You can create and run multiple choice polls to gather the opinion of your audience as a survey, test their knowledge with a quiz, or just get a feel of the room. It's a great way to keep your audience engaged.
This can be done during a specific live agenda session or as a standalone poll during the event, and can also be targeted to specific segments of your audience.
Multiple choice polls consist in asking your audience a question with up to 6 associated responses that the audience can choose from. Depending on the configuration, attendees can select multiple answers for their response, and each answer can be defined as correct or incorrect.
Polls are created, launched and controlled directly from within the live session, using the Polls panel.
When a poll is launched, notifications are typically sent to the attendees inviting them to participate. These notification can be deactivated though if needed. Find out more about poll notifications.
Notes: Polls can support up to 2,500 participants. Once a poll has been launched and closed/hidden, it cannot be relaunched (you will need to recreate the poll by duplicating it). Polls can be associated with live displays in order to show them on a large screen.
How to create a poll
Go to the created live session in the workspace main menu (Live > Live session).
More information on how to create a live session and enable polls.
In the live session, click on + New poll > Multiple choice to create a first poll question:
Next, enter the poll question, and up to 6 possible response options, and configure the poll options:
Questions can display up to 80 characters onscreen and responses can display up to 30 characters (including spaces). Any text beyond that will be displayed as "..." on screen when the poll is launched.
- You can select which of the poll responses are considered "correct", by marking them with
.
- You can set a maximum number of options that attendees can select as part of their response to the poll, using the Maximum allowed answers dropdown.
- You can choose whether or not to display the poll results live as they come in to your attendees.
- If needed you can enable a Timer option, specify the duration of the timer using the minutes and seconds fields, and choose between three possible automated actions once the timer runs out.
After adding the information for the first poll question. Click on Save poll. This will add the poll to the Polls section in the live session:
Note: You can repeat the steps above to create as many polls as you like. Polls can only be edited/modified if they have not yet been launched.
Showing the poll results live as they come in
When you create your poll, you can enable the "Show poll results as they come in" option:
This means that, after having voted, your attendees will see the evolution of the poll results live in real-time, based on the answers that were submitted by the other attendees:
What happens when you close the poll?
If you enable the "Show poll results as they come in" option, when you close the poll you will have the following options available for showing the results:
- If no correct answers are configured, you can either hide the results or keep the results visible.
- If one or more correct answers are configured, you can either hide the results or show the correct answers.
How does this work with the timer and the automatic actions that occur when the timer runs out?
If you enable the "Show poll results as they come in" option and you enable the timer option explained below, the three automatic actions for when the timer runs out will be adjusted accordingly.
Using a timer in polls
When you create your poll, you can enable a Timer option. Enabling a timer will give both your speakers in the studio and your audience a visible countdown of the time left to answer the poll:
When you enable the timer in the poll, you will need to specify the duration of the countdown using the minutes and seconds fields, and choose between three automatic actions for when the timer runs out:
- Don't close poll automatically: After the countdown the poll will remain open and attendees can still submit their responses.
- Close poll and don't show results: After the countdown the poll will close, attendees can no longer submit their responses, and the poll results will not be displayed automatically.
- Close poll and show results: After the countdown the poll will close, attendees can no longer submit their responses, and the poll results will immediately be displayed automatically.
The above selected option will take place as soon as the timer reaches 0.
Note: If you enable the "Show poll results as they come in" option and you enable the "Timer" option , the three automatic actions for when the timer runs out will be adjusted accordingly (see above). The actions available for showing results after closing the poll will also be adjusted.
Tip: In studio, hosts and moderators can close the poll before the end of the count down (for example if all votes are in) or they can add more time to the countdown while the poll is running live (for example if more votes are expected). Adding time is done via the +15 or +30 seconds buttons.
Notes:
- A default minimum duration of 1 minute for the timer will be used for virtual and hybrid sessions, in order to accomodate for the natural streaming delay experienced by remote attendees. There is no minimum for in-person live sessions
- Timers can be used for multiple choice and word cloud polls.
- Timers are displayed in the live display, when configured.
Using targeting in individual polls
Poll targeting is only supported on SpotMe Anywhere
Targeting can be applied directly within the actual polls, in order to determine exactly who will be able to see and participate in the polls. Polls within the same live session can each have their own distinct targeting rules:
- Different targeting can be applied distinctly to individual polls within your live sessions, using the "show" or "hide" rules.
- The same targeting can be applied to multiple polls within a live session (in a list view), using the bulk targeting option.
In the live session options, we have added an option that allows you to not send any notifications for all polls associated to that live session. This is particularly helpful when you have concurrent live sessions and do not know exactly which attendees will be attending each live session. More information
The (user field) metadata types that are supported for poll targeting are "boolean", "choice", "choice-list", "text", and "email". The "list" metadata type is not supported.
Applying targeting to an individual poll
Let's imagine that at a hybrid event, you want to target a poll to only the attendees that are attending "in-person".
To do this, go to the "Edit" view for the poll that you wish to apply the targeting to.
Click on the Targeting section at the bottom (which by default says "visible to everyone" when no targeting is applied):
Here, we want to target this specific poll to participants that are attending "in-person".
