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Participant management

The Team from Poll Everywhere
  • Updated

In this article:

    With identity and participant management, you can restrict options that give you fine-tuned control over who can respond to a poll. Instead of only restricting by organization, you can now restrict participation by team or course, making it easier to manage responses in collaborative or classroom settings. 

    Audience mgt1.png

    This feature is designed to help presenters manage access more easily during live sessions and ensure that only the right audience can participate.

    You can restrict participation to:

    • Everyone (default, open to all)

    • Your entire organization

    • Specific teams you’re on

    • Courses where you're an instructor or teaching assistant

    These settings are configurable each time in the visualization settings option in your poll.

    Audience2.png

    Who can respond when restrictions are applied?

    Here’s how visibility changes depending on the restriction:

    • Everyone: Anyone with the link can respond, including external participants.

    • My organization: Only users in your organization can respond.

    • My teams: Only members of the selected team(s) can respond.

    • My courses: Only students enrolled in the selected course(s) can respond.

    How restrictions affect participants

    Let’s say you are presenting a poll and have the following types of participants:

    • A team member in your organization

    • An org member who is not on your team

    • A student in your course

    • An external participant with no connection to your org

    Participant would typically get the "Restricted Access Poll" message on their screen, and required to log in to participate in the poll.

    Audience6.png

    If you:

    • Select "Everyone" — all participants can respond.

    • Select "My organization" — only org members (including the student) can respond.

    • Select a team — only team members can respond.

    • Select a course — only the student in that course can respond.

    This allows you to tailor the experience based on who your intended audience is.

    How to apply participant restrictions

    1. Open the poll you want to present.

    2. Open the participant restrictions menu (Under the visuallization settings in the centre right-hand corner of the question slide).

      Audience3.png

    3. Choose your restriction:

      • Everyone (by default if non is selected)

      • My organization

      • My teams

      • My courses

    4. Select the group you want to allow.

    Only users in the selected group(s) will be eligible to participate, see and be able to respond to your poll.

    Managing anonymity during responses

    Presenters can now toggle anonymous response mode while a poll is live — even while participants are typing.

    Audience 4.png

    • If a presenter enables anonymity while a participant is mid-response, the text remains and is automatically marked as anonymous.

    • If anonymity is later disabled, a clear, non-intrusive message will appear letting participants know their future responses will no longer be anonymous.

    These updates help presenters manage sensitive topics and keep participants comfortable, even during mid-session changes. For more information, learn more here: Managing Anonymity

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