This post is a short guide for how you can create polls before or during a meeting in Microsoft Teams. In this post:
- How to create polls during a meeting
- How to create polls before a meeting starts
- Managing polls within meetings
- Where do poll results get saved?
- New features coming soon
Polls were launched in late 2020 as a kind of extension to Microsoft Forms to give meeting organisers/ presenters a way to poll attendees before a meeting is set to start, or as a meeting is taking place. I was familiar with creating polls during a Teams meeting, but I wasn’t aware that you are able to create polls prior to a meeting starting!
How to create polls during a Teams meeting
If you haven’t created one already, Polls are really easy to create during a meeting and pop up as an on-screen notification when sent. To create a poll during a meeting as meeting organizer or presenter:
- In the Teams meeting, click on the show conversation button
- Press the … messaging extensions button
- If you can’t see Forms in the apps listed, search for “forms”
- A pop up box will appear asking you to add Forms > press Add
Your first poll will now appear. You can add your question, options or enable multiple answers. You can also specify whether to share results automatically after voting, or keep responses anonymous.
- Press Save. You will then see a preview of your poll which you can either Edit or Send
- Press Send
- As well as appearing as a pop up, the poll is also added to the meeting chat, along with the results if selected to show
How to create polls before a meeting starts
As well as creating polls during a meeting, you can also create polls prior to a meeting taking place.:
- In Teams > Open the Calendar
- Double-click on the meeting you want to add polls to
- Press the Add a tab + icon > Add the Forms app
- A pop up box will appear asking you to add Forms > Press Add
- An additional pop up box will appear introducing Forms > Press Save
You will now see for the Forms tab view, from here you are able to create, manage and launch polls.
- Press + Create New Poll
- Add your question, options or enable multiple answers
- There are additional options you can turn on/off:
- Share results automatically after voting
- Keep responses anonymous
- Allow others to co-author
- Press Save
Managing polls within meetings
Once you’ve created your polls pre-meeting, they will all show under the Polls tab within the meeting in Teams. Polls display as draft by default, then change to live once you launch them.
Under the launch drop down button for draft polls, you have the option to launch, edit or delete the poll. Launching the poll adds it into the meeting as a pop up and within the meeting conversation.
For live polls you are able to view results, close the poll, export results or delete the poll.
When you close a poll, the “live” status (shown above) will change to “closed”. One a poll is closed, the options slightly change to allow you to reopen, export results or delete the poll.
Where do poll results get saved?
Poll results are saved within the meeting organizers Forms app in Microsoft 365. To view the form results:
- Navigate to office.com
- Open the waffle > select Forms
- If you don’t see your polls on the landing page > Press All My Forms
- Your polls will now be displayed
From here you are able to open each poll and view the responses for each poll, plus export to excel. Polls are denoted differently to standard Forms, by the small graph icon next to the poll.
New features coming soon
Microsoft announced in March 2021 a series of improvements being made to Polls in Teams Meetings that are due for release in April 2021. Here’s a look at all the announced new features:
Intelligent Poll suggestions
While preparing for your meeting in the “Polls” tab of your meeting, you will soon discover poll suggestions, where Forms AI services will suggest historical polls to users based on their meeting purpose. AI in Forms can also suggest poll questions that might be useful for your particular meeting and multiple-choice answer options based on your typed poll question.
- AI based poll question suggestion for Teams meeting: Roadmap ID: 79493
- AI based historical poll suggestion for Teams meeting: Roadmap ID: 79494
- AI based option suggestion for Teams meeting polls: Roadmap ID: 79495
Support for open-text Polls
Also coming soon is the ability to ask open-ended questions to meeting attendees. Once submitted, their answers are visualized in a word cloud, where words that are mentioned more often in the responses appear larger. given the context and nuance it can provide, can serve as helpful starting points for discussion.
To best leverage Forms’ text analysis within this feature, we recommend that you ask short answer questions, in which your attendees respond in one to five words.
- Support open-text question poll for Teams meeting: Roadmap ID: 79464
Mark correct answer choice in Polls
You will soon be able to mark a correct answer for your multiple-choice polls in Teams meetings. Whether you are doing a quick knowledge check for your supply chain class or engaging colleagues during a training, this quiz-like feature could prove useful.
- Correct Answer choice feature added to Microsoft Forms Poll in Teams Meetings: Roadmap ID: 80519
Word Cloud for Polls in Teams meeting and Forms Surveys
When users have collected responses for an open text poll / question in a Teams meeting or in a regular form, word cloud data insight will be available to help them get a quick view on the top text phrases people answered.
Post-meeting Poll insights
Also coming this April, you will find a data report under the same “Polls” tab where you initially created your polls. Here, you can discover and analyze poll engagement and response data.
Create and Answer Polls in Teams Mobile App
You can soon create and launch polls on mobile. To do so, you will have to add the Forms app to the Teams Meeting on your desktop first. Then, while managing your meeting on your Teams mobile app, you can create and launch polls under the “More” tab.
Your attendees can vote in polls from their mobile devices without having to visit the Teams chat. They can directly respond via the pop-up window, an experience on par with the desktop experience.
External guest participation in Polls
With this update, anonymous (guest) attendees will be able to view the poll and vote just like registered users. Previously, anonymous attendees vote on a poll in Meeting chat. This update is available for Teams desktop apps, Teams on the web, and Teams mobile.
Availability for Government Community Cloud (GCC)
Microsoft are also rolling out Polls in Teams Meetings for customers in GCC. Soon, you can add the Forms app to launch polls in your scheduled Teams meetings.
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