Well, well, well. Look who we have today on our blog - none other than polls! We know polls are a great way to know preferences. But in a corporate setting, polls can also be used to make quick decisions. And when more and more organisations are using Slack for professional connectivity, the question arises: can Slack do polls?
The answer is both yes and no. Users can run polls in Slack to create something called Slack polls or create a survey on Slack. There are multiple ways to do that, although Slack itself does not have its own poll feature.
This article will tell you three ways you can run polls in Slack. So, how do we do it? Well, before we jump into that, let’s see how Slack polls benefit us.
Think of how polls usually help us, and the chances are you already know their benefits. But it can be a little bit different for those of us who wish to use it in the corporate world. Let’s see how a survey on Slack helps us.
Since Slack does not have its own poll feature, most users use emojis to create a poll. Although it is simple to make, it has its limitations. For example, you will only be able to understand who voted for what by hovering over each emoji icon that has been selected. That isn’t exactly what most of us would like.
Also, emojis can have different meanings for different people or cultures, which can create confusion and misinterpretation of the poll results. This can lead to inaccurate data and misinformed decisions.
Other than it being a manual process, you might have to look for the right emoji to fit in with your answers. But if that is what you want to go ahead with, let’s see how that can be done.
Write the question you want to poll.
1. Add the emojis and state them beside the answers they represent.
2. Post it on your channel, and voila! You have your poll!
A much better way to perform your polls on Slack is to use Sup. The polls in Sup come with a lot of features. You can choose if you wish to allow multiple responses per user or even have a Slack anonymous poll. Other than notifying users of their responses, you can also select the answer type—text, numbers, date, or user.
Now that we know the features Sup offers, let’s dive right into the how-to.
Sign in using your Slack workspace.
1. Go to forms.
2. Select the create form.
Select polls from the array of templates you find on display.
1. Fill in the description.
2. Select who can view the responses.
3. Enable the buttons you wish to turn on.
4. Select the channels you wish to share the report on and if you want to notify responders.
5. Go to next
Write the question you want to create a poll on.
Choose from the answer options.
Select the channel you wish to share it with.
View the results in the poll dashboard.
View what it looks like once it is sent to the channel you shared it with.
To tell you the truth, Sup can do a lot more than just create polls in Slack.
Follow-ups can be created asynchronously. In addition, Sup allows you to select from a variety of templates. For instance, there are daily standups, weekly standups, timesheets, and follow-ups at the end of the day. You can also create your own follow-up survey with personalised questions and options.
The best part about them is that you can schedule them for different times for different members. This comes in handy for organisations that work with employees from different time zones or even those working remotely. This is made possible by allowing you to select the time and the specific days they must be sent.
This feature also allows you to set reminders and view a short follow-up summary.
Sup also lets you create forms and offers you choices to create one that suits you best. It lets you create retrospective forms, team feedback forms, and employee referral forms other than the poll we just created.
You can select the channels you want the forms to be sent to and receive crisp reports that make your job easier.
Drum rolls, please! Here comes the holiday tracker - the feature that makes an HR’s life a lot easier. This Sup feature allows you to request, approve, view, and manage holidays effectively. To add to that, it also sends you regular reminders on who will be on leave in the coming days.
A feature that all organisations need today is a mood tracker. This is especially important today, when more and more organisations are working remotely. When the team leaders are not present to conduct team-building activities and lift team morale, this feature comes in handy to check team spirits.
You can choose to use it as a standalone feature or integrate it with any of your daily standups. The fact that this feature allows users to submit anonymous responses guarantees the honesty of the responses.
Simple poll is another way you can conduct a survey on Slack. While it is similar to Sup in that it can be added as an app to Slack, it lacks the ability to offer options for types of answers, and its high pricing can be another concern.
Polls are such an easy way to decide and even refine your decisions. Not to forget that it comes in handy when time is a big factor. They can be used for both official and, um, not so official purposes. Whatever the need is, we can have it on Slack easily and use it to our advantage.
We have seen on this blog multiple ways to use polls on Slack, even when it does not have its own such feature. You can view the pros and cons of each to decide which one suits you best. But if you’d want to go with the one that offers you hit features like Slack anonymous poll or the one that offers big hits like Adobe, Stripe, and Iterable, trust us, you’d want to select Sup.
