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You can set default settings for new polls, saving time and helping you maintain consistency across all your activities. Whether you're a presenter managing your own preferences or an administrator managing an entire organization, poll defaults make setup easier and more predictable.
Poll defaults are your preselected settings that automatically apply whenever you create a new poll. Instead of configuring each new question manually, you can define your preferred settings once and have them applied automatically going forward.
This includes things like:
Default themes
Participant restrictions
Anonymous response settings
Poll timers
Response limits (for supported question types like Multiple choice, Open-ended questions, Pinpoint Questions(Clickable image))
These preferences help streamline your workflow and reduce repetitive setup.
Who can use this feature?
All presenters have access to their personal poll defaults through their own settings.
Organization administrators have the additional ability to enforce defaults across all presenters in the organization. They can also lock specific settings and optionally exclude certain users from organization-level restrictions.
Updating your personal poll defaults
Sign in to your Poll Everywhere account.
Click your name or avatar in the bottom-left corner.
Select My Settings → Defaults.
From there, you can update your preferences, including your preferred theme, default anonymity settings, participant restrictions, timers, and response limits for specific question types.
These settings will automatically apply each time you create a new poll. If needed, you can still adjust any setting individually while editing a poll, unless an admin has locked it.
Example: How defaults appear in new polls
Let’s say you choose a theme, enable anonymous responses, restrict participation to people in your organization, and limit responses per participant to five. Every new question you create will reflect those choices by default.
If you change your mind later, you can always return to your default settings and update them at any time.
Admin-only: Enforcing organization-wide poll defaults
Admins can apply default settings across the organization to ensure consistency and compliance with internal policies.
This includes options like enabling participant restrictions by default (e.g. only users within the organization) or ensuring all polls are anonymous by default. Admins can lock these defaults so individual users cannot override them.
Go to Organization Settings → Features → Defaults
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Set defaults for:
Participation restriction (e.g., "Only people in my organization")
Anonymous participation
Choose whether to lock these settings
(Optional) Exclude specific users from global defaults
What happens when you lock a setting?
These locked settings will appear greyed out and uneditable in the individual user’s settings and in their poll creation workflows.
Admins can access this feature through the Organization Settings menu under the Features or Defaults section. Users cannot override it unless they are on the exclusion list.
Excluding specific users from organization-wide defaults
Sometimes, an organization might want to enforce defaults broadly while allowing a few trusted users to operate independently. Admins can create a list of excluded users who will not be affected by locked defaults.
Excluded users will be able to update their own poll defaults freely, even if restrictions are locked for others in the organization. To exclude a user:
Go to Organization Settings
Select the setting you want to enforce
Click Exclude users
Add user(s) by name or email
Excluded users can configure their own poll defaults without restriction. Best practices:
If you're a presenter, setting your own poll defaults is a great way to save time and keep your sessions consistent.
If you're an admin, use organization defaults to encourage secure and compliant use of Poll Everywhere features. You can lock settings to prevent changes or exclude specific users to allow flexibility where needed.
Defaults work best when aligned with your team’s policies on anonymity, participation, and reporting. Review them regularly to keep your setup efficient and secure.
An upcoming update will make it easier for admins to apply new default settings to all existing users (excluding those marked as exceptions). This feature helps ensure that changes made at the organization level take effect consistently across the entire account.