Conducting polls in meetings


The polling feature allows you to create polling questions for your meetings. You will be able to launch the poll during your meeting and gather the responses from your participants. You also have the ability to download a report of polling after the meeting. Polls can also be conducted anonymously, if you do not wish to collect participant information with the poll results.

Full details of the poll results, such as each participant's answers and submission times, are contained in the polling reports, which are available after the meeting by default but can also be made available during the live session. 

You can also create and launch quizzes, which allow you to set correct answers.  

Creating polls or quizzes in a webinar is also possible. 

This article covers:

Prerequisites for conducting polls in meetings

*Note: Host can create and edit polls directly on the desktop client with version 5.13.0 and higher. 

**Note: Users on the iOS or Android mobile app can participate in polling, but hosts need to be using the desktop client to manage the polls.

Limitations of meeting polls

How to create a standard poll for a meeting

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 on version 5.12.9 and lower, you will be directed to the web portal. Hosts on desktop client 5.13.0 or higher will be able to create and edit in the Polls/Quizzes window in the meeting. 

During the meeting, all questions under a single poll will be asked when launched. You can create additional polls to ask questions at different times during the meeting.

Create a poll before a meeting

  1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal.
  2. In the navigation menu, click Meetings.
  3. Click the name of the meeting you want to add a poll to or click the Schedule a Meeting button to schedule a new meeting.
  4. If you are editing an existing meeting, click the Polls/Quizzes tab. If you are scheduling a new meeting, click Save, then click the Polls/Quizzes tab.
  5. Click + Create. 
  6. Click the title Untitled Poll... to give the poll a name.
  7. Review the question types and configuration options, then select the question type for the first question.
  8. (Optional) Click the Create Breakout Rooms toggle if you want to enable breakout room creation based on poll results.
  9. (Optional) Click + Add Question to add another question to the poll.
  10. (Optional) Click gear icon at the top right to configure the following options:
    • Require answers to be anonymous
  11. (Optional) Click the preview icon to see a preview.
  12. (Optional) Click the ellipses icon at the top right to Save as draft.
  13. (Optional) Click Save to allow the poll to be started during meetings. 

Create a poll during a meeting

  1. Sign in to the Zoom desktop client.
  2. Start a meeting as the host.
  3. In the meeting controls, click Polls/Quizzes .
  4. Do one of the following:
    • Click Create if there are no polls created yet.
    • In the top-right corner, click the plus icon  to add more polls to the existing ones.
  5. Click the title Untitled Poll... to give the poll a name.
  6. Review the question types and configuration options, then click the arrow to the right of the question title to select the question type.
  7. (Optional) Click the Create Breakout Rooms toggle if you want to enable breakout room creation based on poll results.
  8. (Optional) Click + Add Question to add another question to the poll.
  9. (Optional) Click the ellipses at the bottom left of the creation window, then click Settings to configure the following options:
    • Require answers to be anonymous
  10. (Optional) Click the ellipses at the bottom left of the creation window, then click Preview see a preview.
  11. (Optional) Click Save to allow the poll to be started during meetings. 

How to use the Surveys & Polls library

You can manage a central library of polls for meetings. 

How to launch a poll in a meeting

Polls are not immediately available to meeting participants, as the host needs to launch a poll for participants to respond to. Hosts can create polls before or during a meeting.

During the meeting, all questions under a single poll will be asked when launched. You can create additional polls to ask questions at different times during the meeting.

  1. Start the scheduled Zoom meeting.
  2. In the meeting controls, click Polls/Quizzes .
  3. In the Polls/Quizzes window, click the name of the poll to open the details.
  4. (Optional) Before launching, click the ellipses icon  and then click Edit if you want to modify questions and answers to the poll, then click Save. 
  5. 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.
  6. Once you would like to stop the poll, click End Poll.
  7. Click the ellipses icon  to access the following options:
    • Re-launch Poll: Launches the poll again. 
      Note: If a poll is relaunched 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 relaunching. 
    • 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.
      Note: To have this feature enabled, contact Zoom Support.
    • View Results from Browser: Launches your default web browser and displays the same polling results on the web page. 
  8. Click Share Results to share the results with the participants in the meeting, then click Stop Sharing when needed.