Zoom has become very popular among the masses to conduct meetings, classes or simply to connect socially with fellow beings especially during this time of the crisis. A lot of organizations and schools use Zoom because of its many wonderful features.

Zoom offers a lot of features to make video conferencing better. Unfortunately, some of these features are so deep down in the service’ settings that most of us don’t even know about. One of the best of such features is Zoom Polling. You can create and conduct Polls in Zoom meetings. Whether you want to create pop-quizzes for classes or an opinion poll, you can do it with Polling in Zoom.

Note: The Zoom Polling feature is only available if the Meeting Host is using a licensed (paid) account.

How to Enable Polling in Zoom

To be able to create polls in Zoom meetings, you will have to first enable in your Zoom account settings. Go to the zoom.us/profile and sign in with your Zoom account. Then, from the navigation menu on the left, click on ‘Settings’.

The Zoom Meeting settings page will open. Here, scroll down until you see the ‘Polling’ settings under the ‘In Meeting (Basic)’ section. You could also use ‘Ctrl + F’ shortcut to quickly to find ‘Polling’ option on the page.

Once you find ‘Polling’, Turn on the toggle for it to enable Polling in Zoom Meetings that you host.

Note: If you are using an organization account on Zoom and the option is greyed out, then it has been blocked by your organization and you will need to contact your organization’s Zoom admin to enable it.

How to Create Polls for a Zoom Meeting

You can only create Polls for a meeting from the Zoom Web Portal, not the desktop client. Open the Zoom Web Portal, and click on ‘Meetings’ on the navigation menu on the left.

Then, click on the scheduled meeting you want to create Polls for. If you didn’t schedule any meeting yet, create one as Polls are only available for scheduled meetings.

After scheduling a meeting, click on it to open the meeting management page.

Then, scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the Poll option and click on the ‘Add’ button to create a Poll.

The window for creating a Poll will open. Enter a Title for the Poll and the first question of the Poll. The Poll can also be anonymous. Anonymous Polls won’t show the user information for answers in the Poll Report that is available after the meeting. To make the Polls anonymous, click on the checkbox next to ‘Anonymous’.

The answers for Polls can be Single choice (only one correct answer) or Multiple Choice (more than once correct answer). Add the question and choices for the answer. Click on ‘Add a Question’ to add more questions to it. You can add up to 25 questions to a single Poll.

Click on ‘Save’ after adding all the questions.

You can also create more than one Poll for a single meeting. The process is identical to creating the first poll.

How to Launch the Polls in Zoom Meeting

Polls can be launched only during a meeting. After starting a meeting, the Host screen will have the ‘Polls’ option on the call toolbar. Click on it.

When ‘Polling’ screen opens, click on ‘Launch Polling’ button at the bottom of the screen to start it in the meeting.

The polling will begin. While in the meeting, you can not see the individual answers from each participant. Only the percentage of participants who chose a certain option is visible. The details about each answer are available in the report available at the meeting end. An ongoing poll also has a timer going on. So if you want to use the feature to conduct quizzes, it can come in very handy. Click on the ‘End Polling’ button when you want to stop the Polls.

Polls can be a fun way to make the meeting interactive. Whether you just want a friendly Q&A session to get to know the other participants or you are a teacher who wants to conduct a quiz during an online class, with Zoom’s Polling feature, it is completely viable.