Polls
PollsOverview
The Polling feature in Zoom is one way hosts can collect information from meeting participants. Polls can be created before a meeting or during a meeting, with the option to keep results anonymous. For more information, visit the Zoom Support page on Polls.
Notes about Zoom Polls:
- The Polling feature must be enabled in your Zoom account settings.
- You can also enable “Advanced Polling” which gives you more question types, a Quiz feature that allows you to specify correct answers for each question, and more.
- Polls can only be used in scheduled meetings and instant meetings that use your Personal Meeting ID. Polls are not available in instant meetings that occur in automatically-generated meeting IDs.
- To manage polls, hosts must be using the Zoom desktop application. Participants can respond to polls while using the Zoom desktop application or mobile (iOS or Android) applications.
- The original meeting host is the only person who can create/edit polls before a meeting. Anyone who the host role is transferred to, as well as co-hosts, only have the ability to launch polls that were previously created by the original host.
- During scheduling, Alternative Hosts can be given the ability to add/edit polls during the meeting.
- Detailed Poll Reports can be downloaded either during or after a meeting.
- For polls that are set up as anonymous, participants’ names and email addresses will appear as “Anonymous” in the report.
- NEW! You now have the ability to create breakout rooms and assign participants to them based on specific poll questions!
For Tufts faculty who plan to use Zoom for distance teaching and learning, please also refer to Education Technology's Teaching with Zoom guide.
- Go to tufts.zoom.us.
- Click Sign in and log in with your Tufts username (e.g. jjumbo01) and password.
- Select Settings from the left-hand menu.
- Scroll down to the Meeting Polls/Quizzes option. Click on the slider to turn it to the ON position. This will enable basic polling.
- (Optional) Check the box next to “Allow host to create advanced polls and quizzes”. This will allow you to create polls and quizzes with more question types and “correct” answers.
Polls can be created/edited either before or during a meeting by the original meeting host. Directions for both are described below. When scheduling the meeting, Alternative Hosts can also be given the ability to add/edit polls.
Creating/Editing Polls Before a Meeting
- Go to tufts.zoom.us.
- Click Sign in and log in with your Tufts username (e.g. jjumbo01) and password.
- Within the Meetings page, find the meeting that you want to manage. Click on the name of the meeting to load the meeting info page.
- Scroll down to the Polls section at the bottom of the meeting info page. (The section will be called “Polls/Quizzes” if you have enabled Advanced Polling.)
- Click the Create button to create a new poll. You may also edit or delete existing polls.
Note: If you have enabled Advanced Polling on your account, you will be asked if you want to create a (Basic) Poll or use Advanced Polls and Quizzing.
- A window will appear where you can give your poll a title and edit questions and responses.
When creating a Basic Poll, there are only two allowed question types – single-choice and multiple choice. You can also allow participants to respond anonymously.
When creating an Advanced Poll/Quiz, there are more allowed question types and you have the ability to insert images. You can also mark “correct” answers and allow participants to respond anonymously. (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.) - When you’re done, click Save.
Creating/Editing Polls During a Meeting
Note: By default, only the meeting scheduler has the ability to add/edit polls during the meeting. During scheduling, Alternative Hosts can also be given the ability to add/edit polls.
- Click the Poll button in the bottom toolbar.
- In the Polling window that appears, click Edit Poll to edit an existing poll or Create to set up a new one. You will be brought to info page for this meeting the Tufts Zoom website (tufts.zoom.us), where you can manage polls for the meeting.
- A new page will open in your internet browser (e.g. Chrome or Firefox) where you can manage polls for the meeting.
Launching a Poll
- Click the Poll button in the bottom toolbar. The Polling window will open.
- If you have multiple polls/quizzes, use the dropdown menu to select which poll you want to start.
- Click Launch. A window will appear on attendees’ screens where they can complete the poll. On the host’s/co-hosts’ screens, they can monitor results in real time as attendees submit their responses.
Note: Before launching an Advanced Poll/Quiz, you can also choose if you want to display questions in random order and/or show one question at a time.
Closing a Poll
When you are ready, click the End Poll button toward the bottom of the polling window.

Setting up Poll Questions for Breakout Rooms
When creating/editing polls, you can now mark specific poll questions to be used for the creation of breakout rooms! To do so, find the question you want to use and check the box next to Create Breakout Rooms. Multiple questions can be marked this way. (Note: Only single-choice questions can be used for breakout room creation.)

Opening Breakout Rooms from Poll Results
- In your meeting, launch the poll that contains the question(s) marked for breakout room creation.
- When you're ready, close the poll.
- In the poll results window, find the question and click Create Breakout Rooms.
- (Optional) If necessary, adjust how many participants you want in each breakout room.
- Click Create.
- The breakout rooms window will appear. Make adjustments to the rooms, if necessary.
- Click Open All Rooms.
After launching and closing a poll during a Zoom meeting, click Share Results in the Polling window. A window will appear on attendees' screens where they can view the results. Click Stop Sharing when you are done.

Note: When sharing the results of a Quiz, you can also choose to show participants whether their answers were correct.
A sample poll report is shown below. Notice that for anonymous polls, respondents' display names and email addresses are listed as “Anonymous”. Otherwise, respondents' names (and email addresses, if available) will be included in the report.

Generating a Poll Report During a Meeting
After you close the poll, click the Options button in the Polling window and select Download Results. The report will download as a .csv file, which can be viewed in Microsoft Excel.

Generating a Poll Report After a Meeting
- Go to tufts.zoom.us.
- Click Sign in and log in with your Tufts username (e.g. jjumbo01) and password.
- Select Reports from the left-hand menu.
- Click Meeting.
- Click the Poll Report option.
- Set a date range.
- Click Search.
- A list of results will appear. Find the meeting you wish to create a report for and click the Generate button.
- The Report Queue page will load. Find the Poll Report you wish to view and click the Download button. The report will download as a .csv file, which can be viewed in Microsoft Excel.
The Poll library gives users a central location for the creation and management of polls that can be made available for multiple meetings, instead of having to re-create polls for each individual meeting. If you’ve enabled Advanced Polling in your Tufts Zoom Settings, you can also create/managed advanced polls and quizzes in the library.
Using the Poll Library
- Log in to tufts.zoom.us with your Tufts credentials.
- Click Meetings in the lefthand menu.
- Select the Polls/Quizzes tab in the top menu.
- A page will load with your poll library.
Although you can have more polls/quizzes in your library, only 10 of these can be made available for ALL of your meetings. You can select which 10 by clicking the sliders in the “Enable” column.After scheduling a meeting, you can use the Polls/Quizzes section of the meeting info page to pull any of the polls from your library into your meeting. You can also create additional one-off polls just for that meeting.
During your Zoom meetings, the “enabled” polls from your library (up to 10) are available in the Poll window.