Slido’s new interface will become the default for all users on November 7th, 2024 – with the ability to switch to the old interface remaining for some time.
Our new interface was designed with ease of use and efficiency at the forefront. The core functionalities (polling and Q&A) are stronger, quicker, and more intuitive than ever. However, this does mean that a few features had to be deprecated.
See below for the most up-to-date details about Slido’s feature continuity.
Ability to enable/disable Q&A or polling within your slido
Bulk actions for Q&A questions (archive, restore, delete, etc.)
Improved ability to test the participant experience
Ability to search within your Q&A
Improved ability to share announcements with your audience
Reuse polls you’ve previously created
Ability to moderate open text poll responses
Features that may return
Filter Q&A by Label in Present mode: This feature is rarely used, but we are open to exploring more relevant use cases.
Poll templates: As mentioned above, the ability to reuse previous polls is coming soon. However, our teams are still evaluating the value of Slido’s native poll library.
Using any of the features above? If you’re willing to share your use case, we’d love to talk to you.
Features leaving permanently
Developing the new interface gave us the opportunity to look critically at our product and understand how it was being used. As a result, there are elements of Slido that we will be sunsetting.
Agenda/Session: We developed the agenda feature when we were mostly used at conferences. In 2024, Slido is mostly used within companies to help facilitate conversation between leaders and their teams. This means that the agenda feature has very low usage and so we decided against the investment it would need to modernize the technology it’s built on.
Ideas: The Ideas feature was designed in a way that makes it difficult to evolve. We are currently exploring other brainstorming poll designs, including an enhanced open text poll, that will better address the needs of our users.
Show results as pie chart (multiple choice poll): This is another feature with low usage. The improvements needed to match our quality standards are simply too costly.
Switcher app: With Slido for PowerPoint now supporting macOS, there’s less and less need for Switcher. The Switcher app is currently used by less than 1% of all users and used within less than 1% of all slidos – which means we simply couldn’t justify updating it for the new interface.
Star a Q&A question: This feature was replaced with our more powerful Q&A Labels function.
Archive a Q&A reply: This has been replaced with the Delete reply action.
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Good to see the continuous evolution of the tool.
The Idea feature will be missed! We used it as a means for the participants to chat, as we want to separate chat from real questions for the Q&A. Curious how other companies are doing that. And please keep the ability to editthe Q&A. In our multilingual country we indeed edit those to translate a question for the presenter.
Hello @markus-pxs
you could run the chat as an open-text poll. You can name the poll as a chat and give some instructions for participants. Then they can keep submitting their votes as a post to the chat. I hope this would work for your use-case.
When it comes to editing option as a host this option is not possible but in case you would want to have a feature that translates questions from native language into English on a participant side then you can approach our support@slido.com team who could enable one of our testing features that could help you with your use-case.
Kindly
Hi Ondrej, thanks for the suggestion for the open-text poll. But the fact that one needs to post a chat to start seeing the chat of the other participants makes it not usable. If you’re participating in a digital session with hundreds or thousands of participants (with embedded live video), the chat makes a huge difference in terms of end user experience and emotion, as you can share your opinion and feelings about the session. So I am a bit surprised that it’s not developed yet as a feature. Maybe it is because a lot of focus goes to integrating Slido in Teams or Zoom. In our use case we’re using the Slido platform landing page and have every interaction therein. I guess we stay with the ‘old’ version as long as possible ;-)
Hello @markus-pxs I see what you mean. Thank you for the point. I will forward this feedback to the product as well.
Agree shame to lose the Ideas tab - Can a thumbs up feature we added to the open text poll? That is one of the main features we use in brainstorming sessions - The thumbs up allows everyone to see the most popular ideas. If this is in development could a rough timeline be provided as otherwise our clients want us to look at other polling systems that provide this feature
Also what date will Ideas be permanently unavailable as mentioned this is one of our most used features and not knowing if one day we log in and it’s suddenly gone isn’t very useful
Hey @MMP ,
Thanks for sharing the details of your use case. This helps us when sharing the need for new features.
I wanted to add, with the improved design of Slido, it will also make adding new features easier with the design. We are looking into adding an upvote option to the Open Text poll and will share any details of new features to our Product News.
We will be sending out emails in the fall when we finalize the date for deprecating the Old Interface and the features going away mentioned above as we have many determining factors for the planned deprecation. There will be plenty of heads up before the Old interface is no longer available.
Let us know if you have any other questions!
Best,
I too would like to voice my sadness with the removal of the Ideas tab. We use the Slido page for a lot of our broadcasts and meetings with live video embedded into the page and use the Ideas tab as a sort of chat function to keep it separate from questions that would come in.
I don’t think creating an open poll text response will duplicate this feature as an audience member would have to submit their own response before seeing others that have already been submitted. We found before the Ideas tab was created that people would sit on the sidelines and not respond at all, but if they saw a post, they were more likely to chime in and post something that would enhance the conversation.
