare acts as a processor (Auftragsverarbeiter) for the operator, under a data processing agreement (Auftragsverarbeitungsvertrag, Art. 28 GDPR). The operator does not pass session data to any other third party for their own purposes.
No third-party requests
The typeface (Plus Jakarta Sans) is embedded directly in the page (self-hosted), so opening any of these pages makes no request to Google Fonts or any other third party. No external service receives the visitor's IP address.
No names, votes or session content are ever sent anywhere outside this domain. These pages load entirely from callitafive.com.
No cookies, no tracking, no analytics
The tool sets no cookies, runs no advertising or analytics scripts, and uses no tracking pixels. The only data kept on your device is the resume note described above, which is functional and stays local. No request from these pages reaches any third party; the typeface is embedded in the page itself.
Purpose and retention
The data is used only to run the live estimation session: to show who has joined, to keep votes hidden until the reveal, and to compute the round result for the team to discuss. It is not used for any other purpose.
Each session has an 8-hour lifetime. After that, the server storage for that session is deleted, and the names, votes and results in it are gone. The resume note on a device also stops being offered after 8 hours. Nothing is held centrally beyond the life of a session.
Roles, legal basis and your rights
Controller (Verantwortlicher)
Frederik Metz, Ridlerstrasse 9, 80339 Munich, Germany. Contact: the operator.
Processor (Auftragsverarbeiter)
Cloudflare, for hosting the session server in an EU region, under an Art. 28 GDPR data processing agreement.
Legal basis
Where you join a team session, the basis is the legitimate interest in running the estimation session (Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR) and, where applicable, your consent in joining by typing a name (Art. 6 (1) (a)). In an employment context your employer confirms the precise basis under GDPR and BetrVG.
Your rights
The usual data-subject rights apply (access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection, complaint to a supervisory authority). Because data is deleted after 8 hours and there are no accounts, the practical route is to leave the session or wait for the automatic deletion; for anything else, contact the controller above.
If your organisation introduces this tool for staff, your employer may be the controller for that use, with the operator and Cloudflare as processors. Your data protection office can confirm the current arrangement and whether a data protection impact assessment is needed.
For the works council
This page is offered for transparency and to support your review. Please assess and approve the tool together with your works council as part of your normal co-determination process. If the data handling, the AI position, the hosting region, or the web-font arrangement changes materially, this page is updated and the change is brought back to you for review.
Questions about data protection can go to the controller above, or to your organisation's data protection office.