A poll asks the room a question at a set point in the video and shows the results as soon as someone answers. Use one to keep people engaged, to learn who’s watching, or to warm them up for your offer.
Add one on the Room timeline.
Add a poll
Find the moment
Under Webinars → your webinar → Set up → Room timeline, move the playhead to where you ask the question in the video.
Add it
Choose Add at (time) and Poll.
Write the question and answers
Each poll needs a question and at least two answers.
Save
Choose Add poll.
Poll fields
| Field | What it does | Limits |
|---|---|---|
| Question | What you’re asking. | Required, up to 300 characters |
| Answers | The choices. Add an answer adds one, and the X removes one. | 2 to 6 answers, each required, up to 120 characters |
| Starting votes | A number of votes each answer starts with. See below. | 0 to 100,000. Default 0. |
| Appears | When the poll opens. | See the timeline |
| Disappears | When it closes. New polls run for 3 minutes. | At least 5 seconds after Appears, or At the end |
| Show in the room | Off hides it without deleting it. | On by default |
Choose starting votes
Results show as percentages. With few people in a session, the first voter would see “100%” for their own answer. Starting votes give the bars something to start from.
They’re added to the real votes when working out what attendees see. For example, with starting votes of 30 and 10, and 3 real votes for the second answer, attendees see 70% and 30%.
Starting votes stay out of your own numbers: your reports and exports count only real answers. Pick numbers that don’t push people to one answer, and set them all to 0 if you’d rather show exact results.
What attendees see
The poll appears above the chat, labelled Live poll, for everyone in the room while it’s open. It’s inside the chat tab, so someone reading the Q&A or Resources tab won’t see it until they go back.
Attendees click an answer once. Their choice gets a tick, and they see a percentage and a bar for every answer. They can’t change their answer, and they don’t see results until they’ve answered.
Only one poll shows at a time. If two overlap, attendees see the one that starts first until it closes. If a poll is open when someone joins late, they can still answer.
When someone answers a poll in a replay, it counts towards the same poll, and it opens based on their position in the video. Someone who answered live sees their earlier answer.
If the answer can’t be saved, usually because the poll has closed, they see “Your answer was not saved. The poll may have ended; please try again.”
Edit a poll after people answer
As soon as one person has answered, the poll’s question and answers are locked. Otherwise, earlier votes would end up counted against different wording. The inspector shows “People have answered this poll, so its question and answers are locked. You can still move it.”
- You can still change when it appears and disappears, and turn Show in the room off.
- You can’t change the question, add, remove or reword answers, or change starting votes on this screen.
If you try to save new wording, you get “This poll already has responses. Keep its question and answer labels unchanged, or add a new poll.”
To ask something different, turn the old poll off and add a new one. Keep the old one rather than deleting it, because deleting a poll also deletes its answers and removes it from your reports.
Use the answers
| Where | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Inspector, Last 30 days | “412 people answered.” |
| Overview report | Answers and percentages for each poll, without starting votes, plus an export. |
| Webhooks | poll.answered, with the question and the chosen answer, each time someone answers. |
Tips
- Keep the wording short. People are watching a video while they read it.
- Ask out loud in the video at the same moment, and leave a pause. A poll with no spoken prompt gets far fewer answers.
- Ask something that tells you who’s watching, such as their biggest obstacle. You can use that in your follow-up.
- Use 3 to 4 answers. More takes longer to read, and pushes the chat down on a phone.
For error messages, see Common problems.