Live polls

Prepare a poll queue, run questions before or during a show, and keep every final result on the dashboard.

Running a poll

HeatCheck supports multiple-choice polls with two to six options and rating polls answered on a 1–10 scale. Prepare as many as you need, then launch them before or during the show. A live poll stays open until you close, cancel, or stop the show.

1
Add it to the queue
In the Polls panel, choose Multiple choice or Rating 1–10, then write a question up to 200 characters. For multiple choice, add two to six options of up to 80 characters each. Choose Add to queue. This does not put anything in front of listeners yet.
2
Launch it
Choose Start poll beside any queued poll. In a draft show, this opens a poll-only pre-show page at your public URL while the interest gauge remains offline. Once the show is live, the poll appears alongside the interest slider without interrupting it.
3
Watch it fill in
Results update live on your dashboard and on any overlay showing the poll. Multiple choice shows each option’s share; a rating poll shows the current average and response count.
4
Close it
Choose Close & reveal to save the final result. It remains on listeners’ screens for 45 seconds, then clears itself. Choose Cancel instead to remove a poll without a final reveal. Every normally closed poll remains under Closed polls in the Polls panel, where you can expand it and read the result again.

Close it on air, not after

The reveal window is short on purpose — it is designed to be the beat where you read the result out. Closing a poll while you talk about something else wastes the moment.

Putting a poll on your stream

Add the poll widget to an arrangement in Settings → Stream overlays to show the live question and result. Its presentation depends on the poll type and overlay shape:

Multiple choice: Most shapes show a bar for every option. The widget never presents a partial option list, because that would change the meaning of the result.
Lower third 1920 × 220: Too short for bars, so it gets a different form: one stacked bar carrying every share, with the leading option named under it.
Rating 1–10: Shows the live average with its /10 denominator and the response count, in every compatible overlay shape.

The widget disappears when no poll is open

It is not an empty box between polls — it drops out and the rest of the overlay closes up. So an overlay you built with a poll widget will look different off air, correctly.

Getting good answers

Fewer options beats more

Six is a limit, not a target. Include only options that are distinct and useful; unnecessary choices slow the response and divide similar answers across multiple rows.

Ask things you will act on

“Which of these next?” gives you a running order and makes the audience complicit in it. “Rate this out of ten” duplicates the gauge, which is already doing that continuously and better.

Leave it open long enough

People arrive at the page a few seconds after you say the words. Give it thirty seconds minimum, and watch the count rather than the clock.

Answering a poll is worth one point to a listener who checked in to that show’s roll call.
Changing an answer is free, and does not earn a second point.
Responses are anonymous, like votes.

Segments and scheduling

Listener suggestions