How to set up and run a live session word cloud poll

What is a word cloud poll?

A word cloud is an aesthetic visualization of your audience’s thoughts, gathered in the form of a “cloud” or collage made of words. The gathered word cloud is displayed on a large screen at a venue for in-person attendees to see, or in the app for remote participants:

To create a word cloud, the host or moderator asks the audience a question in the form of a poll via the app. Based on the question (and the configuration in Backstage), participants will submit one or multiple responses, with each response made up of a single word (or a group of words separated by spaces). Emojis can also be used in responses.

Word clouds are perfect icebreakers and presentation openers that look impressive when displayed on a large screen. They can be used to get a feel of the room or venue, to re-engage attendees during live sessions, and to crowdsource what’s on their minds.

How to create a word cloud poll?

Word clouds are created in live sessions in the workspace.

In your workspace main menu, go to Interactivity > Live sessions, and select the live session where you wish to create a word cloud poll.

In the panel to the right, click on to open the Polls tab, then click on New poll and select Word cloud as the poll type:

In the New word cloud section to the right of the screen, use the below options to create your word cloud poll:

1. Enter the question that attendees will receive when the word cloud poll is launched.
2. If needed, edit the maximum number of characters that attendees can use to formulate their individual response(s). This is the limit per response, and is by default set to 30 characters.
3. Allow multiple words: Check this option if, as part of a single submitted response, you wish to allow your attendees to be able to use multiple words separated by spaces (for example a short sentence such as "I feel great"). If this option is not enabled, attendees will only be able to respond with a single word for each response (for example "Great").
4. Allow multiple answers: Check this option if you wish to allow your attendees to submit multiple responses for the poll. If this is not enabled, attendees will only be able to submit a single response that is made up of a single word or a group of words separated by spaces (depending on whether the Allow multiple words option is enabled). Emojis can also be used in responses.
5. Determine the maximum number of individual responses that attendees can submit for the poll. The maximum number of responses you can set is 20.
6. You can customize the colors that will be used to display the word cloud. To do so click on Edit colors. This opens the live session settings where you can adjust the word cloud colors:
   
   Here you can configure up to three different colors that will be used to display the words in the word cloud. The default colors used are the primary color in the workspace theme editor. You can customize the three colors using the selector or by entering hex color codes.
   Click on Save to confirm the color changes made to the word cloud poll.
   You can only use one set of colors per live session. This means that if you have multiple word cloud polls in a live session, they will all use the same colors.

Once you are finished creating the word cloud poll, click on Save poll in the bottom right of the screen:

The word cloud poll is now saved in the live session, and you can access it from here in the studio to edit it, or to launch the poll when you are ready:

From here, you can go through the above steps again to create additional word cloud polls in the session, if needed.

How to run a word cloud poll?

So, you're now ready to launch the word cloud poll: you are in Studio as the host or moderator, and the session is live:

1. When you are ready to launch the poll, in studio click on to open the polls list, then open the word cloud poll, and click on Launch poll:
   
   The poll's status changes to Live, and a countdown is shown indicating when you can expect to receive the first responses from your remote attendees:
   
   
   
2. Attendees will see the poll question appear over the live stream if they are attending remotely (with a Go to stream button), or they will receive a push notification on the mobile app:
   
   A badge also appears in the Poll tab to show that a poll has been launched, and users can directly open the Poll tab to access the poll.
   
   
3. In the Poll tab in the app, attendees can begin to submit their response(s). Here they can type their responses in the panel to the right, where it says "Your answer", and hit Send to submit their response(s).
   All the attendee responses will appear in real time in the word cloud preview in the web app:
   
   The more often a specific (exact) response is submitted by attendees, the bigger it will get in the word cloud. Colors are randomly assigned to responses based on the word cloud color settings.
   
   These responses will also be displayed in real time in the live display for the in-person attendees to see at the venue. More information on setting up a live display
   
   Tip: We recommend that you choose a background color or a branded image for your live display, as otherwise a black border will be shown. In the example above we have used a background image.
   
   In Studio, the host and speakers will also see the attendee responses as they come in. This includes the view of the word cloud, as well as the list of submitted words and the number of times each exact word or response was submitted
   
   
   

Show final results:
Once all responses are received from the attendees, the host or moderator can click on Show final results for the poll. In doing this, attendees will no longer be able to submit responses for the word cloud via the app. The word cloud visualization will continue to be displayed in the app to attendees, and in the live display at the venue.

Hide results and close poll:
To remove the word cloud visualization from the app and the live display, the host can click on Hide results in Studio. The word cloud will disappear immediately from the live display, and within 15 seconds in the web app.

Get more information on your word poll:
Hosts can also access more information regarding the word cloud poll, by clicking on the INFOS dropdown button. This includes when the poll was launched, when it was closed, what the number of individual responses is for the poll, and what is/was the percentage of attendees that joined the live session and that participated in the poll.

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.