FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

We added a user count toggle and chart visibility toggle setting to VoxVote. With these options available in the side menu you can control components on the screen.
For example: if you have only 12 users with votes, and you don't want to show the 12, you can toggle with letter V. (press once the V, and the number is gone).
Hide/Show chart? With letter H, you can toggle the chart display or not.
Beware: if you are hiding both the chart and the vote count, you will see nothing!
Missing your chart? And you have voted? Press letter H, or use gear in top left corner, and toggle the chart.

As an example: Below you see the same votes, with on the left, the chart toggled off, and on the right, the chart visible with results.

Yes, we have the common starter tips:

1. Prepare questions a day or longer before the event. Use the preview button to test your questions. 
2. Inform your audience to bring their own device (BYOD - Bring Your Own Device), and inform about the live feedback options during the presentation. iPad or iPhone users can already download the VoxVote app from the app store, others can vote in a browser on https://live.voxvote.com.
3. On the actual event, use the live mode (green button), and share the live.voxvote.com URL 
4. Always start with a fake/dummy question, for example: "What day is it today?" Or, "How many fingers am I holding?". This will allow the audience to get their devices, login anonymous, and navigate with the (web)app.
5. When closing a question, interact with your audience about the results, for example: I see that 5% of the audience think that ..... can I ask you a question about that answer you gave?

Little advanced:

1. Use keyboard commands for starting and navigating through your questions.
   With letter 'S' you can start a question. With 'R' you refresh the results to latest live data, with 'T' you can stop your question from broadcasting. Other commands are (N)ext question and (B)ack. (F)ull screen.
2. Controlling and hiding elements.
   On the chart result screen, the top left corner shows a gear (setttings icon). In there you can
   A. Toggle the visibility of number of users (sometimes you only want to show the %, and not it was done from 30 users only).
   B. Toggle the visibility of the chart results (sometimes you want to see the users who voted, without influencing the results of the first 10 users who voted)
   C. Toggle the control commands at the top of the screen.
   
   NOTE: If you both dissable the number of users, and the chart results, you won't see anything, so don't do that by accident! 
    

Yes, you can.
You can embed the 'iframe'  from youtube into a VoxVote question, or a slide.

See here a short video instruction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4mbnbyRglU 

 

The autoclose timer allows you to set an interval in seconds. From the manually start of the question, the autoclose timer will countdown to zero. When the timer has run out, the live question will be closed and the results will be refreshed. If you want another run on the same question with same interval? Press start again.  

How to set the timer?

The autoclose dropdown can be found on the main edit screen where you have an overview of all the questions for your event.

• No autoclose: If you don't want the autoclose function to be used: set dropdown to -- no autoclose timer --  and set it with Preview or Live (to see the changes). 
• Other values: If you want different seconds (5 seconds, or 1 hour voting time), you can change the value in the URL: countdownSeconds=60  will countdown 60 seconds.  countdownSeconds=6000 will allow the question to be open very long.
  When using an autoclose value, the URL can be found in the live screen. 
• Once the value is set, the live and preview from the start screen will also use the autoclose value.
• Autoclose default: 60 seconds
• Autoclose settings are shared for all your events and questions.

To prevent deleting important live data, we don't have a delete data button or function.
But if you accidentially recorded test results in the live mode, we have the following suggestion.
Make a copy of the question, and delete the earlier question. 

Hint: use the preview button to test your question.
The delete question can be found by selection a question and use the red button. Hide/delete question. (PS: all data will be deleted).
In case you want to re-use an event for a new group of audience, you can easilly clone (duplicate) the whole event from the start page. (overview event, click on the logo in the designer)

PS: deleted questions still count a a question for the free version with max 10 questions in an event.

In september 2016 we released open answers for free text input.
On the chart result page, we show both a wordcloud (textcloud or tagcloud) from the most common words used. Stopwords like the, in, on etc are removed from them. 
On each refresh, the wordcloud is re-generated with a different layout.
On the 2nd tab, we also show the full answers given by the audience, where the most given answer is on top.
 

The tab preference (WordCloud or Frequency) is remembered each session and through navigation.

TIP: ask your audience to answer short answers. If you ask a question: What is your favourite color, ask them to answer Green, Yellow, Brown. And not: my favourite color is brown.
TIP: when testing your result in preview mode, with only a few answers given, the text cloud might be looking a bit empty. The more answer given, the better. You can also paste this whole paragraph of text to see a great textcloud.

With a simple text keyword in the instruction text, you can limit or specify the exact numbers of answer options for your multiple choice question.
The keywords with the number can be set in the instructiontext on a multiple choice questiontype.

