Run a word cloud via Slido

  • 24 August 2020
  • 46 replies
  • 45210 views
Slido Team
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Slido is gradually rolling out a new user interface. If the below steps and visuals match what you are seeing within your account, then you are using the new interface and this article is for you. If not, please see this version.

 

A word cloud creates a "cloud" of the most popular words or short phrases that are sent by your audience.

 

Word clouds are a fun way to get a sense of how your participants are feeling, or where they’re logging in from. It lets you identify silent heroes, find out what your participants value most or just warm up the event.

 

In this article:

 

 

How the word cloud works

 

Here are four simple principles of the word cloud:

  • Short answers work best
    For maximum impact, one word is best. If your participants need more words to express themselves, a maximum of three words work too. This is to enhance the dynamic display. For longer answers, an open text poll is recommended.
     
  • No swearing
    Swear words won't go through at all, unless you’ve disabled the Profanity filter in Poll settings 
     
  • Watch the words grow
    The word size changes dynamically depending on how many times your attendees enter it.
     
  • You will not see certain words that are considered 'connectors'
    We should keep in mind that words we use to connect words conversationally are filtered out when submitted to the Word Cloud. These words include 'However,' 'Ok,' and 'This,' to name a few.

 

 

Create a word cloud

 

  1. Open your slido and click the + Add new button on the left, next to My interactions
  2. Select Word cloud and type in your question
  3. Hit Start interaction or the green Play button to activate your poll
     
Create a word cloud

 

 

Word cloud options

 

You can customize your word cloud in a few different ways. Select the Poll options in the upper right corner to see the below settings.

  • Multiple answers: Allow your participants to submit more than one response 
     
  • Profanity filter: Enable or disable the filter for profanity (this always defaults to being on)
     
  • Character limit: Set a character limit for your responses
     
  • Poll results: Choose whether your live poll results will be visible or hidden for participants
     
  • Add image: Add an image to be displayed alongside your poll question

 

 

Test your word cloud and see how it works for participants

 

To see how the word cloud works for your participants:

  1. Activate it by clicking the green Start interaction or Play button 
  2. Select the View as participant option near the bottom right corner
  3. Submit an answer as a participant and click Exit participant mode when finished

Each line is considered a single entry, no matter the number of words included. Make sure your instructions in the poll description are clear or explain verbally what you're after.
 

Test the word cloud participant experience

 

You can delete your testing response by clicking the three-dot menu next to your poll and selecting Reset results.

 

 

Run your word cloud

 

When you’re ready to run your word cloud for your participants, simply activate the poll and open Present mode. You can share your screen while using Present mode and display your poll results live for all to see.

 

See below what a word cloud looks like in Present mode.

 

Word cloud in Present mode

 

The number of words displayed depends on the size of the screen it’s presented on. This means that the Present mode view may differ a little from what participants see on their devices.

 

Pro tip: Start the word cloud with hidden results

You can hide the results of your word cloud from participants by selecting Hidden under Poll results in the poll settings. This way, you can choose when to display the results by switching it back to Visible.

 

 

Moderate your word cloud

 

Once you click Start interaction, your word cloud is active and the audience can submit their words. Underneath your question is a Review answers box . If you click this, it will expand, giving you the option to delete entries.

 

Moderate your word cloud

 

Note that special characters (æ, ø, å, š, č) will be replaced by simple letters.

 

 

 

Learn more:

 

 

46 replies

S

It would appear that not all of the responses participants enter into my wordclouds are actually appearing on the screen when I am in presenting mode.  I haven’t moderated how many times people can enter their responses, so why is this.  I became aware of it after looking at my results, post training, and seeing comments there that then do not appear when you go to “present”.  Can anyone advise me what I am doing wrong or why this is? 

 

 

Alex
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Hi @SharonH,

I think the reason why some words were missing is because there’s a limit of top 50 words being shown on Slido Present mode at a time. This is for accessibility reasons, to make sure that all words are readable. 

Number of words shown also automatically changes with the resolution of your screen, if the screen you use for Present Mode is smaller, it’ll show less words compared to a larger screen. Though it will still only show up to 50 top words maximum, even on a large screen.

It is also possible that some words were automatically excluded through our profanity filter. Do you know if perhaps some of the words could be considered vulgar? 

Please let me know if you have any more questions. 

- Alex
J

All words are in the same font how do i fix?