We will therefore select Visible to > Add rule > Attending > In-person
Click on Save. The targeting in the "Edit poll" now shows that targeting is applied:
Remember to click on Save poll to confirm your choices.
You can also see that targeting is applied to the poll before launching it, below "General settings":
When you launch this poll, only the attendees that match the targeting will:
- Receive the notification to join the poll.
- Be able to see/answer the poll in their app.
- See the poll results when made available.
Remember that polls cannot be edited after they are launched, and this includes the targeting.
Applying targeting to multiple polls within a live session
From the list of polls in the live session, you can add the same set of targeting rules to all polls or a select number of polls.
To do this, when viewing the list of polls, click on Targeting:
Next, select the exact polls that you wish to apply the targeting to, using the check boxes, or use the Select all check box to select all the polls in the live session:
Here, you can click on Remove in order to simply remove any existing targeting rules from the selected polls) OR you can click on Apply in order to add new targeting to the selected polls:
After adding the rule(s), click on Save. The targeting is now applied to the polls that you selected in the list:
Remember that polls cannot be edited after they are launched, and this includes the targeting.
How to edit, duplicate, delete or re-order polls
Edit, duplicate, or delete polls
Once you have created a poll, you can at any time access it in order to edit, duplicate, or delete it.
To note, polls can only be deleted before the live session has gone live. Also, polls launched within in-person live sessions are always considered to be live. Therefore, for in-person polls, only polls that were not yet launched can be deleted; you cannot delete in-person polls that were already launched.
- In the Polls section, click on the poll you wish to perform an action on:
- This will open the poll details, with three available buttons to edit, duplicate or delete the poll:
- Clicking on Edit will allow you to modify the poll question, responses, and various options.
This can only be done for polls that have not been launched. - Clicking on Duplicate will create a copy of the poll in the Polls list.
You can also duplicate polls from within the list itself, after clicking on Edit list, without opening the poll:
You can duplicate polls that were or were not already launched. When duplicating a launched poll, the audience's responses will not be carried over into the duplicate. - Clicking on Delete will delete the poll permanently, the system will ask you to confirm if you wish to proceed with deleting the poll. Polls can only be deleted before the live session has gone live.
Also, polls launched within in-person live sessions are always considered to be live. Therefore, for in-person polls, only polls that were not yet launched can be deleted; you cannot delete in-person polls that were already launched.
Re-ordering polls
In the list of created polls, you can at any time reorder the polls so that they are in the correct order that you wish to launch them.
- Go to the Polls section in the live session, and click on Edit list:
- From here, you can drag a drop your polls to create the order that you want in the list:
- Remember to click Save to save your changes.
How to launch and run a poll
During your live session, whenever you are ready you can launch a poll question.
In the live session, go to the Polls section and click on the question you want to ask your audience:
From here, when you are ready to launch the poll, click on the green Launch poll button.
The poll is launched to the attendees. Below in the web app example, a notification will appear on the Poll tab, and a prompt appears over the live stream (if applicable):
More information on the notifications received by attendees when polls are launched
From here, the attendee can join the poll by clicking on the notification or on the Poll tab or the Go to poll button.
Here they will and select their response to the question, and hit Send:
In the app, a message will appearing confirming that the poll response was submitted:
In Backstage, the host or moderator will see the results coming in while the poll is live:
At this point, the host or moderator can choose to close the poll when they are ready, in order to stop receiving votes.
Closing a poll and showing results
In Backstage
When the host or moderator clicks on Close poll, they will have two options to immediately choose from, depending on how they would like to show the results to the audience:
- Selecting Show results now means that the poll will be closed and the results are immediately displayed to the attendees:
The host or moderator can at any time access the poll again and use the Hide results / Show results button in order to decide whether or not to display the results to the attendees. - Selecting Show results later means that the poll will be closed and the results will not be immediately shared with the attendees. The host or moderator will have access to a Show results button:
They can use the Show results button if and when they want to share the results with the attendees. This could for example be done right at the end of the live session, once all polls have been run. The host or moderator can at any time access the poll again and use the Hide results / Show results buttons in order to decide whether or not to display the results to the attendees.
Important: Depending on the options used for the poll ("timer" and/or "showing result as they come in"), the options available to the host or moderator will vary. More information.
Once the host or moderator has finished discussing the poll results with the audience, they can access the poll and click on Hide results for that poll.
Once hidden, the poll question and answers are no longer displayed to attendees, and the poll can no longer be launched again. In the polling panel, the status of the poll is updated in the list of polls. Here we can see that the poll question is marked as Voted.
Tip: To launch a poll again, you will need to recreate the poll by duplicating it, edit the name of the poll and make any adjustments, and then launch the new poll.
In the app
Back in the app, if/when a poll results are shared, a notification will appear on the screen:
The attendee can click on the See results button, or directly in the Poll tab to access the results:
How to export the poll results
Poll results can easily be exported via the live session analytics. The report will contain a dedicated "Polls" tab, if polling was used.
Simply go to the live session where the poll was run, and download the interactions report.
NEXT STEPS
Find out how to add clapping to your stream.
Find out how to add and run Q&A in your live session.
Find out how to add live interpretation to your stream.
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.