How to use polls in a group chat

Ask twenty people which week suits them and you get twenty messages, three of which contradict each other. A poll asks once and collects the answers in one place. It is available in any group chat, and anyone who can post in that group can create one.

Creating a poll

1. Open the group conversation in Chat.
2. Tap the poll icon beside the message box.
3. Type your question in the Question box.
4. Fill in Option 1 and Option 2. Use Add option for more, up to ten in all, and the cross beside an option to remove it.
5. Tick Allow multiple answers if people should be able to choose more than one. Leave it unticked if you want them to pick just one.
6. Choose Create poll. It appears in the conversation for everyone in the group.

Seeing the results

The poll shows the running totals as people vote. Tap the votes line underneath it to see exactly who chose what.

It is worth knowing that a poll is not a secret ballot. Everyone in the group can see how everyone else voted, not just the person who created it. Keep that in mind before polling a group on anything people might prefer to answer privately.

Changing a vote, and ending a poll

People can change their answer or take it back at any time, because a poll never closes. There is no way to close one and no way to edit the question or the options once it has been posted.

If you need a poll to stop, the person who created it can delete their own poll message, which removes the poll and all its votes together. Nobody else can do that, including group leaders, because in chat you can only delete your own messages.

So it is worth getting the question and the options right before you tap Create. If you make a mistake, the tidiest fix is to delete it and post a new one.

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Good to know

• Keep the question short and the options concrete. ‘Which Tuesday suits?’ with three dates works far better than ‘When are people free?’
• Allow multiple answers when you are looking for availability, because most people are free on more than one date. Leave it off when you need a single decision.
• A poll takes between two and ten options, and whether people can pick one or several is fixed when you create it.
• A poll sits in the conversation like any other message, so it stays there for people who look later in the day.
• Polls are a group chat feature only. You cannot create one in a one-to-one conversation. See How to send a message.
• Polls do not reach children, because children are not part of group chats. See How to turn on chat for a group.
• If you want to know who has seen a message rather than what they think, read receipts do that instead. See How to see who has read a message.