Alex
Userlevel 5
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Hi @Jacki,

If by the same font - you mean the size and colour of the words, this is because each of the words have only been mentioned once in the word cloud (or all words the same amount of times, equally). 

Please try adding one of the words in there multiple times on a different device to see if that word grows bigger and perhaps changes colour (depending on which theme you’re using).

Let me know if this helps or if you need more help!

- Alex
D

Hi @Jacki,

If by the same font - you mean the size and colour of the words, this is because each of the words have only been mentioned once in the word cloud (or all words the same amount of times, equally). 

Please try adding one of the words in there multiple times on a different device to see if that word grows bigger and perhaps changes colour (depending on which theme you’re using).

Let me know if this helps or if you need more help!

I tried type type the same word 3 times and other 10 word just once, the font is still same for every word. Is there any threshold that to change the font (color and size)?

thank

David

Alex
Userlevel 5
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Hi @David Dou,

Sorry - I realized my earlier explanation was lacking a key element!

 

You’ll need to submit the same words but as different participant to count more times. This means that if a single user submits the same word multiple times, it’ll only count as once. This is to make sure that voting in a word cloud remains fair. 

So, in order for certain words to appear bigger, multiple participants have to submit the same word. 

 

For example: Participant 1 submits the word “lion” five times, it’ll appear small until Participant 2 submits “lion” too.

 

Please let me know if my explanation makes things a little clearer or if there’s anything else that I can help with! 

- Alex
D

Hi @David Dou,

Sorry - I realized my earlier explanation was lacking a key element!

 

You’ll need to submit the same words but as different participant to count more times. This means that if a single user submits the same word multiple times, it’ll only count as once. This is to make sure that voting in a word cloud remains fair. 

So, in order for certain words to appear bigger, multiple participants have to submit the same word. 

 

For example: Participant 1 submits the word “lion” five times, it’ll appear small until Participant 2 submits “lion” too.

 

Please let me know if my explanation makes things a little clearer or if there’s anything else that I can help with! 

thank for your information and I will try later.

-David

T

Is it possible to amalgamate word clouds from different meetings to create one large cloud?

Alex
Userlevel 5
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Hi @Team North,

Unfortunately, this is not possible. 

You can only see the answers from a single Word cloud poll. 

Sounds like a neat feature though! I’ll make sure to share this with our Product Team. 

 

Let me know if there’s anything else that I can help you with 😊

- Alex
J

I have set up my word cloud to build by using Slido in Webex. However, my results are not building a word cloud, but just a list of words with votes next to them. How can I display the word cloud in Webex? (The word cloud does appear on cell phones signed into Slido.)

 

Dasa from Slido
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Hi, @jcnorman, 

You’re right, at the moment the host view shows a list of word cloud with a respective number of submission for each word. On the other hand, your participants can see the word cloud in the sidebar with Slido. 


Here’s the good news: Our product team is already aware of this experience and they plan tol change it with the next release in early 2022 (January/February). 


In the meantime, I’d suggest to open Slido Present mode: 
1. Go to slido.com
2. Log in with your Webex credentials
3. Select your Slido
4. Click the green Present button in the top right corner.

This will open the Slido Present mode in the browser tab you could screen-share in Webex to display the poll results and Q&A in a nice visual way. 

We understand it’s not ideal with the workaround, but we hope it helps a bit. 


Please do let me know if you have any outstanding questions. Happy to address them. 

 

Best, 

 

Dáša from Slido

Dáša
J

I have added a word cloud as one of the questions in a survey. It seems as though the setup doesn’t have the same options as a word cloud as a poll. In a survey, they can only enter one word. Is there a way to enable multiple words for a word cloud in a survey?

Slido Team
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Hi, @johanne-g, 


You are right, at the moment it’s not possible to enter multiple words when the word cloud is part of a survey. I understand it’s not the best experience, sorry about that. I’ve let our product team know and they’re looking into it.

We’ll get back to you as soon as we’ve got any news. 

---
Dáša from Slido

Slido Team
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Hi, @johanne-g,  

Just wanted to share a workaround with you that could work for submitting multiple entries for word cloud in a survey.

When you separate your submissions with a comma and space, all words will appear as standalone words. Having said that, this would only work if you: 

  1. Add a space after a comma
  2. Use only 1-one word submission - no space between words is possible


Here’s an example: 

 

Hope this helps.

