The polling feature for meetings allows you to create single choice or multiple choice polling questions, while advanced polling adds matching, ranked choice, short answer, and long answer options. You can also set correct answers to have the poll function as a quiz.
You will be able to launch the poll during your meeting and gather the responses from your participants. Full details of the poll results, such as each participant's answers and submission times, are contained in the polling reports. The polling reports are available after the meeting by default, but can also be made available during the live session. Polls can also be conducted anonymously, if you do not wish to collect participant information with the poll results.
Prerequisites for Advanced Polls and Quizzes
- Host user type must be Licensed
- Meeting advanced polling and quizzes enabled
- Zoom desktop client
- Windows: version 5.8.3 or higher
- macOS: version 5.8.3 or higher
- Linux: version 5.8.3 or higher
- Zoom mobile app*
- Android: version 5.8.3 or higher
- iOS: version 5.8.3 or higher
- Web client
- The meeting must be either a scheduled meeting, or an instant meeting using your Personal Meeting ID
Limitations for Advanced Polls
- By default, only the original meeting host can edit or add polls during a meeting. If the host or co-host role is transferred to another user, that user will only be able to launch polls already created. Alternative host can add or edit polls, but the host must enable the setting for allow alternative hosts to add or edit polls when setting the alternative host.
- All meeting participants must be on the supported version or higher, or they will not be able to see or participate in an advanced poll or quiz. If unable to update to the minimum version, we recommend joining through the web client.
- You can create a max of 50 polls for a single meeting, with each poll having a max of 50 questions.
- If a poll is re-launched in a meeting, the poll report will only display the last poll occurrence. If you know you will need to launch the same poll twice and want both sets of data, consider creating a second poll with the same questions as the original to avoid re-launching.
- Uploaded images must be either PNG or JPEG format, and cannot exceed 2 MB.
Enable Advanced Polls and Quizzes
Advanced polls and quizzing is disabled by default. You will need to enable this in the Zoom web portal before you can create an advanced poll or quiz.
- Sign in to the Zoom web portal: https://nic.zoom.us/.
- Click Settings, in the left-hand side menu.
- Click In Meeting (Basic).
- Scroll down to Meeting Polls/Quizzes. Check the box next to Allow host to create advanced polls and quizzes.
Note: If you want Alternative hosts to be able to edit polls and quizzes, please check that box as well. If it is not checked, only the host will be able to create and edit polls and quizzes.
Creating an Advanced Poll
Polling questions can be created in advance of the meeting, or done during a live session. If you create or edit a poll during a live meeting, you will be directed to the web portal to complete the process.
- Sign in to the Zoom web portal: https://nic.zoom.us/.
- Click Meetings.
- Click on the topic of your scheduled meeting. If you do not have a scheduled meeting, click Schedule a Meeting.
- Scroll to the bottom to find the Polls/Quizzes tab.
Note: If the tab is labeled as just Polls, advanced polls/quizzes has not been enabled.
- Click Create and select Advanced Polls and Quizzing.
- Click Untitled Advanced Poll to change the name of this set of polls.
- Click on the question area to edit the following details:
- Click the Untitled Question area to edit the name of that polling question.
- To the right of the name of the polling question, click the drop down menu to choose the type question:
- Single Choice: Poll participants can select only one of the provided answers. Possible answers can be listed all at once or under a drop-down menu.
- Multiple Choice: Poll participants can select multiple of the provided answers.
- Matching: Poll participants can match prompts on the left side with answers on the right side. Order of prompts and answers can be adjusted as needed. Up to 9 prompts can be provided for each question, with the possible matches ranging between 2-9 options.
- Rank Order: Poll participants can rank each item based on the provided scale. Up to 10 items can be provided for each question, with the scale allowing a range of 2-7 options.
- Short Answer: Poll participants can respond with a short answer response. The minimum and maximum allowed characters for the response can be set.
- Long Answer: Poll participants can respond with a long answer response. The minimum and maximum allowed characters for the response can be set.
- Fill in the blank: Poll participants are presented with the statement and a blank, asking them to fill in the missing information based on the statement and other context provided. Multiple blanks can be added and each blank has its own answer box.
- Rating scale: Poll participants are given a statement or topic, then are given the opportunity to rate the topic on a given scale. The range of the scale can be adjusted from the default of 1-10, and the ends of the scale can be labeled to indicate what the scale is based on, for example Not likely to Extremely likely.
- Click on the blank for each choice to enter an answer for participants to select from.
- Click Add Choice, Add Row, Add Column, Add Prompt, or Add Answer (depending on the type of poll question selected) to add additional answer options.
- Trash bin icon: Delete the current polling question.
- The three dots:
- Click here to access additional options:
- Upload Image: Allows an image to be uploaded and displayed below the question.
Note: Images must be either PNG or JPEG format.
- Duplicate Question: Duplicate the current polling question as it currently is.
- Select the check box next to Required to ensure a question must be answers before a participant can submit poll answers.
- Pencil icon: Edit the existing question.
- (Optional) Click Add a Question to create an additional question.
Note: Each question and individual answers for a question can be reordered as needed.
- Click the three dots (...) to access the following option:
- Allow participants to answer questions anonymously: Poll participants can choose to have their answers associated with themselves or to provide answers to the poll anonymously.
- Make a quiz and set correct answers: See the following section for more details.
- Click Save.
During the meeting, all questions under a single poll will be asked when launched. You can create additional polls to ask questions at a different time during the webinar.
Creating a Quiz
If you want to set correct answers and score respondent's accuracy, you can turn the polling feature into a quizzing platform.
Note: Only Single Choice, Multiple Choice, Matching, and Rank Order polls can set a correct answer. Short answer and long answer questions will require manual scoring.
- Create an advanced poll.
- Click the three dots and click Make a quiz and set correct answers.
- Click set answer shown on each question.
- Select which answer(s) you want to be the correct option.
- Click Done.
- Repeat for each question.
- Click Save.
Launch a Poll or Quiz
Polls are not immediately available to meeting participants, as the host needs to launch a poll for participants to respond to. These polls can be created before the meeting starts, or during a live session, but in either case, poll must be created in the Zoom web portal.
- Start the scheduled Zoom meeting that has polling enabled.
- Click the Polls/Quizzes button.
- At the top of the polling window, select the poll or quiz you would like to launch (if multiple polls or quizzes were created).
- Click Launch. The participants in the meeting will now be prompted to answer the polling questions. The host will be able to see the results live.
- Once you would like to stop the poll, click End Poll.
- Click the three dots (...) to access the following options:
- Re-launch Poll: Launches the poll again.
Note: If a poll is re-launched in a meeting, the poll report will only display the last poll occurrence. If you know you will need to launch the same poll twice and want both sets of data, consider creating a second poll with the same questions as the original to avoid re-launching.
- Download results: This will launch your default web browser so that you can download the entire poll report, which shows what each participant chose, instead of the percentages of each choice.
- View Results from Browser: Launches your default web browser and displays the same polling results in the web page.
- Display questions in a random order: Questions and the results will be shown in a random order.
- Show one question at a time: View of questions and their results are shown one at a time.
- Click Share Results to share the results to the participants in the meeting.
- Select the check box next to Show correct answers to all for answers to be displayed to viewers.