Specify maximum number of answers:  {max: number}  
For example: On a list of 10 countries, we want your top 3 favourite countries. 
We specify a {max : 3}  in the instruction text.  The "3" will be used to check on the answers given. 
If 1 or 2 countries are allowed, but on 4 or more, the answers will not be recorded. Your audience member will receive an on screen alert message, and needs to select max 3.
We also recommend to write down the 3 or three in the questiontext or instructiontext. 

Specify exact number of answers:  {exact: number}  
For example: On a shortlist of 16 candidates, which 2 candidates should go to the next round?
We specify a {exact: 3} in the instruction text.  The "2" will be used to check on the answers given. 
We also recommend to write down the 2 or two in the questiontext or instructiontext.

See below a summary how this can be set in our designer, and how it renders on the live voting screens.

Important to know:

• This feature will only work with {exact: number}  and { max: number} in the instruction line.
• The { } part will be stripped out of the display to your audience, the number will be used to validate the input.
• This feature cannot be combined with the exclusive 'radio' button in a multiple choice. aka. 'none of the above'
• We recommend to write the desired number of input answers as a text in your question or answer.
• Always specify a number equal or lower than the number of options. Specifying { exact: 5 } on a list of 4 options will never receive any input on that question.

See more in our short video about this option.

The free version has almost the same functionality as the paid version, with the following differences highlighted.
For more details, compare the product list and packages, making you a paying customer with all unlimited options.

The main differences

VoxVote free and paid - main differences

Functionality	Free	Paid
Number of Votes / Audience size (if you plan 1.000 or more concurrent users in the audience, please inform us in advance for extra monitoring, or scale up our cloud capacity for extra costs per hours during your event to have a 100% flawless high-end event.)	Unlimited	Unlimited
Number of Questions per event	10 questions	Unlimited questions per event
Number of Answer options per questions	Unlimited	Unlimited
Question Images	-	Allow to add an image to your question. Also decide if the image is only on the presenter screen, and or on the voting devices of your audience.
VoxVote Slides	-	Create slides inside VoxVote and integrate them with your polling questions. No install or plugins needed.
Number of Free events	5	5 + upgrade or bought credits (your remaining free will be valid paid credits)
VoxQuiz™ - Quiz option	Yes, available	Yes, available
Branding/Logo	-	Yes, custom logo's on chart result page. A default account logo, or individual event logo's are possible.
Export to Excel	-	Yes, allow to export your voting data  to Excel or .CSV after your  event. See this example
Private vs Public	Public	Allow option to hide voting results and making your voting data private
Target customers:	Free for everybody Register on https://designer.voxvote.com	Paying customers who want more, trainers, coaches, event organizers who present regular. For teachers/staff/universtity/chartity, we also have a special educational license.
Allow audience to ask questions & moderate by host. With full screen preview options.	-	For paying customers or partners, the Question and Answer module (also known as message module) is available. Including moderate function, Export to Excel and Full Screen options. Per event the question and answer module can be switched on or off.
Open answers - allow free text input. The live reporting is done with a wordcloud (tag cloud) and full frequency of answer given.	Available	Available
Ranked results - allow questions with numeric rank input, or other 'open text ' , see .pdf with calculation example	Available	Available
Support - try to read our faq section first on this page. Learn from our video's  and other sections on this website	Twitter or Email	Email and phone Support +31 6 83 33 51 56
Custom URL for audience voting, with logo/corporate style for example https://osborneclarke.voxvote.com	-	Read more for details.
Shared credits - buy a package Silver or Gold and share portions of credits with same domain users.	-	Packages Silver or higher: you can share 4 credits or more. Read more....

Yes you can, ask the audience to leave event from live voting app (this will save battery resources). They can come back later.

All the quiz related documentation (example, video and point calculation) can be found here

The most how to questions are described on this page, or our step by step tutorial. On top of that you can also watch our video's on youtube.
Sometimes, you just want to ask a question because you can't find it on the website, or you want to discuss some option. Please sent us an e-mail with your question.

All our paying customers who have bought an upgrade or Bronze package or higher, can also have phone  support +31 6 83 33 51 56 , and for sales questions you can also contact us.

Yes, VoxVote started already in 2014 with a special version for educational institutes. However, since March 2023, we ask a small symbolic amount per whole domain institute see our edu365 page.
If you are an school or educational institute, you can check the list of schools already granted which could be the old license, or the new license, and if missing, you can apply here. 

