The Rating Poll lets your audience quickly share how they feel about a topic, session, or experience using a numeric scale. It's a fast, visual way to gather sentiment, feedback, or impressions from your participants in real time.
Whether you’re running a webinar, virtual class, or live Q&A, Rating Polls give you instant insights into how your audience feels, without needing lengthy surveys or forms. Responses are collected directly from the chat and displayed live on screen in dynamic bars, showing the overall average and distribution.
This interaction works across platforms like Zoom, YouTube, Teams, and more, making it easy to get a pulse check at any point in your session.
In this guide, we’ll explore how to set up a Rating Poll, customize it to your needs, run it during your session, and review answers in real time.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How do Rating Polls collect responses?
StreamAlive detects numbers (like 1–5 or 1–10) typed into the chat by participants. These numbers are then tallied and averaged to show a visual breakdown of ratings on the Presentation Live screen.
Can I customize the rating scale?
Yes! You can choose your scale, such as 1 to 5 or 1 to 10, depending on the type of feedback you want to collect.
Can I add labels to the rating scale?
Yes! You can add labels for lowest and highest rating. You can also change it to a star rating, so one star for the lowest rating and 5 (or 10) stars for the highest rating.
What does the output look like during a session?
The results appear as a live visual display on the screen: either as a bar chart or a set of animated dots showing how each participant rated. It also shows the average rating and number of responses.
What happens if people type something outside the scale?
StreamAlive only counts numbers that fall within the defined scale. Anything outside the set range will be ignored and not affect the visual display or results.
Can I use this as an ad-hoc interaction?
Absolutely. You can launch a Rating Poll on the fly using the “+ New Interaction” button in the Presentation Live screen—even without setting it up in advance.
Is the Rating Poll anonymous?
Yes. Responses are aggregated and displayed anonymously. You won’t see who voted what—just the overall sentiment.
Creating a Rating Poll
To run a Rating Poll during your session, you can choose to:
Add it to your presentation before the session
Create an ad-hoc interaction during the session
Using Quick Interaction Links
Adding Rating Polls to your presentation
Go to My Presentations
Click on + New Presentation or select the presentation that you want to add your rating poll to.
If you choose to create a new presentation, select “Start blank"
To learn how to use the Create with AI feature, click here
Click on + New Slide in the presentation editor
Add a Rating Poll
To learn more about how to create a presentation, click here
Once the poll is added, customize the feature using the tabs on the right-hand side.
Edit the heading, customize the poll, and configure its settings in the Content tab.
NOTE: You can set the rating scale between 1-5 and 1-10, and add in labels or icons in the bars
You can also edit the design of the interactions, like the visualization colors of the poll, background color, heading color/font, and so on.
For a more in-depth guide on how to edit your presentation, click here
Click on Preview to simulate what it will look like during a session.
Presenter’s POV:
Viewer’s POV:
Now that your presentation is complete, you can present it immediately or schedule it for a future session
Follow the instructions on how to connect StreamAlive to your preferred meeting or streaming platform, or even use it for in-person events.
Creating an Ad-hoc Rating Poll
What’s the Purpose of Creating an Ad-hoc Rating Poll?
Ad-hoc interactions in StreamAlive let you launch audience engagement activities on the spot, even if they weren’t pre-planned in your presentation. With Rating Poll, this means you can instantly ask your audience to rate something in real time—no setup required in advance.
Why Use an Ad-hoc Rating Poll?
Imagine you’re in the middle of a live session and want to quickly check how your audience feels about a topic, demo, or segment. With the Rating Poll, you can trigger a spontaneous feedback moment by asking attendees to drop a number (like 1 to 5) into the chat.
As those numbers roll in, StreamAlive displays them instantly as an animated bar or dot chart, showing the average rating and distribution. It’s perfect for heat checks, quick feedback loops, or even just light-hearted moments like “Rate my storytelling from 1 to 10!”
This makes ad-hoc Rating Polls a great tool to boost interactivity, collect feedback naturally, and keep your session dynamic—all without breaking your flow.
Connect StreamAlive to your session
To learn how to connect to your required platform, click here
Once you’re connected and on the Presentation Live screen, click on the + New Interaction button
Click on the Rating Polls interaction
Customize your Poll
Edit the heading, customize the poll, and configure its settings in the Content tab.
NOTE: You can set the rating scale between 1-5 and 1-10, and add in labels or icons in the bars
You can also edit the design of the interactions, like the visualization colors of the poll, background color, heading color/font, and so on.
For a more in-depth guide on how to edit your presentation, click here
Remember: Everyone can see your screen at this point, so don’t spend too long on it. Alternatively, you can plan your poll question and options in advance using the presentation builder method discussed in the section above.
Choose a theme [Optional]
This step is optional, but if you choose to continue without choosing, the interaction will use your default theme.
Remember: spending time customizing your poll design in the middle of your live session is likely to be an attention killer, so consider using the presentation builder to create your interactions in advance if you plan on customizing them.
Once ready, click on Go
Share the StreamAlive window with your audience
Ask your audience to start typing in answers in the chat
StreamAlive picks up these answers and powers the interaction in real time
Using Quick Interaction links
What’s the Purpose of Quick Interaction Links for Rating Polls?
Quick Interaction Links allow you to trigger a specific interaction in StreamAlive with a single click—no presentation needed. With Rating Polls, this means you can immediately launch a feedback moment and invite your audience to rate something in real time.
Why Use Quick Interaction Links for Rating Polls?
Let’s say you’re running a recurring meeting, training, or livestream and want to consistently gather feedback at specific points. Instead of recreating the poll each time, you can set up a Quick Interaction Link for your Rating Poll. When you click the link (or paste it into your browser), the interaction instantly starts in the Presentation Live screen.
As audience members type a number within your defined scale into the chat (e.g., 1 to 5), the Rating Poll tallies and displays those responses live, providing an instant visual pulse of your group’s sentiment.
Quick Interaction Links are especially helpful for team meetings, webinars, or regular streams where you want to keep things flexible yet interactive—making it easy to gather feedback anytime, with minimal effort.
Go to the Quick Interactions Links tab and click on "Show link" next to Rating Polls.
Copy the link.
When ready to use, open the link in a new tab, or you can paste it into your presentation file or Google Slides, and so on.
A pop-up will appear where you can choose your required platform. Learn more about connecting to your preferred platform.
Enter your session details and click on Present when ready
A pop-up asking you to admit the bot will appear (In cases like Zoom with the waiting room disabled, or YouTube/Twitch and similar platforms, it will join automatically)
Go to your live session and admit the bot.
Customize your Rating Poll
Edit the heading, customize the poll, and configure its settings in the Content tab.
NOTE: You can set the rating scale between 1-5 and 1-10, and add in labels or icons in the bars
You can also edit the design of the interactions, like the visualization colors of the poll, background color, heading color/font, and so on.
For a more in-depth guide on how to edit your presentation, click here
Remember: Everyone can see your screen at this point, so don’t spend too long on it. Alternatively, you can plan your poll question and options in advance using the presentation builder method discussed in the section above.
Choose a theme [Optional]
This step is optional, but if you choose to continue without choosing, the interaction will use your default theme.
Remember: spending time customizing your poll design in the middle of your live session is likely to be an attention killer, so consider using the presentation builder to create your interactions in advance if you plan on customizing them.
Once ready, click on Go
Share the StreamAlive window to your audience (if you haven’t already done so)
Ask your audience to start typing in answers in the chat
StreamAlive picks up these answers and powers the interaction in real time
Learn how to use the Presentation Live Screen to manage your interactions during your live session.