Having said that, as mentioned before we understand this is not ideal and we’ll be looking into possible solutions. 

C

Hi,
I’ve got a quick question about wordcloud entries: If somebody enters the response “Ok”, the word doesn’t appear in the wordcloud, even though it is the most used word. “O.k.” is displayed as usual, “0k” also works just fine. Is “Ok” listed as spam / explicit word or is there another problem? 

Thanks in advance for your help.

M
Userlevel 5
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Hey @Christina,

That’s a good catch! The word cloud filters out words categorised as not meaningful enough or unacceptable. The word ‘ok’ is categorised as not meaningful enough and so it is filtered by the algorithm and doesn’t show up for everyone, even if it is popular. The reason why you saw 0k come through is that it is not seen as the same as ‘ok’.

It’s set up this way to make sure that word clouds show the most meaningful responses.

I hope this helped :) Let me know if you have any questions.

 

EDIT: An earlier version of the comment incorrectly stated that words with fewer that 3 characters are also filtered. There is no character limit on words that show up in the word cloud. Sorry for the miscommunication on our side!

- Meggie
M
Userlevel 5
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Hi @Juraj S,

That’s a good spot! Sorry, I did not notice that this option disappears as soon as you add more polls to the survey.

After checking with our product team, I found out that adding multiple answers isn’t possible in word clouds and open text polls in surveys. Instead. you could add another word cloud poll that lets participants submit another answer. You could then export the results and combine answers from both word clouds in Excel or Google sheets.

Hope this helps and sorry again for my incorrect advice above - even we discover Slido features every now and then :) 

- Meggie
P

Hello Slido community!

In the past we were able to present longer sentences vs. just 1 or 3 word entries (see attached screenshot).

For example, when I add a longer sentence now, I noticed how each sentence is ‘butchered’ into individual words. Is this a new restriction or is there a workarond as I find it quite limiting to only allow a few words vs full sentences.

Thank you!

Peter

 

L

Hi all! Word cloud is not working for me. I did a test with a couple of folks from my team. We all answered with the same exact answer, one word, no comma, no space but it only shows the answer once and the word itself is not bolded or larger. It’s basically not working as a word cloud and even worse it looks like only one person answered the question. Can you explain why please?

Cori from slido
Userlevel 3
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Hi @Ludo, 

I’m sorry to hear you’re having issues with this. 

Do you have a screenshot with what’s happening in the word cloud I can take a look at? 

Thanks! 

- Cori
D

I set up a word cloud and began testing it.  The question asks for up to three words to explain why they are here.  The first words I tested were “had to be” and “Had to” and neither of them showed up.  Many other words showed up and when duplicated, the words grew.  

M
Userlevel 5
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Hey @poppermann,

Those are some lovely responses in the screenshot 💚

We recently adjusted the algorithm of the word cloud so that it doesn’t let through whole sentences and it also filters out words that are seen as not meaningful, such as ‘this’ or ‘also’. This means that when a participant types a full sentence, it is broken up into words and phrases. This was done to optimize the performance of the word cloud.

If you’d like participants to submit full sentences as responses, I’d suggest using an open text poll instead.

Hope this helps and sorry for the late response. 

- Meggie
K

A less than ideal workaround is to get the participant to enter multiple words as a single enter delimited by “commas and spaces”. E.g. “happy, satisfied, excited”. These appears as multiple individual words in the word cloud display. Take note of the spaces. “very happy” ends up as “veryhappy”; hypens and underscores do not help.

J

Hi, I’m having trouble adding pre-populated answers as an admin.  I want to give people the ability to click on a dropdown to pre-select an answer, but also to type something new if they don’t agree with one of the answers.

The above states I should be able to do this as as an admin, but I can’t see instructions on how to do this.

If I just add one word answers to the Slido as a respondent, this doesn’t seem to resolve this, so assume it’s something I need to give as an admin.

Please can you help?

Cori from slido
Userlevel 3
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Hi @j789s, 

The best way to do this would be to create a multiple choice poll that has an ‘other’ option as an answer, you could then follow this up with an open text poll which calls back to the multiple choice poll. For example ‘If you answered Other in our first poll, could you elaborate here?’ - this would then give your participants space to share their alternative ideas with you. 

I would recommend then merging your polls to create a survey, which sounds best suited for your use case of collecting insights and feedback from your participants. 

Let me know if you have anymore questions! 

Best,

- Cori

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