Run an open text poll

3 years ago
28 April 2021
18 replies
10708 views

Userlevel 4

Slido Team
9 replies

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.

Use an open text poll to have attendees respond in their own words. This is especially useful if you want to ask an open-ended question.

In this article:

Create an open text poll

Open your slido and click the + Add new button
Select Open text and type in your question
Hit Start interaction or the green Play button to activate your poll

No need to worry about saving your progress. Polls are saved automatically.

Open text poll options

You can customize your open text poll 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
Show respondent names: Display participants’ names next to their 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 poll and see how it works for participants

To see how the poll works for your participants:

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

Test the open text poll participant experience

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

Run your open text poll

When you’re ready to run your poll 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 an open text poll looks like in Present mode.

Newer responses will always appear at the top. If you receive more responses than can fit on the screen, simply scroll down to view the rest.

Please note that an open text poll is limited to 5000 responses and each response is limited to 10,000 characters.

Learn more:

18 replies

In the past, I’ve been able to allow multiple responses to an open text poll while sharing the results. However, now this won’t work. When I share the results, participants are only able to enter one response to the open text poll. They can see all the results but don’t have the option to enter another response. Is this a bug? How can I work around this issue?

Hi @KCas,

This should still work. Simply enable allow multiple answers in the poll settings of the open text poll in question, and make sure you do not lock voting while the open text poll is active. This way, participants can enter multiple responses to your open text poll even while the results are being shared.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you need anything else :)

Hi there,

I am trying to create a poll where a statement/question is made to the participants, and they can then use the free text field to submit their thoughts and answers. Ideally I would then like other participants be able to vote or ‘like’ any answers that they see appear on the screen, so we can then rank the answers. Is this possible?

Userlevel 3

Hi @PSC,

You could run an open text poll which allows free text but if you were looking to rank answers using our polls function, I would suggest using a ranking poll or a word cloud. With the ranking poll, your participants can rank the answers of importance to them personally. With the word cloud, words get bigger as more people select them, so it’s a great visual poll!

Our Q&A function allows users to upvote answers and even reply to them which might be worth mentioning as another workaround to your use case 😊

Let me know if you have anymore questions, I’d be happy to help!

Best,

For open text polls in Slido, is there a way to allow the participant to view the live responses to the poll without first having to submit an answer themselves?

Userlevel 3

Hi @AimeePerez,

It isn’t possible for the participant to view the responses without answering the poll in participant mode on their devices. However, if the participant chose not to submit an answer, the presenter of the Slido event can display the results live, which the participant will then see.

Let me know if you have any more questions, I’ll be happy to help!

We are trying to run an open text poll that would ask audience members to answer a math problem. When we are testing this, it doesn’t appear that decimal points are allowed/recognized to submit. This is a key point for someone to be able to answer back 2.22 or something along those lines. Is there a suggested workaround for this? We want it to be able to be open answer and not have to default to multiple choice.

Userlevel 5

Hey @lflynn,

I just tested this and the open text poll was allowing me to add decimal points - see the screenshots. Would you be able to take a screenshot of your poll so that we can investigate it?

Hi I'm trying to set up an open text poll where people can vote for the questions they want to see answered by our presenters the most however this doesnt seem to be possible in open text? We want the participants to send in questions during the presentation therefore we can't gather them before and organise a voting poll. Thank you in advance for your help!

Userlevel 5

Hey @Laureen,

It sounds like the Q&A would be a better solution for you. This feature lets you collect questions which participants can then upvote.

Hope this helps :)

Is there a limit to the open text poll length of an answer?

Userlevel 3

Hi @Huissier conference,

For open text, the limit is 10,000 characters. We have an article that includes character limits across Slido that you may find useful!

hope this helps!

Best,

The display participant name option isn’t there if you are using open text in a survey - is there a way to switch that option on?

Userlevel 4

Hey @AheadPartnership ,

This feature isnt available within Surveys, as there is only the option to display the results for one Survey Poll at a time.

We will submit this as a feature request for future consideration when making improvements on the Survey.

Let us know if you have any other questions!

Best,

Can you add a second open text question to open text poll?

Userlevel 3

Hello @GuyB

you can create a survey with our paid plans that would allow you to add 2 open-text polls under one survey.

In case you would have any additional questions just let us know.
Best,

Hi @PSC,

I don’t think that your response really addressed the original poster’s question.

From what I gather, their enquiry is along the same lines as what I was hoping to get from Sli.do.

In our workshop, we’d FIRST like to collect suggestions or action in a free text format (either “Word Cloud” or “Open Text”), but THEN progress to a voting stage BASED on the crowd-sourced free text entries.

So far, I cannot see this as possible and therefore I really don’t see the point of “Word Cloud” or “Open Text” poll types…. At least not for our use cases.

Why not allow one poll type to be progressed to another poll type? Seems logical..

Thanks,

Userlevel 4

Hey @slidopersom ,

Thanks for your question.

What Cori was suggesting are workarounds for what the original poster asked, as we dont currently have a feature that allows you to submit a Poll response and allow others to upvote others responses.

The upvote option is only available in our Q&A right now, but we hope to see this feature added to Open Text poll in a future roadmap.

Thank you for your feedback and it will be shared with the product team for consideration.

Let us know if you have any other questions!

Best,

Create an open text poll

Open text poll options

Test your poll and see how it works for participants

Run your open text poll

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