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.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.