Sending Polls

During IBM^® Lotus^® Sametime^® meetings, the chair can use polls to gather feedback from meeting participants. The chair can send a question to the meeting participants and view participants' responses. For example, the chair might ask participants to vote on which job applicant to hire. As participants respond, the chair sees which candidate the participants prefer.

Note Only the chair create a new poll question and send polls. You cannot create poll questions before joining the meeting. However, you can create them and then click the Send later button to send them at a later time.

When sending a poll, the chair can also:

• Share the tallied responses with other participants. Normally, the chair is the only person who sees the poll responses. The chair can choose to share the tallied poll responses so that all participants see the responses in the Poll Tab. To do this, click Share Responses on the Polling tab.

Note When the chair shares the responses, participants see only the tallied responses. Participants do not see individual answers to the poll.

• Allow anonymous responses. By default, the chair can see each participant's response to the poll question. (These individual responses cannot be shared with other meeting participants.) The chair can preserve participants' privacy by allowing them to respond anonymously to poll questions.
• Mark correct answers. The chair can specify correct answers for poll questions. When the chair shares the poll responses, participants can see if they answered the question correctly.

Sending a Poll

Follow these steps to send a poll question to the meeting participants:

1. Click the New Poll icon on the Polling Tab, or choose Tools - Polling - New Poll.
2. Enter your question in the "Question" area.
3. Select the type of question from the drop-down list. Depending on the type of question you select, some answers might be filled in automatically. For example, if you select a True/False question, the answers True and False automatically appear. You can edit these automatic answers if you like.
4. If necessary, enter the answers to the question.
5. (Optional) If you want to mark the correct answers, select the check box or radio button next to the correct answers. You see the answers marked as correct when you view or share the poll responses. Participants do not see the correct answers until you share the poll responses.
6. (Optional) If you want participants' answers to remain anonymous, select "Responses are anonymous."

Note If responses are anonymous, you cannot see the names of the respondents when you view individual poll responses.

7. Do one of the following:
• Click the Send Poll icon to send the poll immediately. A new window containing the question and answers appears on the other participants' computer screens. (You cannot respond to polls that you send.)
8. Click the Close Sent Poll icon to close the polling window. The question window is closed for all participants (latecomers will not see this poll) but the responses window stays open for you to view.

Tip To resend a question, double-click the question on the Polling tab and then click the Send Poll icon .

See also:

• Responding to Polls
• Viewing and Sharing Poll Responses
• Viewing Poll Responses Shared by the Chair
• Sending Information to Participants