Yes, the export option is available for all paying users and free for eductional partners. An example of the export file can be viewed here.
Per event, you can export the questions and answers, also for when you didn't have any live data, the preview data can be analyzed.

Yes, from October 2021, we have an option for paid/upgraded and educational users to reset your PIN. (Account page / Reset Pin)
You will receive a random new number upon your first project preview.
Make sure your documentation and instruction slide(s) are up to date.

Our advice: don't reset too much, there is no need to have a new pin on each event.
 

You can use the 'Hide Project' checkbox in the event settings. Available for each customer who had achieved at least one purchase or are educational partners.
In the free plan, all voting results are available through the VoxVote Search Results page. Basically: If you have recorded confidential results, or question options are confidential, you should upgrade the free plan to at least one credit purchase.

Yes, we call it crossing, also known as segmentation, cross-tabbing, correlation, or live pivot charting. 
See detailted tutorial on /tutorials/advanced_crossing_and_weighting

In above example, the Gender question: Are you Male/Female was recorded normally.
When recording the ' Do you like soup'  question, the Yes/No soup answered are reported per gender. You can combine all kind of single questions. Where you can also use averages when having numeric 'weighted'  results. For example: How many smartphone's do you have? And you can combine that with gender, or other questions.
Important to know: A crossing (combination) will only combine the results for those who answered both questions. So in preview mode, finish all questions on the test devices, otherwise the combinations can't be made.

Press the Start button in the top right corner. A green indicator with the question number should be displayed, indicating the question that is accessible by all voting devices. In the following example, question 2 has been started and will appear on the screens of all connected devices. Go to live.voxvote.com  in your browser.

No you can have unlimited audiences, even on our free credit trial accounts.

Our Azure platform scales automatically on heavy duty tasks. But in general, on large conferences (1500+ concurrent users) contact your event organizer and inform them that WiFi repeaters and accesspoints should be available and that you are using VoxVote for audience measurement. On normal conferences up to 200 persons, normal WiFi or cellular data (4G, LTE, 5G) is fine.

This is intended behaviour. The story on stage must be in sync with the questions. A speaker will first go to the question, and when everybody is ready, press the Start button.

Yes, on live web app (https://live.voxvote.com) , go back to the first login screen (leave event, or click on logo), enter the PIN again, and you can continue to vote in preview mode.

General rule:

• preview (test/dummy) data in the chart show as grey results. Multiple test votes per device are possible.
• Live mode, when presenting on stage with live audience, use the green button to start collecting live data. In live mode you can vote only one time per question. Chart results are green.

This is intended behaviour. You have to refresh the chart results yourself.
If we refresh automatically, the first live voting results might influence the other persons in the audience wo still have to vote.
The speaker can decide the moment to Close or to Refresh. Both will show the latest voting results in the chart.
From VoxVote version 1.6 (June 2016) you can use the AutoClose timer settings. Where you can choose a timer in seconds. 

Preview:
Most of the time, they are a bit too long. Use the preview to optimize your question text and answer labels. In general: a good question has only a few words, and answer labels should be short as well, easy to choose from.

Zooming:
When presenting on a beamer, and the resolution is poor (800x600 or 1024x796), you can change the Zoom level to 80% or 90%. The designer/chart area will larger with more text. Example: in chrome, you can use Control and the mouse wheel to zoom in or out.

Yes you can. You can share credits between users with the same company email domain name. So finance@mylawfirm.co.uk can transfer credits to events@mylawfirm.co.uk 
Not only the credits, but also the upgraded features associated with the packages are shared

Minimum package: Silver
The minimum credits that can be transferred needs to be 4 purchased credits or more. So with one Bronze bundle you can't share.We are working on a do-it-your-self user interface, but currently you can contact us with your requests, sent us the list with target email addresses and number of credits per user. (Note: we can only transfer to existing VoxVote accounts, make sure your colleagues have signed up and have confirmed accounts).

Limits
Main global email provider accounts are excluded from this service (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail etc. unless you work at one of these companies).
It must be a recognizable company/corporate mail address within your own domain.
Once transferred? The credit's can't be retransferred. It's one-way only.

Sometimes you want to allow the audience to vote on multiple answers, but one answer is special, it must deselect the earlier chosen answer.
Example question:

Which countries have you visitited the past 10 years?
[ ] Italy
[ ] Sweden
[ ] The Netherlands 
[ ] Mexico
[ ] Japan
( ) None of these / I don't travel.

