Run a live poll and take questions from the room

Two things make an event app get opened more than once: voting on something, and getting a question answered from the stage. Both live on one screen — Live session, in the left menu.

What the room sees

Attendees open /live/<session> — from the star link on their agenda, or by scanning the QR the Live session screen puts on your projector. They get the open poll, and the wall of questions with an upvote arrow on each.

Reading works for anyone. Asking and voting need their personal link — the one carrying their QR code. Without it a vote count is just a number anyone can inflate.

A poll is a survey you open at the right moment

There is no separate poll builder. On the Surveys page, pick a session and press + New poll. Write its one question in the Form Builder exactly as you would any survey question — a Select for "which of these", a Rating for "how confident are you", NPS, yes/no, or free text.

Then, on the Live session screen, press Open the second you want the room to answer. Press Close when you are done. That is the whole live part: open, watch the bars move, close.

Keep it to one question per poll. Attendees answer a poll once, so a second question is a second poll — which is also how you want it on stage, one thing at a time.

Nobody sees the numbers before they vote

An attendee gets the results only after answering, or once you close the poll. A running tally shown to someone who has not voted yet stops measuring the room and starts steering it.

Your screen shows the numbers from the first answer onwards, because you are the one deciding when to reveal them.

Questions from the audience

Q&A is on by default for every session. Attendees type a question, everyone else upvotes, and the best ones rise. Your screen shows the same list with the vote counts and the moderation buttons.

Two switches at the top of the Live session screen:

• Q&A open — turn it off and the ask box disappears, for a session that is not taking questions.
• Approve before showing — every question waits in your queue until you let it through. Off by default: a queue nobody is watching looks to the room like the feature is broken. Turn it on for press conferences, ministerial sessions, and anything being streamed.

Whether or not you moderate up front, you can always Hide a question, mark it Answered so people stop re-asking it, or Delete it outright when it contains a name or a phone number that should not be on a screen.

"Do not show my name"

Attendees can tick a box so their name is not shown to the room. It is labelled exactly that, and not "anonymous", because you can still see who asked — somebody has to be accountable for what goes on a projector. Answered and hidden questions stay in the table either way.

Running the screen

Open Live session, pick the session, and put the browser on the projector. It refreshes itself every three seconds; you never reload it. It remembers which session you were running, so a stray refresh does not drop you back to the first one on the list.

The right-hand panel has the QR code for the room. Put it on the screen between speakers.

Common problems

No poll appears for the room — it is still a draft. Press Open on the Live session screen. A poll with no questions written yet is also skipped, deliberately: an empty box helps nobody.

The poll is not in the list — a poll belongs to exactly one session. Check the session on its Surveys page.

Someone says they cannot vote — they opened the bare address instead of their personal link. Send {{agenda_link}} in your confirmation email and the link travels with them.

A question is stuck — "Approve before showing" is on and it is sitting in your queue.

What happens next

• Let attendees build their own agenda
• Add sessions and tracks
• Ask for feedback after the session