Slack doesn’t have a built-in poll command to launch polls.
To do a poll in Slack, your best option is to install a poll bot and use it to create polls.
There are several Slack polling tools, each with more or less the same features. In this article, we’ll share to create poll using a free Slack bot Geekbot. For a comparative analysis you can also check the ‘Geekbot Vs. Polly: Which Slack poll and survey tool is best for your team‘ blog post.
Geekbot is also an easy to use polling software that integrates with Slack, letting you easily run polls to gain insights from your team.
This post shows you how to use Geekbot to do a poll in Slack in 6 steps.
Note: Are you ready to start running polls in Slack? Geekbot is free for smaller teams with less than 10 users. We also offer a paid option for larger teams which you can try out free for 30 days.
1. Install Polling Slack Bot
Go to slack.com/apps and type in the search “polls Geekbot” or simply “Geekbot”
Click on Geekbot and in the opened window on the left, click “Add to Slack”:
2. Open Dashboard
Right after the installation. Geekbot will prompt you to open its dashboard.
You can also open it from Slack by simply sending Geekbot a direct message “dashboard” or “login”:
Alternatively, you can type /geekbot "Insert Your Poll Question" in a chanel with Geekbot to instantly launch a quick poll.
3. Create a New Slack Poll
As you can see below, Geekbot offers several ready-made templates for polls, surveys, standups, and more.
To start a poll in Slack, simply select “My Polls & Surveys” in the left menu. From here on you have an option to choose from pre-made polling templates or creating your own poll from scratch.
Let’s run a single questions Poll as an example and use one of Geekbot pre-made template to save us time.
Select “Polls (single question)“, and you will see we have four templates to tackle your needs.
Note: if you want to build a poll fromscratch, notice a “Build your own” button in the righ upper corner.
Let’s click “Yes / No” pollas a starting point. In the opened window you will see more detailed information about this poll. Click “Use template” button in the upper right corner:
4. Write Your Poll Questions
It’s time to fill our poll with more questions!
Note: There is no limit to how many questions you can add to your Slack poll.
When you click “Answer Type”, you’re taken to a screen where you can select between several different types of responses.
- Yes/No: Users can freely type any kind of answer.
- Agree/Disagree
- 1 -5 scale.
- 0 – 10 scale
- Emoji ranking
Let’s make a poll with two questions, and use different type of answers for each.
When you’re ready, click “Next” to continue customizing our poll.
With Geekbot, you can also write an intro message. This is the first Slack message your team sees, and it can be as simple as, “It’s time for our weekly poll!”
You can also type an outro message. An outro message is usually something simple such as, “Thank you for completing today’s poll.”
Bonus: With Geekbot, you can use emojis in your Intro and Outro message to make your Slack poll more engaging, emotive, and friendly. 🙂
5. Select Your Participants
With Geekbot, you can either manually add participants to your poll or sync your poll to a specific Slack channel.
If you wanted only the responses of a few team members who aren’t grouped neatly into one channel, then just add their names to the list manually. Geekbot pulls all available names from your organization’s Slack workspace.
Note: With Geekbot, there’s no maximum or minimum number of participants required to run a Slack poll.
6. Schedule Your Slack Poll
Next, it’s time to schedule your Slack poll.
The “Schedule” tab allow you to pick how soon you want your poll published (now or later), how often you want to run your poll (once, or daily, or weekly, and so on).
You can pick the frequency of when your Slack poll is sent out, selecting from a dropdown list of options, including:
- Once
- Weekly
- Montly
- Quarterly
- Yearly
- Custom Schedule
You can also select what day(s) to send out the poll, along with what time.
Lastly, you can limit the polling time. For example, you may want to accept new poll responses only within 2 hours after it’s published:
7. Control Visibility
In the last tab, “Results”, you may choose whether you want to share poll results with voters or make them only visible to you in the admin dashboard.
Run Anonymous Poll in Slack
If you want to run anonymous poll in Slack, simply check “Anonymize results” in the “Results” tab when you create your poll:
Note that if you create an anonymous poll, you won’t be able to deanonymize it later. Instead, you will have to create a new poll from scratch.
8. Check Poll Results
After you publish your poll and start getting responses, you can view them in two different ways.
First, you can view them directly in Slack. For example:
But you can also view responses as a whole from your Geekbot dashboard.
If you have questions in your poll with numerical type of response (e.g. scale 1 to 5), Geekbot dashboard will automatically convert the results in intuitive graphs.
In the above image, you can see that 73% of your team filled out the poll (with five missing participants) and most team members agree that they’d appreciate freshly squeezed juices over fresh veggies and yogurt dips.
Final Thoughts: The Many Benefits of Using Geekbot
We use Geekbot to run Slack polls whenever we need them. It’s a quick and easy way to get information from your team. Plus, there are dozens of ways teams can use Geekbot to improve their company culture.
For example, GitLab uses Geekbot to do remote work check-ins and build camaraderie. Other customers use a feature called Geekbot Sentiment (where Geekbot measures team happiness).
Also, as we’ve mentioned, many teams use Geekbot to run asynchronous remote work meetings, such as standups, retrospectives, and more.
If you’re ready to start using Geekbot, click here to start your free trial.
Frequently asked questions
Can You Make Polls in Slack?
Yes, you can easily make polls in Slack using various polling apps, such as Geekbot, Polly, and Simple Poll.
To get started, navigate to the Slack app directory and type in the polling software you want to use.
For example, if you wanted to install our tool — Geekbot — then type it in the search bar.
When Geekbot pops up, just click on “Sign In to install” (if you’re not already logged in).
From there, you can create an account and start running polls in Slack.
How do you make a Slack poll anonymous?
To create anonymous polls in Slack, you'll need a third-party app like Geekbot Surveys. When setting up your poll, select the "anonymous" or "anonymize results" option in the survey settings. This allows team members to provide honest feedback without revealing their identity, making it ideal for sensitve topics or workplce satisfaction surveys.