It is obvious that you can't select one or more countries AND selecting the last option.
You can achieve this with the 'exclusive' option on a multiple question. In the question editor, select multiple on the right, and you can use the checkbox after the answer label to indicate which labels are special and exclusive. 

Yes, when you have a perfect set of questions and answers, and you want the same questions for another group/audience/class/workshop, you can easily make a full copy of the event.
From the start screen (click on the logo), you see all your events. The button duplicate will make a full copy from all settings. Update the name of the event so you know which one is the new one, and you have an empty set of answers.

There are some advanced features available (you don't have to find for Easter eggs in our software), but both on the designer and in our web based voting app, we offer the following functions.
 

A. Voting Integration with extra parameters, set you language and more.
The following parameters are possible on the live.voxvote.com url 

• pin=100001 - your 5 or 6 digit numeric pin. Example: https://live.voxvote.com?pin=500001 will automatically fill the pin form. (note, make sure you use your own pin when sharing)
• autosubmit   - when adding autosubmit to the querystring, your pin will be autosubmitted, so you don't have to ask your audience for entering PIN and press the OK (submit) button. This is a handy tool for sharing the voting links on social media or webinar/MOOC events. HINT: test it yourself, and make sure your event is open.
  Example: https://live.voxvote.com/?pin=500001&autosubmit   (for those not familiar with concatenating querystring parameters: the first one has always a ? and all following parameters have the & sign.  The order of the parameters is irrelevant. https://live.voxvote.com/?autosubmit&pin=500001 has the same result
• nm=  set's the name from the voter. In the app, you can ask your audience to fill in a nickname or other identifier to remain less anonymous. (Sometimes needed within a quiz, the organizer wants to know their audience). When you use the live.voxvote.com URL in a integrated app (for example XCode or Android or other web packages) you can use an iframe, and sent the known session name to our VoxVote platform. So it can place the nm= (nickname) already in the app.  
  Example https://live.voxvote.com?nm=John Visser  will set the name John Visser in the webapp.
  Example https://live.voxvote.com/?pin=500001&autosubmit&nm=John Visser   will set the name John Visser in the app, and directly opens event 500001.
• lck=y  will lock the set name with the nm= parameter. So basically, your audience can't change the name or code you sent to the URL.
  Example https://live.voxvote.com?nm=John Visser[vis277NL]&lck=y   will set the name to John Visser[vis277NL]  and the special name code can be found in the export and other data for further reporting an name lookup.  (note: lck=y will only work with the nm= )
• lang=  where you can set the voting language for your live audience in the url.
  Use the  letter language combination to set one of the following languages:
  lang=en  (English)
  lang=nl  (Nederlands / Dutch)
  lang=de  (Deutsch / German)
  lang=es  (Español / Spanish)
  lang=fr (Français / French)
  lang=it  (Italiano / Italian)
  lang=pt  (Português / Portugees)
  lang=pt (Polskie / Polish)
  
  Example: setting a spanish question to your event pin (123456) and bypass the login/pin and open first question direct for user Johan Cruijff , the following link is the one you should use.
  https://live.voxvote.com?pin=123456&autosubmit&lang=es&nm=Johan Cruijff
• Advanced characters.
  If you would like to add an email in the name, example president@acme.com  make sure to escape the @ to %40  
  You can find more about escaping chars here: https://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.ASP 
   

For whom?
For those who need this function, for example to embed the https://live.voxvote.com URL link in a custom app or platform. And want to know their audience. 
It's free both for paying customers and free users

B. JSON realtime export from our API.

If your in house development team can handle JSON, this might be a good option for real-time reporting, or real-time weighting.
It's a table (grid) in JSON format, with a lot of repeated project data, there aren't any nested objects (at the moment in version 1.7)
What do you need?

• API address: https://api.voxvote.com/project/Export
• An API Key, which can be found on the my Account page - for paying customers only.
• Your eventId  (on top of the event pages) a long 36 string. with numbers and letters, for example ed4269b5-cdbf-4c0d-90f7-a4820100fa71
• An optional switch for 'Live data only'  or do you want the test/preview data also to be included. 
  liveOnly=True  will give your live data,   liveOnly=False will give you all data.

Example:
https://api.voxvote.com/project/Export?APIKey={api key from your account page}&Id={project/eventId}&liveOnly=False
An example which will return [ ] (because an empty event, and non-existing APIKey), but the format is correct.
https://api.voxvote.com/project/export?APIKey=due-rS16F02P1J-nOwnBWw&Id=e605df3f-6ee9-53e2-af6b-a67e00949613&liveonly=True

This JSON is available for paying users only and the granted educational license.)