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Run a Q&A session


Slido Team
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Slido is gradually rolling out a new user interface. If the below steps and visuals match what you are seeing within your account, then you are using the new interface and this article is for you. If not, please see this version.

 

With Audience Q&A, attendees can use their devices or computers to send their questions into Slido. They’re also able to upvote questions submitted by other participants. 
 

It's a simple and effective way to crowdsource the most popular topics. You’ll easily see what people are genuinely the most interested in.

 

Participants can submit questions anonymously, but some Slido plans allow you to require names. More information about this is in our Participant Privacy guide.

 

In this article:

 

 

Ask your audience to join your slido and submit questions

 

Once you create a slido, invite your audience to join it. People can join your slido by using the slido code, joining link, or QR code.


The most common way to join is for people to go to slido.com and enter the code of your slido session.

 

Make sure the slido dates you set up match the actual date of your slido because your participants can only use the code during these days​​​

 

Join with a code at slido.com

 

 

Besides the slido code, you can invite people by sharing a joining link to your slido session – or by sharing its QR code. Both options are found under the Share menu in the upper right corner. 

 

Get the direct link or QR code for your event

 

Your slido’s joining link and QR code are not bound by event dates. This allows you to collect questions before the live dates in order to learn what’s most relevant to your audience.

 

Once someone joins the slido session, they can start submitting and upvoting questions immediately. The Q&A is unlimited and so participants will be able to submit as many questions as they wish.

 

By default, they’ll have the option to submit questions anonymously or with their name.

 

 

Manage audience questions

 

Managing questions is easily done directly from the Host mode. Below are the three most important actions when doing managing:

  1. Highlight the question that’s being answered so that it gets more attention.
  2. Mark the question as answered once you don’t want to display it anymore. You can then view those questions in the Archive folder.
  3. Change the order of the questions. By default, the questions will be sorted by their popularity, but you can change this to have the most recent questions at the top.
     
Managing audience Q&A

 

And here’s how a highlighted question appears for your audience:

 

Participant view of highlighted question

 

With some paid plans, you can also moderate your Q&A. This allows you to review every question before it goes live for everyone.

 

Pro tip: Use the arrow icon to minimize your list of interactions. This gives you more space to view and manage your incoming questions.

 

Minimize or expand your list of interactions

 

Hosts and co-hosts can edit questions as needed. This is especially useful if questions are submitted with typos. 

 

 

Topics for Q&A

 

Our topics feature allows your participants to navigate and filter questions in a more structured way during a Q&A session. Topics are visible in participant mode only and they’re automatically generated if and when the below criteria are met:

  • A topic must first be identified by the system using common words or phrases within at least 3 questions, and then
  • There must be at least 20 questions, or…
  • At least 3 topics generated, regardless of the number of questions

 

Here’s what it looks like for participants:

 

Participant view of topics

 

A few things to keep in mind for Q&A topics:

  • Topics are generated using only live questions – archived questions won’t be included
  • Questions need to be in English
  • Slido generates Q&A Topics using its own machine learning model. During this process, the data does not leave our infrastructure and is not exposed to any third parties.

 

 

Did this topic help you find an answer to your question?

18 replies

  • 1 reply
  • June 27, 2022

Hello - We’d like to run an asynchronous Q&A where participants can leave questions anytime and we’ll answer within 24-48 hours. Assuming participants will not keep the Slido event open/active, can Slido push an email notification to a participant when their question has been answered?


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Hey @asmirand,

No, at the moment, there is no way to set up an email notification for participants when their question has been answered.

Instead, you could set up the event to require participants’ emails. After 48h or when you’ve answered all questions, you could export the list of participants and send them an email asking them to check the event.

Hope this helps! 🙂 I will pass on your idea as feedback.


  • 1 reply
  • July 13, 2022

How long can the Q&A active? 

I need the Q&A active for exchange questions for 12-months. Is it possible?


Francesca
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  • Slido Community Manager
  • 20 replies
  • July 13, 2022

Hi @ewintan

It is! If you go for one of the annual plans, your events (including the Q&A) can be active to up to 12months. 

For the one time plans, the maximum length is 7 days. 

 

 


  • 1 reply
  • July 21, 2022

Hi 

I’ve set up a Q&A event which will happen every 2 months. Is it possible to temporarily stop receiving questions e.g. for a day and then restart again, without changing the link? Thanks!


Cori from slido
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Hi @hrops

You can, depending on your Slido plan, this is available in our professional plans and higher. You can then close questions by toggling on. 

 


However, if this isn’t the case, a workaround would be to create a permanent link for your event and moderate your questions. 

Hope this helps! Feel free to get in touch with our customer care team through your slido admin or at support@slido.com if you need us to look at your use case a little more closely, we’d be happy to assist! 


  • 1 reply
  • August 4, 2022

Hi! Is it possible to add more characters to the default 300 when editing questions? My task is to translate questions in Slido, so when participants have already used 250 characters, there is not enough room to add my translation. (Since questions are being ranked, it’s not possible to send the translation in a separate field.)  Thank you!

 


Cori from slido
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Hi @Terp


300 is our maximum limit for questions so you wouldn’t be able to edit them this way. A workaround which will enable you to translate would be to reply to the question with the translation. This would then ensure that the translation was linked to the question asked. 

Hope this helps!
Best,


  • 1 reply
  • January 24, 2023

Can moderators see the names of people who upvote in Q&A?


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Hey @BB Admin,

No, moderators can only see the number of upvotes a question receives.

Could you maybe share your use case? Why would you like moderators to see this?


For questions, is there beside the upvote option, also in downvote (=dislike) option?


Cori from slido
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Hi @Dieter Kaiser

There is! You can enable downvotes in your Q&A session so the preferences from your participants are more clear to you 🙂
 

https://community.slido.com/audience-q-a-42/enable-downvotes-for-your-q-a-440


Hope this helps, let me know if you have any more questions!


Hi there - do you set each Q&A up as a separate event? Or something within the main event?


Carly from Slido
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Hey @TaylorHopkinson ,

Each Event has its own Q&A session.

If you explain your use case a bit or how you’re planning on running your event so we can better understand what you’re asking?

Best,


  • 1 reply
  • June 9, 2023

Can a presenter in Powerpoint mark a question as answered, or does that need to happen on the Slido admin side?


Carly from Slido
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Hey @Rueben ,

First you will need to add the Audience Q&A Slido interaction to your Powerpoint deck.

When in Present mode, from the top right corner of the Question you want to mark answered you will see 2 options, 1 to highlight the question you are focusing on, and another to mark it as completed once you’re done. 

Let us know if you have any other questions!

Best,


  • 1 reply
  • January 4, 2024

Hi there - I would like to host an anonymous Q&A for participants, however I would like to have 4 different people answering the questions with their names shown.  How can I do this?

 


Carly from Slido
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Hey @Amy Moore ,

This is possible, you’ll just need to invite those 4 people as Guest Collaborators to the Event, they can then reply as the Moderator to the questions being submitted.

Let us know if you have any other questions!

Best,


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