It was also great to be able to push the audience to what tab we wanted them to be on. So during a live session we could start with a Poll that people could respond to as soon as they land on the page, then turn that off and it would go to the Q&A tab so the audience could type in a question. Then if we wanted to open up a chat we could start an “Idea” and it would push them to that tab, close it and back to the Q&A tab they go. If that is no longer the case, at least please create a “Chat” function within the new interface and make it so everyone can see responses without having to type in their own first.
Hello @gripp
thank you for sharing that with us. I will pass your feedback to our product team.
I have another request on a current feature that I have not been able to find yet in the “new” Slido.
When an event is over and we have left over questions in the queue, I have been able to archive all (and I found where to do that in the new Slido) but before I hit the confirmation button to archive all it would ask if I wanted to label the questions first. I had created a label “Follow Up” so that these questions could easily be found in the excel export. Is it possible to bring that feature back again?
Hello @gripp
thank you for all the feedback. It has all been submitted to our team however I am not able to promise any updates at the moment. It is very valuable for us and I have submitted all of your insights one by one so our team is aware of these.
Removing the ideas tab will be a reason for us to find other solution for our needs.
We do a lot of online workshops and the Ideas function is a crucial part of our session with the ability to upvote/downvote and highlite responses during our discussions Is fundamental. The open text does not in any way support that use case and as mentioned by others it is not shown until you submit an answer.
This retirement of ideas will probably lead to us finding another solution and not renew in 53 days.
Hi @knytn
Thank you for your honest feedback. Deprecating the Ideas feature was one of the many tough decisions our product teams made in order to best move forward with the improved interface.
With that said, I am absolutely relaying your feedback. And we still hope to introduce an even better alternative feature in the future.
I hope that the Slido Switcher will not be deprecated. We use it all the time for our Broadcasts. Since we are working in a corporate environment and are not allowed to add PowerPoint Add-ins, we can only use the Slido Switcher to switch between PowerPoint Slides and Slido.
Hi @sebla
Thanks so much for sharing your use case. It adds so much more value to your feedback. I’ll make sure it gets to the appropriate teams.
I use slido mainly at conferences and sometimes there are lots of polls during one event and there are some points now accuring with the new interface:
sorting polls is pain in the new interface - I used the “session” to keep an overview
when programming polls, you always need some more clicks to access the poll settings - would be great, if the settings are regulary visible.
in the old interface, when hovering over a question in the list, you were able to see if answers are hidden (which in most of may cases is the standard) and if the the poll is closed. It would be great if these “eye” and the “lock” icons could return.
Hey @ATH ,
Thank you for your feedback.
I have shared these frustrations with the team for consideration.
Let us know if you have any other questions or concerns.
Best,
Hi I am using webex now. Will the webex change to Slido system after November 7, 2024 automatically or do I need to do anything? What will the participants need to do? Do they need to download Slido or not? Can they still use the original room number to join the meeting? I have got accustomed to using Webex. I am not sure whether I can use Slido without any problems. I got a notice email about rolling out to the next phase of Slido's interface, so I would be grateful if you could make it clear about my concerns. Thanks.
Hello @Ally2024,
this change will happen automatically and there is no need to do anything on your end. It will only impact your experience on the host-mode on our website. In case you are preparing your polls directly in Webex integration then you will not even notice any change.
Slido is a web-based tool so your participants do not need to download anything. The change is only for the hosts of Slido not for participants. They can continue using your Slido as usual.
Feel free to ask any additional questions. Kindly
Hi - Thank you for working so hard to continue to make Slido a great tool!
Regarding the filtering by label or by a starred question in Q&A. Please note that one or the other of these is extremely important. My team hosts are regular hosts of virtual events (8-10 per month), and for some of these events, we have very active Q&A sessions. Currently, they are the only feasible way to make it manageable for the speakers of the session to efficiently know if they should verbally speak to a question from the Q&A, if it is for them to filter their Q&A view down by starred questions only, and for the Q&A mods to therefore star select questions. This way the speakers can quickly identify questions for them to speak to in order to facilitate their engagement with the attendees. Otherwise they have to scroll and scroll to filter our “good” questions.
This functionality is rather critical for out team, please strongly consider supporting this need.
Hello @Matt Saunders
thank you for submitting your feedback. I will make sure this is forwarded to our team however at this stage I am not able to promise if the feature of Filter Q&A by Label in Present mode will be implemented.
You would just have to add your speakers as co-hosts to Slido in order to be able for them to filter labeled questions. Also if someone would filter these questions it would be applied for all devices logged in to the host mode.
I hope this can help also in the new host mode.
Hi @Ondrej from Slido - Historically, we have primarily used the question filtering function in host mode. However, more recently, we have begun leveraging this functionality, in present mode as well. This is just a new used case for us, however, our plan has been to begin leveraging this functionality for all of our events.
example 1
Example 2 - This example is sorting by popular and not starred, however, sharing this as well as an example of the layout we have begun using within our livestreams.
Hello @Matt Saunders
thank you for the screenshot and explanation. I will forward your feedback to our team as at this point it is possible only in the host mode with the new interface.